Tritium Replacement Local?

[Royal Oaks]

I'm interested to know if anyone local (Monterey, bay area) can replace old worn tritium sights on Beretta 92. I think the issue is no one can ship tritium? So what about I bring the slide to you?? Anyone?

[hermosabeach]

Why can’t you mail sights to manufacture for replacement of the vials?
It’s done all the time



Or realize if you needed the glow over the past 10-15 years... do you really need night sights


I’m not sure anyone is set up with a supply of radioactive vials and can remove the old and install new vials.
Trijicon can take yours in and repair them. You need to remove from gun and reinstall




Or find a shop that sells and installs sights and buy a new set.

[ptmn]

You're out of luck. Tritium is radioactive waste, so nobody at home is going to be able to comply with regulations for containment and disposal.

You're also out of luck sending your slide to Trijicon to have the vials replaced. Trijicon charges $18 a piece to relamp dead vials on their pistol sights with new tritium vials. The bad news is that their newest policy is that they will no longer relamp sights if they are built into the slide, the sights have to be removable from the slide. On a 92FS, only the rear sights will come off, so Trijicon won't do it.

When I had my Sig P232 night sights relamped by Trijicon, they had me ship them my entire slide via UPS. Got my slide back to me in 2 weeks. Before you ask, the front sight on a P232 only looks like it is built into the slide, it isn't, it comes off.

Best option for a 92FS is to pick up a new Vertec slide. It fits and functions on the 92FS and both the front and rear sights have dovetails, so they are replaceable with night sights. You won't be able to purchase from Optics Planet if you live in California, they wouldn't ship a Vertec slide to California. That was 2 years ago, maybe they changed policy now?

I found someone that had a new one and purchase it f2f, then installed a set of Trijicon night sights myself.

One other night sight option, but not a good one, is to have a dovetail machined into your current slide. Most gunsmiths won't do it, since there isn't a lot of metal on the front sight area.

[67Cuda]

I'm interested to know if anyone local (Monterey, bay area) can replace old worn tritium sights on Beretta 92. I think the issue is no one can ship tritium? So what about I bring the slide to you?? Anyone?

I've bought tritium vials off of Amazon. Replaced the dead vials on my M70.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07JN8CHPF/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

[CWL]

I've bought tritium vials off of Amazon. Replaced the dead vials on my M70.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

How do you remove the vial of tritium without breaking the glass?

[ptmn]

I don't recommend it, but there's a YouTube video of a guy replacing night sight tritium. Just use the YouTube search function.

In the video, the guy drills out the vials. I think he mentions something about it not being that dangerous...he's wrong.

I used to work in a related field. People that think Tritium is dead after its 12 year half life are wrong. It really doesn't decay down till around 84 years. Just do the math on half lifes.

Big difference between radioactive exposure vs contamination. Low level stuff like a tritium night sight exposure isn't all that bad, but once it goes from exposure to contamination, that's when the danger to health changes drastically.

By drilling into tritium pistol sights like in the YouTube video, that causes contamination as the gas is released.

[CWL]

Busting up the glass tritium vial is a no-go.

Inhaling tritium gas can give someone a nice dose of cancer.

[ptmn]

The "funny" thing about tritium contamination...they would treat it with beer. Caused the body to piss it out, then run bio assay's and scans. Even if it is out, it still caused damage in the body from beta radiation. Beta can sometimes be stopped by layers of clothing and your skin, but once it's inside your body, there's no shielding so your tissues are exposed, which is why H3(tritium) contamination from drilling vials is a lot worse than exposure from the sealed capsule.

Long story short, OP shouldn't mess with replacing vials himself. OP shouldn't find someone to do it for him at their house, since the slide can get contaminated (which is why Trijicon stopped doing relamping on sights built into the slide) and the contaminated slide can result in the OP contaminating himself.

It's not like Covid 19 where your hands get contaminated and you wipe them down with sanitizer. Radioactive contamination is a whole different process.

As CWL mentioned, you can get a nice dose of cancer.

[Royal Oaks]

Thanks to all replies, seems I'm SOL on this one. Next topic will be painting some high visibility dots, better than nothing. Lot of opinions on that as to which paint is best, wonder if anyone here used a paint they liked?

