Sight project idea

[yellowfin]

OK folks, here's a creative one I just thought up for a gift for my wife. How feasible would it be to get 3 diamonds put in the 3 dot sights for a pistol? I'd like to get her something to carry when we move in a little while and once we reach our destination, so I figured adding jewelery would be a decent way to go about it and the 3 dots would be something I could afford rather than blinging the whole thing. Any tips?

She's always wishing I bought her more jewels so this is a way I can knock out two things at once.

[maxicon]

There was a post about this a long time ago, but search isn't doing much good, so here goes.

It wouldn't be hard to do, and not super expensive, either. A 10 point diamond is 3mm, or 0.12", and will be too big for, say, a typical 1911 front sight, so you'd want to go smaller - maybe 7 or 8 points. Most diamonds are set with prongs (not that practical in a sight) or bead set by pushing bits of metal over the gem to hold it in place (tricky to do with steel, and risks breaking the stone).

You don't need a high quality gem for this kind of use, so if you got them from a jeweler who buys scrap, they should be pretty cheap, as there's little resale market for small pulls.

Gold beads are popular for some types of shooting, and setting diamonds in gold beads, then putting those in the sights, would be pretty straightforward. I'm sure there are multiple ways of doing it. ETA - these are often pinned in place, but putting them in with a small setscrew would let you change out the insert easily. Now, that would be kind'a cool - a set of gemstones in miscellaneous colors (ruby, emerald, diamond, sapphire) that could be changed out!

Now, whether it would make an effective sight would be a different question. They'd be white and glittery, but tiny diamonds like that aren't going to be real flashy. You'd pretty much need to try it out to see how well it would work. A couple of CZs in a dab of removable adhesive would be a good test case, and very inexpensive.

If you did the gold bead version and later decided it wasn't working out, the diamond beads could easily be replaced with plain gold beads.

My wife would rather have a couple of nice stud earrings, or some black pearls. IMO, it would be an amusing curio gift, and a great conversation piece, but no substitute for real jewelry...