I've never changed from stock sights on a handgun before and just had a question.  I recently installed a set of Trijicon HD sights on my Glock 17 using a sight pusher and had no problems.  It worked just fine.  I was very careful to make sure the rear sight was centered in the dovetail.  I don't have a caliper or any device to measure, but as best as I could tell with my naked eye it was dead center.

Testing at the range shooting supported off a bench, 15 yards, it was about 6-8 inches left and about 4-6 inches high.  I pushed the sight over to correct for this and the point of impact crept closer to the bull but it seemed like an unreasonable amount I was having to push the sight over.  It was obviously pretty far from center with the naked eye.  I didn't have anyone else there to give it a try for me and make sure it was the sights and not me.  The Glock 17 itself shot just fine with the stock sights so I figured it must be just me.  I pushed the rear sight back to dead-center and figured I'd have someone else take a look.

There was a gunsmith on duty at my LGS and I asked him to take a look.  It was indeed shooting left and high for him as well.  He drifted the sight a bit and brought me his sample target.  It was now centered but the rear sight was drifted pretty far from center in the dovetail.  It wasn't like all the way over or anything, but it was pushed far enough off center to be noticeable with the naked eye.  It was also still shooting a few inches high.  If I changed my sight picture to more of a pumpkin-on-a-post sight picture, then that brought the POI down for me.

I was just wondering how common it is for a rear sight to have to be moved off-center in the dove tail to bring POI to center?  Is that a real common thing and kind of one of those things everyone has to do when installing new sights?  Or is it pretty uncommon and should be pretty close to mechanically centered and maybe something is out of spec on those sights?

I sent an e-mail to Trijicon and they said that the sight picture for the Trijicon HD's on a Glock 17 shouldn't change at all from the stock glock sights and they said that if I send my slide to them that they could check it.  Has anyone ever sent a slide to Trijicon (or another sight manufacturer) before?  What do you think they'll do to it?  Would you send them your slide?  Sorry for the questions but I've never sent parts from any of my guns to anyone but the manufacturer.

Thanks in advance for any opinions or advice.

Is your front sight canted?  Sometimes there is a little play during installation, and it might be off enough to show up downrange.  

What kind of HDs are you using?  If you put GL104s in a G17, that might explain why the elevation is off.

Can you take a picture of the rear sight showing how much it's off center?

You need a taller front blade

Thanks guys.



Good thought.  I'll take a look after work today.  

They are the GL01's (or maybe its 101 - not sure without looking at the packaging), for the Glock 17/19.  You made me think of something though.  I ordered them from MidwayUSA and whenever you order something from MidwayUSA or CheaperThanDirt or alot of online retailers that come in that vacuum-sealed plastic packaging, most of the time you receive the item and the retailer has already cut the edges off the packaging.  I'm guessing they do that so that they can repackage returns better and if you return an item, they can more easily sell it to someone else.  Just guessing.  Anyhow, it would probably have been pretty easy for someone to return the wrong sights and take the little ziplock bag of the wrong sight and stick it in the package for the GL01's.  I don't know how I'd tell though without sending the slide to Trijicon for them to check out.



Sure.  I'll be able to snap a picture tonight or tomorrow.  In this thread I'm reading from Chris_1522 above that its perfectly normal for people to drift the rear sight a bit so I'm guessing its really not that far.  If you were to be looking at it and comparing the ledge of the dovetail on each side of the rear sight, you can just barely tell that its a little off center.  If you weren't looking for it, you probably wouldn't notice.



I'm wondering if -Nick- above was correct and maybe I have either the wrong sights all together, or maybe the wrong front sight and the correct rear sight.  The packaging is the correct model but the packaging arrives opened.  If someone else returned sights to the retailer it looks like it might be easy to accidentally get the sights mixed up...especially if several people returned different models of sights that were having the returns processed at the same time.

I'll have to look to see if I can find the heights on the Trijicon website, maybe I can measure them while they are still on the gun and determine if they are correct or not.