Fitting a front sight

During a chance conversation with a work colleague the conversation turned to guns and it transpired that the lady had a .22cal Sportco in the boot of her car, it had been purchased by her partner in Darwin just before the cyclone, he had driven out into the scrub and fired some shots to try it out, a few days later the cyclone hit - their house was demolished so they headed to Adelaide. Fast forward to 1992 when the conversation took place, a quick call to the unlicensed partner confirmed he was no longer interested in the gun and 5 min later it was gifted to me along with a box of Civic long rifle (10 rounds missing).


Sadly the boot of the car was not water proof and water had penetrated the gun bag and the last 20cm or so of barrel was badly rusted inside and out, I cut the rusty portion of the barrel away leaving it 1.5cm over the legal min length, had it recrowned, floated the barrel - reshaped the stock to suit the shorter barrel, fitted a rear hold down bolt to the back of the action, made a new trigger and trigger guard to suit my short fingers and fitted a 3-9 x 40 variable scope as I no longer had a front sight. I was able to get it legally registered during a gun amnesty some years back.


The lack of front sight bothers me and now that I have my own machinery I'd like to refit a front sight - either the original held down with a single screw, or a dovetail type. My question is how do I setup the barrel so the front sight is exactly on centre and also perpendicular to the horizontal plane of the rear sight, the rear sight is dovetailed into the barrel this can be seen just in front of the scope, I can setup a dial indicator and clock up the barrel on this narrow section of dovetail but it is only around 12mm or so wide - is there a better way - I'm only going to have one shot at it and want to be sure I'm going about it the best possible way with least chance of error.

Attachment 390377
Attachment 390378

Are you able to make up a block that fits in the rear sight dovetail, such that you can indicate off that?
(Run the indicator up the side of the block so that when the block is vertical, the barrel can be clamped down and the front sight area will be parallel to the mill table/ perpendicular to the block side)

Michael

A front sight will have no use with a scope fitted and will most likely interfere with the sight picture.

Taking Michael's advice I clamped a 123 block to the short flat section of the rear sight dovetail, with a dial gauge fixed in the chuck I was able orient the barrel in the vice so the block was truly vertical when I ran the dial gauge fixed up and down the block. I didn't get a pic as the actual job was a non event - drill and tap a 4mm thread so I could mount the original sight. I checked and front sight can be around 20mm or so high before it starts to obscure the tele sight picture.