I have a light weight Commander. Early 1970’s.  I don’t shoot it much. It has what I think is the factory sights .  I want to keep the retro look. But have somewhat better sights. I see the Harrison Design retro sights . I’m thinking this is the route I want to go.  The front is a staked sight. I would want to keep it that way. The rear is offered in a square cut and a round cut . There a preference that I don’t realize?  If I go the HD route I’ll probably mail them the slide if they install.  Anyone have these on there 1911’s ?  Wardawg Attached File


Bottom 1911.

I have them on my EDC 1911 with the round bottom notch.  The front is a tritium night sight.  The night sight just falls in the round notch better than a square bottom rear sight cut.

You can get just  about any staked front sight shape you want.  Make sure you get a narrow tendon.  The 80 series uses a thicker tendon.

I had a steel satin Commander .Great gun .But back then you paid a premium price and got a gun with crappy sights.I would keep gun change sights.

You can stay with staked, but Novaks could fix that quick.  All they need is the slide, and I suspect they would do a fine job with a staked new front too.

Novak front and a Harrison Retro rear are visible and compliment classic lines:

I've used Novaks once, and would do so again.

Mail it to them and you'll have it back in a week, and it will be perfect.

If you want to keep the retro look but stay with staked sights, to be brutally honest - a set of new Colt S70 or S80 sights (the only difference is the S80s have white dots in them, the S70 sights are flat black) would fit the bill. They're quite a bit taller than the stock sights on that old Commander and other than needing to re-stake the front, should drop right in. The sights on that stainless gun in the top right should give you an idea.

The Harrison retro rear would work but IMO they look out of place with that weird "pyramid" look, vs the straight blade look of the Colts.

YMMV, of course.

Honestly though Novaks are the easy button.

Optic cut.

The future is now.

This is what’s on it.  I got this used 10 years ago. Is this  factory front sight ? I think my issue could be how low the sights set. At least the front. Could be I just need to shoot it more.  But I’m going to track down some s80 sights . Thanks for the reply’s. Here’s the ole girl.   Attached File
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Yeah those are original, except for the paint job.  I had the same colt.
Traded it before I fixed the tiny sights.  They are horrible for a decent gun.

I was at the range a couple years ago when some other shooter approached me wanting to know if I knew anything about 1911s.
Said his front sight fell off.
Get over into his bay and he has field stripped it.  He actually had found the flying front sight and was trying to figure out how to replace it.  Of course we couldn’t.

My point is if you intend to put a staked front on, ensure whoever does it knows how.  That colt missing the front came from the factory with only the slightest bit of “relief cut” or whatever they call the bottom of the hole.  I think it is where the staking is supposed to spread into.
 Someone with more knowledge may correct me.  How do you even get a tiny bevel in there?  I think they make a special tool to put in thru the slide to do the staking part.  Probably another special one to grind a bevel.

I’m guessing when you said paint job , you are referring to the yellow on the front sight. If so it actually is some kind of plastic insert.  Trying to figure out what thickness tenor I’m supposed to get I my reassured the front sight . It measures .100    It’s not that the sights are the end of the world terrible.  But they are definitely the weakest on any of my 1911’s.
 I’m thinking dremmel has something in there line up to bevel the internal area to open an area up for the staking metal to hold on.  Wardawg

Yes, I think you need to shoot more. I grew up shooting those kind of sights and it's very easy to do. The way I learned 1911 was to point rather than aim. If you keep doing this, you'll find that the sights naturally align or very minimal "finding." The pistol was made for people on horse back and as such aligns perfectly with your pointing finger. Probably the best pistol out the box that does this. The only other pistol I know of that seems to do this would be the CZ-75.

If I owned that, I wouldn't change anything out, to be honest. I would be able to group it pretty well, at least for my standards.

Thank you for your honesty.  I’ll probably do just that.  Wardawg

That's awful! You should probably just sell it to me. I had a '69 LWT Commander that I really regret selling.

My father had an early 70’s Colt light weight that I didn’t get when he passed.  I saw this in a gun shop and grabbed it.

I'll get another one someday... Wasn't very fun to shoot a lot, but man did it fit the hand perfectly.

It's definitely something that's a bit of an acquired skill set. In my case, I was a 10 year old kid, so it's not like I can tell my dad we need night sights and I probably wouldn't even know what they were then lol. I personally think if you can shoot reasonable groups with that kind of sight, you should have 0 problems with any other sight. So there's that aspect of it.

Yeah - replacing the front sight on a stock 1911 isn't too hard but it does require some specialized tooling...and it's pretty easy to get wrong. If you google replacing the front tenon sight you'll get a bunch of info, but you'll need a front sight staker at the very least from Brownells or elsewhere - and while they're not expensive, they're also very much a single purpose tool. It's not like you can buy one and use it for a bunch of things...and it's not like you're going to need to replace your front sight all that often (unless you botch it the first time around).

It's way easier to ask a gunsmith who's done it before to do it again for you. Since Colt managed to slap it together without refinishing it, it shouldn't require you to hog out the underside of the slide...there's already enough room there to set the sight (otherwise yours would have flown off by now!)

Also if you just want a set of sights, you might be better off asking on places like 1911forum or 1911addicts - there's plenty of gunsmiths there who remove the original sights before installing new sights; you might even try just emailing Novaks and asking if they happen to have any extra sets of takeoffs laying around. IIRC they send the original sights back with the slide, but it's possible they have some just laying around anyway...

Though, depending on how fancy you want to get and how much you want to keep the original kind of look to the gun - you might investigate cutting the slide for a CZ front sight...they don't use a cross-slide dovetail; they actually tap in from the front, and look like a part of the slide. It's different but it looks pretty slick.

John Harrison did my colt s70 sights, his retro rear and staked in serrated front. The staked front sight install was like $65 plus the cost of the sight about a year ago.  I’ve heard of the issues with those falling off so I wanted a top tier pro to do it. I just sent the slide and it was back in like 2 weeks I think.