Into each new relationship, some rain must fall.
I put a red dot on my S&W m69 two years ago and it worked without difficulty, but the Smith is a revolver without that pesky steel slide that automatics have, slamming back and forth with every shot. I’m certainly sold on the concept – in fact with my deteriorating eyesight an optic is pretty much a non-negotiable necessity – but I await concrete proof that it’s a good idea in practice.
Still, in the past several years red dots on automatics have become very popular so I can assume it’s not a big problem, right?
Right?
So how come the optic damn near fell off my new gun the other day? It’s held on with two screws, both of which backed out so far it’s a miracle I didn’t lose one or both. Naturally I assumed the screws had been installed without thread locker. But upon inspection…
Nope. They had thread locker. So WTF?
I went to town this morning and got my own tube of Locktite, and the screws are snugged down again. I’ll have to recheck the zero, of course, but I don’t know how long it’ll be before I trust the optic to stay put because I can find no reason for this to have happened.
Too many moving parts…
I’d bet that you have only a couple of threads engaging. Hard to tell from the pic, but that fastener looks like a tapered tip? If so, even crappier engagement. Anyway, couple of thoughts. I’ve also thought that it might be worthwhile to put a thin layer of hi-temp RTV between the slide and optic. Or maybe something like Yamabond, or permatex aviation sealant.
Pre-installed dry loctite does not hold nearly as well as liquid loctite installed at time of assembly, just sayin… Hope it holds up better this time!
This is an interesting conundrum. I’m looking forward to seeing how well the remedy you come up with works out.
Two tiny dabs of paint, one on the screw head and one on the sight body immediately adjacent to the dab on the screw head, provide a reference to a screw backing out again. Won’t stop it, but you’ll see it coming sooner.
Auto mechanics sometimes use silicon sealer on fasteners they may want to remove later. Works, but I’m not sure how it would be on that small a screw. Can be a bit messy….