You know it’s a good day when you come home and this is waiting for you…



Two slides I had sent off. 13 day turnaround from door to door.



I’m no photographer so I just tried to get a photo in some sort of unobstructed light.





P229 - Odd they didn’t reinstall aftermarket sights.



P226 - Reinstalled factory sights. Must be liability and inability to easily replace if damaged.



Tried to get some up close photos of the finish, very uniform and appears to be as professional as you’d expect from the manufacturer.

Very nice. Just curious, what did they charge? I have a P320 in FDE that I’d like to have re-done in black nitron and have the Sig Lites swapped out to X-Rays.

Wow! Those are beautiful.

Those look great!

Beautiful, absolutely beautiful.

Wow! Those look great, man!

I love that color scheme so much. I had a 938 that looked like that, it was just so beautiful.

What's SIG's excuse for not re-installing the sights on the P229? They can't give you that bullshit about them being aftermarket sights. They took them off for the work. They damn well should have put them back.

quote:

Originally posted by jer830:
Very nice. Just curious, what did they charge? I have a P320 in FDE that I’d like to have re-done in black nitron and have the Sig Lites swapped out to X-Rays.

quote:

Originally posted by 12131:
What's SIG's excuse for not re-installing the sights on the P229? They can't give you that bullshit about them being aftermarket sights. They took them off for the work. They damn well should have put them back.

Honestly I’m a bit miffed with it too. I’m trying to come up with a legitimate reason but I’m having a hard time fabricating one that is solid enough not to shake my head a bit. I have a sight tool so it’s not a concern, but at the end of the day, WHY?

As far as I'm concerned, they dropped the ball on that. No legitimate excuses for it.

Thanks OttoSig. I’m going to give them a call. I’m probably talking out of my butt, but perhaps Sig not re-installing your aftermarket sights is for liability (as in bottom feeder lawyers) bringing a lawsuit if the pistol is used in defense somewhere down the road. Welcome to the American tort system.

That's a very reasonable rate. Were they finished in Nitron?

Which aftermarket sights are they? And are you sure that the sights installed on your refinished P226 slide were the originals? SIG could easily have replaced those with new factory SIGlite sights. Below would be my explanation as to why they would do that.

The material used for most sight bodies is generally a pretty soft (steel) alloy mixture, intentionally so as to not cause any damage to the receiving slide when being installed. As such, in the installation process, the sight material is designed be the sacrificial material as the sight is pushed into place. Because of this the sight that you originally had on the P229 may no longer have provided a snug fit in the dovetail slot(s) after they tried reinstalling them on your refinished slide, though if that were the case it would've been appropriate to provide such an EXPLANATION rather than leaving it up for conjecture by the customer. But since you did have an aftermarket set on the P229, their tech probably figured that you would want the same kind of sight on the rebooted slide so he didn't put a set of SIG sights on...I guess...plus he actually wouldn't be doing a direct SIG product swap. Again, that conjecture thing.

At our shop over the years, I've had the (mis)fortune of reinstalling a variety of recycled, transferred pistol sights on various customer guns. In fact I just did one yesterday to a customer Gen5 G19 with a TruGlo tritium/FO set. Even though the rear sight utilizes a set screw and the TruGlo designs do go on relatively easily with less resistance than Ameriglo, Trijicon, Meprolight and other comparable sets, this TruGlo sight offered noticeably less frictional resistance than whet I've experienced in the past with new, right out-of-the-package sets. I suspected that these were recycled (the telltale was that they were brought into the shop in a Ziploc sandwich baggie), but the customer swore that they were "brand new". Hmm..maybe 'new' to him...

In years past I also did this with a couple of my own guns, namely a HK USPc and a Gen4 Glock 19. Most if not all of those recycled sights pushed back on far too easily, with little "fight" (resistance) like they commonly would've put up when they were brand new. I would always warn the customer that they went on far too easily, and that I could not guarantee that they would hold windage zero as a result of live fire or even dropping the slide during dry fire. I did as much with the Gen5 G19 customer from yesterday as well, not confident at all that the threadlocked set screw would be enough to keep that rear from drifting on him. But since he was a regular, I decided not to charge him for the installation. We'll likely find out how well it (doesn't) hold...

In several of the past cases the customer subsequently came back with a new set of sights to be installed, or bought a new set out of our own inventory, after their reused set started moving around on them. As for the rest who didn't come back, I'm probably guessing that they either didn't believe me, convinced that I intentionally 'sabotaged' their old sights in order to sell them a new set of sights, or just were prepping the gun with any set of sights to have as a backup pistol or some other reason and not really seriously using the firearm after the install. Or they really DID stay in place, and my cautionary warning was just that, a warning. But that's just conjecture as well.

With my own guns: for the Glock I wound up replacing the recycled Trijicon Bright & (not so) Tough three dots (Novak rear) after the 2nd or 3rd range visit because the rear sight started drifting on the G19 (they had been on my carry Gen4 G23 prior to the reuse). The Bright & Toughs on the USPc were totally out of whack elevation-wise (but I knew that going in when I first used them on another USPc; I just got used to how I had to hold the gun in order to hit where I wanted), but when they started shifting around sideways that was the final straw for them. The vials for both guns still had plenty of life left but as I was also moving away from 3-dot sights in general at the time, the inadequate fitting made it an opportune time to replace them with something more desirable.

Anyways, that's been my experience with reusing old sights. Others may have had far better results. Like I said...conjecture.

Very nice. I like the color tones

I like the look

Beautiful! I have a 226 I'm waiting on from CCR. It should be getting close by now!

quote:

Tried to get some up close photos of the finish, very uniform and appears to be as professional as you’d expect from the manufacturer.

Nitron on stainless steel? Those came out looking great!

I've had them Nitron a stainless steel slide in the past, and was satisfied (rather than blown away) with the result. If they all look like your slides do now, I'm gonna have to stop saying "the finish may not be exactly perfect" when people ask about having SIG do that kind of refinishing.

I had three slides redone a few years ago, 229 and 2 225's. The also threw on new night sights on one of the 225 slides. I had them back in hand in 8 DAYS! It was also 99 bucks each (plus the cost of the night sights on one) so it's good to see that they haven't increased prices.
Sig did an EXCELLENT job refinishing them.

Great looking pistols, sir - and excellent photos! Silly question I ask; the barrel on the 226 looks new. Did they also refinish the barrel? If they didn't to you or anyone know if they still refinish barrels? Used to be their Custom Shop webpage had some deets and other offerings - now it is pretty sparse. Picked up a trade-in P220 and the barrel looks rough ...