Replacing a front sight blade on a 3 screw Blackhawk

So. I am doing a project to an old 3 screw Ruger .357 Blackhawk that I received that had a lot of rust and was missing the cylinder. After fitting a replacement cylinder I chopped off 2 inches of barrel and need to replace the front sight blade. I was thinking maybe an old silver coin cut to fit. Has anyone else made any interesting front sight blades with something else cool like that? Pics if you have?

sharps 40 has done some nice ones

Welcome to our forum. Consider using heat to remove your existing front sight then silver solder it onto the shortened barrel.

John

Hello SAJohn. I am going with the Vaquero style fixed sights. The original sights are going to be way too tall as I have also removed a good portion of the top rail on the gun and am adding a brass fixed groove style sight to the rear. Thank you for your suggestion.


DNO

Black powder rifle component suppliers have various silver and brass universal front sights in plain or shapes like horse head, etc. Google and see if you find something you like. If you find one with a wide base, you can solder to the barrel w/o having to mill a mortice in the barrel like for the Vaq front blade.

Are you contouring the top strap in the shape of the Vaq?

Are you going to have it re-blued?

Hondo44 said:

Black powder rifle component suppliers have various silver and brass universal front sights in plain or shapes like horse head, etc. Google and see if you find something you like. If you find one with a wide base, you can solder to the barrel w/o having to mill a mortice in the barrel like for the Vaq front blade.

Are you contouring the top strap in the shape of the Vaq?

Are you going to have it re-blued?

Click to expand...

No sir. Just high polish end result. I think I am going to go with a coin silver soldered into the barrel

Cool.

Copper penny makes a really good blade, is easy to Cerakote, GunKote, or whatever finish you choose to match the gun. Makes for an interesting sight picture if you do a little scribing across the rear of the blade for height adjustment. Use an older penny as they are all copper and hold up better. Canadian pennies used for sight blades are worth more than an penny.

How about a silver Mexican fifty centavos coin, Something like this? And the obverse side says "Libertad", spanish for freedom.
I just can't remember how big they were in diameter.
I have a box of old foreign coins I could dig out if you were interested in something particular.