[ptmn]

Not SOL, but it could be pricey. Tooltech will do it for you on a 92FS, but they charge $325. This price includes the night sights and the machining.

http://tooltechgunsight.com/product/beretta-92fs-w-existing-tritium/

If I were you, I wouldn't go that route. If you are in no rush, wait till someone is selling a Beretta Vertec slide for $100 - $150 on eBay/Gunbroker/Gunauction/etc. Buy that slide, then purchase Beretta Vertec night sights to install on the Vertec Slide. That's what I did. Now I have my original slide as a spare, completeley unmodified. I went one step further and bought another barrel when I found one for $100, so I have two complete uppers for my Beretta

I tried Glowing paint on my 5906 years ago. I had to charge it first with a flashlight and it glowed for 2 or 3 minutes. I was very happy with it. The paint did come off when cleaning, but a little clear nail polish over the paint made it a little more durable. Unfortuantely, I don't remember the company I bought that Glowing paint from, it was 22 years ago. I remember the instructions said to use a toothpick to apply the paint.

I think this would be an excellent option for you while you wait until someone offloads a Vertec slide cheap. Time is an important asset. If you have time before you need night sights, then you can wait for a good deal to pop up.

[SharedShots]

If you use Super Luminova paint a charged night sight will last until daybreak the next morning. Compared to tritium the paint starts out many times brighter but fades over the hours. Still, in complete darkness it will glow all night long.

If you want to replace the tritium vials the product is available for the asking on Amazon. Lookup tritium for watches. There are a variety of type, flat, tube and in varying sizes. It's not magic stuff nor hazardous to remove and replace.

To charge superluminova just use a UV flashlight, it takes mere seconds and glows all night long. The thing about a UV light is that it charges the paint in seconds,, literally. 1,2 done. All you need is one of those really small pen sized UV lights. Do a bit of research about it and just make sure you get the quality stuff. Like many activities, things tend to get reinvented when some other industry has already figured it out to a science.

You can replace the tritium using T100 vials for about $30. The flat tubes are better than the circular tubes.

The source for luminova paint is Glowinc dot com. They have both water and oil based, they work the same. The company has a pretty detailed set of info about what color is best/brightest and how to apply it so that it lasts. Beware, once you see how easy it is to use all kinds of things will start glowing in the dark. The trick is to get to the detail behind where the paint will go and make it bare metal and smooth. Then apply the paint. The smoother the bare metal behind the paint the brighter the glow will be. This happens because the glow will also reflect from the backside outward.

If you really need the tritium replaced and don't want to mess with it yourself a lot of jewelers who repair watches (not just replace batteries) can do the work for you. You aren't taking the entire gun or the receiver to them right?

[ar15barrels]

If you really need the tritium replaced and don't want to mess with it yourself a lot of jewelers who repair watches (not just replace batteries) can do the work for you.
You aren't taking the entire gun or the receiver to them right?

The front sight on the OP's Beretta 92 is not removable, so he WOULD be taking the whole slide.



If he could just drift out the sight, there would not be a reason for this whole thread.

[SharedShots]

The front sight on the OP's Beretta 92 is not removable, so he WOULD be taking the whole slide.



If he could just drift out the sight, there would not be a reason for this whole thread.

The whole slide is just that, a slide. A slide is not a firearm. It doesn't matter if its a slide or a watch a jeweler can figure it out, it's not rocket science. The OP can do it with a small diameter drill, the kind with a hex base and just remove the existing tritium vial by hand. Then insert the replacement. Getting the vial isn't hard either, they get shipped to your front door.

He can't drift out the front sight so the OP's post is relevant. If we could all get primers, bullets, cases and powder quite a few threads wouldn't have a reason to exist either.

Now, if someone walks into a jewelry store wearing camo, face paint, and body armor and says "Can you replace the tritium in my gun" well then I can't speak to that. How many jewelers don't own a handgun? Probably zero and while they wouldn't want to be advertising that kind of work, discretion goes a long way when it comes to these things.

[CamW]

Aristocrat Products offers fiber optic sights for Beretta. The website also says they can remove tritium vials.

https://aristocratproducts.com/page4.html

[BrassCase]

You could also check with Wilson Combat, I believe that they will dovetail for a front sight on a 92FS.