Front sight, staked like a vampire - until dead.

[Guest ColtCCO]

A customer brought this Kahr K9 in to show me today, to ask me if it looked right. His front sight had been sliding back and forth in the dovetail so he dropped it off with Frontier Firearms for a $20 repair. It's not moving now! I counted 10 deep strikes with a sharp-tipped punch on the metal of the slide, all around the front sight but not really on it. I took a quick photo and confirmed that it did not, indeed, look right to me - you always work on the less expensive part. In this case the dovetailed body of the front sight could have been "spread' with the tip of the punch instead.

(I had to tweak the contrast and brightness - my phone's camera flash didn't do great things for the photo, and the focus was a mite off.)

Disclaimer - the company I work for does do Gunsmithing, just not this.

[gregintenn]

That shouldn't be considered gunsmithing. Bubbaing, or butchering would be a more appropriate term.

[Guest bkelm18]

Jeez. That's horrible. I don't know the first thing about being a gunsmith but I know better than to mangle a slide like that.

[johnboy]

Man that is just wrong.

[Guest Scramasax]

Did they JB weld it also? Glad to say even without my glasses I can do better. Sorry for his missfortune.

Cheers,

ts

[Dolomite_supafly]

Wow, that is horrible. They took a $500 gun and turned it into a $300 gun. It also makes any future adjustments or replacing sights impossible.

This is why some people should not be allowed to even handle a hammer, except to hit themselves in the head.

I have ran into this before on other guns, not Kahr. I do not stake the slide or the front sight. I remove the front sight then put a few punch marks inside the dovetail on the bottom flat portion. This generally raises enough metal to keep the sight in place and there are no stake marks visible. And more importantly the sights can still be adjusted or replaced.

Dolomite

[Fourtyfive]

Just plain crazy .....

[jcj]

Yikes

[R_Bert]

I will note that unless he displayed a receipt from the shop for the "smithing", well.......

That said, whoever did that hatchet job would have really pissed me off. They would be ordering me a new slide or explaining the "job" in small claims court.

[Guest bkelm18]

Actually... if memory serves me, I think the OP previously worked at Frontier. Just in the interests of full disclosure...

[Guest ColtCCO]

Actually... if memory serves me, I think the OP previously worked at Frontier. Just in the interests of full disclosure...

True! They used to employ a different gunsmith, my coworker, and this was the first sample of the new gunsmith's work that I'd seen since...it wasn't easy to ignore the technique used, when it was put in front of me. I didn't want this to happen to anyone else with a loose front sight - if this had happened to one of my kilobuck-plus 1911s, I would have an aneurysm on the spot.

Edit - customer was made aware that this cautionary tale would be posted. He knows of this thread, if he wishes to add any additional info, he will do so.

Edited January 18, 2012 by ColtCCO

[Caster]

Jeez, why didn't they just break out the arc welder?

Bubba, somebody ought to kill him for all the guns he's ruined.

[Guest Kamikaze]

Jeez, why didn't they just break out the arc welder?

Bubba, somebody ought to kill him for all the guns he's ruined.

I think I could do a better job with an arc welder....

[Jonnin]

Ok, I am not a gunsmith and my efforts are usually fail, about all I can manage is a replacement part or a polish job. But why on earth would you beat on the metal rather than just use some sort of glue/locktite/jb/etc compound that would hold it in place for a very long time and can be easily removed at a later date?