Back on track with the Fusion Project - Fitting the sights

Current progress:

Blend undercut trigger guard.

Fit trigger to frame.

Fit hammer, sear, disconnecter.

Trigger job.

Fit and blend grip safety.

Fit firing pin stop.

Fit extractor.

Fit thumb safety.

Fit slide stop.

Do a general de-burring and pre-finish clean up.

Refinish.

Decide on grips.

Install sights.

Test fire.

Adjust ejector.

Lock-tite the grip bushings, trigger overtravel screw, and rear sight set screw.

So I got the slide back from Bob Serva and Co. after realizing that a 9mm slide had been installed in place of a the .40 I had requested.  I may have just kept it 9mm, except that a .40S&W barrel had been fitted to it.  So back the whole thing went.

In the meantime, Bob asked me if it would be ok if they installed a stainless steel slide instead of a carbon one.  "No problem," I said.  The thing arrived, having been re-bead blasted, and the new slide to frame fit is even better than it was before.  I'm pretty happy with it.  

Except there is one thing they forgot.  Can you spot it?  They forgot to make the press check cuts.  Arg.  Oh well, those can be done when I send it back for ion bonding.  Still, I wish they hand noticed this detail before shipping to me, because although the quality of product I've received from them has been good, I have pretty much zero confidence in their attention to detail.  

The build goes on.  I decided to tackle installing the sights today.  I have a fiber optic front sight from Fusion, and a 10-8 rear sight.  

The sight cuts on the slide seem to be a bit on the small side, but I guess that means I can get a pretty darn tight fit, which is good.  I can typically get at least one side started a bit, but with the sight cuts on the Fusion it was very obvious that the parts would need extensive filing to even begin to fit.  I mostly followed the instructions in this video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1YxRoi_9Lc

I finally got the rear sight to slide into the dovetail by about a millimeter.  This took about 45 minutes of filing and test fitting.

Almost there...

And close enough.  I can get the sights to slide in about halfway to 2/3 of the way using just finger pressure, and I can use a hammer and punch to drift them in the rest of the way after refinishing.  By the way, this was an intense pain in the ass!  The whole process took about 3 hours, and the edges on the sights get really, really sharp from all the filing.  I ended up cutting my finger on the rear sight, if you can believe it.