My old eyes prefer a red dot to open sights these days so I needed to find a way to mount one on my recently acquired Browning Medalist. The gun is so pretty that I really didn’t want to drill and tap if I could avoid it. A search of the internet turned up one long discontinued clamp-on mount and little else. It was time to make my own.
Since the Medalist sight rail is dovetailed into the barrel, I reasoned that it should be strong enough to support an optic sight. I started out with a dovetail to picatinny adapter from UTG. Since it was still a bit too wide to clamp onto the sight rail, I disassembled it and filed down the inside of one half. Of course, the heads of the tiny set screws for the pins stripped immediately. A reverse drill worked wonders to get them out although they are now destroyed.
Trial fitting the picatinny mount sight revealed a shift or misalignment to one side so a shim was cut from a piece aluminum angle, shaped and then glued in place. I did not reinstall the springs and set screws as the picatinny clamp keeps every thing tight. I applied some painters tape to the underside to hopefully prevent scratching the rail. The sight installed well and lined up nicely.
I’m pretty happy with the result. I think it should hold up well on a .22. Time will tell!
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Since the Medalist sight rail is dovetailed into the barrel, I reasoned that it should be strong enough to support an optic sight. I started out with a dovetail to picatinny adapter from UTG. Since it was still a bit too wide to clamp onto the sight rail, I disassembled it and filed down the inside of one half. Of course, the heads of the tiny set screws for the pins stripped immediately. A reverse drill worked wonders to get them out although they are now destroyed.
Trial fitting the picatinny mount sight revealed a shift or misalignment to one side so a shim was cut from a piece aluminum angle, shaped and then glued in place. I did not reinstall the springs and set screws as the picatinny clamp keeps every thing tight. I applied some painters tape to the underside to hopefully prevent scratching the rail. The sight installed well and lined up nicely.
I’m pretty happy with the result. I think it should hold up well on a .22. Time will tell!
