Just in case anyone ever asks you if it's easy to replace the rear sight blade on a Ruger Black Hawk the answer is nope not really.
Some of you no doubt read my post a few days back where I took my Black Hawk convertible out to shoot and found the right had side of the rear sight missing. I still have no clue how or why it was broken but it's now all fixed up with a new blade.
On the surface the job was simple.
1. Take out the screw. Not an easy task alone as that screw is TINY and finding a screwdriver blade to fit wasn't easy. I had not long ago gotten a 4mm size bit set rather than quarter inch bit set by accident. Turns out that was a good thing as one of the bits was a perfect fit.
2. Pull out the old broken rear leaf. Again not all that easy. It seemed to hang up and didn't exactly want to come out but did.
3. Put in new sight blade. Again NOT easy. Perhaps I should have known or realized sooner there was a spring in there. With the spring in place the rear sight leaf doesn't really have room to fit. I solved this issue by finding a punch small enough to fit thru the screw hole to depress the spring while I inserted the blade and held down tightly on it while pulling back on the punch. This allowed the blade to fit into place with one end on the spring.
4. Put the screw back in. OK this wasn't all that difficult except it is TINY as I mentioned. Lighting wasn't great here at my desk where I was doing the job and I needed about four hands to hold the gun steady while doing all this work.
But start to finish once I had all the tools in place it was maybe a 15 minute job that prolly would have taken 2 minutes for someone who doesn't have 10 thumbs and arthritic hands to work with. Had I taken the job to a spot with better lighting that too would have speeded it up. Putting the gun in a vise in a well lighted place would have really helped. Lessons learned if I ever have to do this again.
Due to Ruger's excellent customer service the part needed came in just a very few days with no cost to me.
Now I just need to get it out to the range and sight the gun in with the load I'm gonna be using until I shoot up the rest of the 1014 rounds I loaded up that were too short to function in my semiauto .45acp guns. They work fine in the revolver and are pretty accurate, more so than this old man for sure.
