Random question that I thought someone here might know the answer to:

I was watching Band of Brothers (again) last night.  While preparing for a night-time prisoner catch raid in Bastogne they showed the squad cleaning their weapons.  It looked like someone was cleaning their front rifle sight with a lighter.  Is there any particular reason for doing this?  I was thinking maybe it would help see the sights at night.

Quoted:
They were probabally blackening it with carbide.[/quote

+1

Actually works!  I was watching the same episode with a buddy and to test it, held a dime in a pair of needle nose pliers over my zippo.  Blackened it nicely.

Then I tried it with a "clean burning" butane lighter, also blackened it nicely.  That surprised me.

BTW, I use a plastic fork set on fire (watching out for flaming drips, so don't do this over your carpet!) and that blackens the front post without getting it  hot....the trail of smudgy smoke extends 3 or 4 inchs above the burning plastic.  I feel safe smudging  out the tritium front site, knowing I'm not going to melt something.  But the soot is soft enough, I can wipe it off with just a finger tip.

Unless it was a carbide lighter, it was CARBON.  Commonly used to take the shine off the sights for day shooting.  You can also buy Birchwood Casey spray-on sight black that comes off much easier.

Heat is a good way to explode your tritium vials, do NOT use a lighter on them, use the spray.

Thanks for the info.  That makes sense.

My first instinct was to grab my AK clone and Zippo but I've learned over the years (the hard way) to do a little research first ;)

I used some keyword from the repsonses to find this article:

www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3623/is_199610/ai_n8734871

BTW, findarticles.com has a slew of gun related articles online.  Beware--it gets addicting.