I have been thinking alot lately about making my very basic mid-length AR more usable for me and cant get around the fact that I have long arms that need all or more of a midlength handguard for a “modern hold” that leaves little length left for both a front sight and light.
I basically need to have alot of length to get what I feel I want on the top rail when I buy a rail. This becomes even more of an issue when I am only wanting to do this project as a SBR and I find myself fighting the length of barrel vs length of handguard wanting the barrel as short as possible while having the handguard be long enought to not cramp my shooting form.
Anyway alot of talk to get to the point. Why not make a rail mounted light with a built in fixed front sight. Basically an x300 with a post and ears. I dont know about the feasability of doing it in a flip up style ,but common someone please make one of these.
Just an open rant. Thought that complaining to myself was doing no good so maby something good would come from complaining out loud.
If he puts a light at 12 o’clock in front of the front sight, then it’ll block the sights because it’ll be too high sitting on top of the rail.
I don’t understand why anybody puts a top rail in front of the front sight. Anything mounted on the rail and the front sight are going to be in the way of each other.
ThreeHeadedDog, this is a great idea. I hope somebody builds it.
OK, I was wrong (again), though it looks like it’s really close to blocking the sights (close enough that a TLR-1 in the same spot would block the sights).
Here’s a pic from a recent EAG Tactical carbine course that I snagged from another forum. The rifle belongs to Stephen_H (at least I’m pretty sure it’s the same Stephen, I could be wrong though).
Look closely, there’s a front sight mounted on the Surefire X300 benzel. When asked if it was a pre-production product or a prototype, he said, “A little of both, I think.” That’s all the comments I saw on it, though.
I personally think it looks pretty damn cool and is a great idea, although I currently have no need for one on any of my present carbine setups. But I know a lot of guys would like to have them if they ever become available.
That last pic looks like a great adaptation of what I was looking for. I know that there are many people putting front sights in front of the weapon light and I think that that is great, but for me it is simply not very easy.
I dont know the proper way to measure arm length but I just measured 80 inches ± from tip of finger to tip of finger(wing span, I guess). I use up alot of space on my handguard to get into the modern form. A front sight/light combo would free up some room for me to get my off hand out and over the gun to control recoil better.
I currently am running a mid-length with standard handguard and fixed front sight, and dont really have enough room to grip it right. My off hand thumb hangs over onto the fixed sight; which, though I havent actually heated the gun up very well, I suspect would get hot and uncomfortable under more rigorous use.
How’s about a rail mounted front sight post that is also a ring mount for standard diameter flashlight? Think scope ring (proper diameter for a flashlight) with the top part of a FSP on top of it (at the proper height).
Bottom: Rail mount + bottom half of flashlight ring mount.
Top: Top of flashlight ring mount + the rest of the front sight post.
…so basically your flashlight is mounted through the middle of your FSP.
This is a 16" barrel with a 12" rail. I get pretty far out on it. X300 @ 12 o’clock. Not sure if I would want the BU front sight mounted to the light. sight mounted to light, mounted to rail. Seems like quite a few places for alignment to go bad at just the wrong time, which is why I generally like the standard FSP on a hard use rifle, for its durability. Wouldn’t be against giving one a T&E.
Here’s a quick MS Paint sketch of the sorta thing I was thinking (ignore lack of symmetry, scale, etc)…
That green/yellow thing in the middle represents the light.
Surf, you may be right about the durability / coming out of alignment concerns – on the other hand, we trust ring mounts like that to keep scopes and stuff aligned, so I dunno.
I think it might work on the lights that don’t have adjustable bezels. Streamlight’s SSL-1 would be a good candidate since it looks like the whole front end/bezel assembly is screwed on. A cnc machined bezel with the FSP wouldn’t be as big of a stretch for them to convert to. Send e’m a letter or call a rep and ask about it.
I have a DDM4 with a Streamlight TLR1 mounted at 12 oclock in front of the FSB. It does not block the front sight. It does slightly change the sight picture because you don’t see as much of the base of the FSB, but you get a full view of the important thing, the sight post. I sighted the rifle in with the light mounted and am able to get good groupings at 50 yards despite the fact that I suck at irons.
For me the profile doesnt matter. Just the added rail space that placing both the front sight and light on 12 o’clock rail takes up. I guess untill some manufacturer does something I may just try and mount my light in either the 10:30 or 1:30 position(when I get the rail that is).
As a side note I dont think you would need to have a zero issue with front sight for this. If it did happen that instead of a X300/front post combo it was simply a light-mount/front sight combo like mattj posted you could always have the light mount have a solid hole (as in no tightening screws or anything just rail lock, big hole and post on top) with the mounting tension devise seperate. Try to visualize a mount long enough to have 2 rings. One is just the sight with the tightening ring behind it so the sight doenst have a worry of loostening. One could also use a collet type tightening devise.
The Larue goose neck rail with an x300 and a dd front sight might give you what you want, you should have almost 10" of top rail behind the front sight.
