I have had a pistol with a red dot that has been needing some back up iron sights. I have heard good things about the sights offered from Dawson Precision. Their prices are very good and I was intrigued with their sight height calculator.
When you arrive at their website, dawsonprecision.com, scroll your cursor over their gunsights tab at the top of the page. After doing this, click on your manufacture of handgun. The next page you arrive at will give you the options of choosing sights by the set or individually by front or rear. For my application, I just tried their all black sights so that they would not be distracting when I am using the red dot sight. They do offer a couple other options such as fiber optic and tritium sights. I measured the height of the housing of the optic in order to decide which height rear sight I would need in order to see the notch of the rear sight over the top of the red dot housing. After doing this, I did some guesstimation in order to decide which height I would need for the front sight. The two sights came to a total of just $65. The shipping was even free and quick. Another thing to consider if using their sights on a gun with a red dot, is to be sure the rear sight you choose will be narrow enough from front to back that it will not contact the red dot as you are installing it. Some of their rear sights hang too far forward and will not fit in conjunction with a red dot. You can contact their customer service if you are unsure and also you can exchange the sight for another as long as you haven't installed or have done any fitting on it yet.
On the outside packaging, there is a disclaimer which states, “Please check sight is correct before fitting! Altered sights cannot be returned for credit.” If you happen to receive the wrong height sight you can return it for the correct one. In the package, Dawson also includes an aluminum punch for each sight. The punch for the front sight even had a nice contour that fit the shape of the sight well when tapping them in. The aluminum punches worked well, they didn’t scratch the finish at all since they are a softer metal. They did leave gray marks which wiped away fairly easily.
After installing, I made a trip to the range to check how the zero worked out. At ten yards, my ammo was impacting two inches low. This is where the sight height calculator on Dawson’s website came in handy. To access this function, you will need to click the Dawson Fixed Rears option on the sight options page for your manufacture of pistol. Next, click the rear sight that you have installed on your pistol. Next to the part written “Sight Height & Notch Width” click on the word “Calculate” that is written in red. From here you will be prompted to enter the height of your front sight, sight radius between your front and rear sights, whether your point of impact was low or high, then it will ask the impact distance that it was off by, it will then ask your target distance in inches. Once you fill out all of these required boxes, it will recommend the correct height sight you will need for your gun. Since I was shooting a target ten yards away, I put in 360 inches for distance. At this point it recommends the correct height front sight to buy, which is pretty affordable. The black front sight ended up only running $25 and shipping for just a front sight even ended up being free!
Hope this helps for those looking for iron sights to consider for their pistols.
Have a great and safe weekend!