Mounting A Red Dot Sight on the Aeron B96 Part 1

Hey!  Back after a loooooooong hiatus.  Recently purchased a small red dot sight from Millett.  Thought its compact and lightweight size would make for a nice addition to a 10-meter style pistol.  The only hurdle?  Most 10-meter pistols have zero mounting provisions for anything save their iron sights.

I thought the five shot, semi-auto BRNO Aeron B96 would be an interesting pistol to adapt. It's a great trainer for rapid fire .22 pistol so the red dot would make it similar to the guns used for bullseye pistol matches.

Removed the two screws holding the rear sight.

They're M4 x .7mm thread.

The sight fits into a pocket in the frame.

Here's the Millett SP1 dot and a small selection of picatinny, Weaver, 11mm dovetail rails/mounts and assorted junk stuff on hand.   

The original sight has a width of 0.5515" at the forward end and 0.705" aft.  The pocket depth was about 0.230". After measuring all the various options on hand it became pretty clear that an adapter plate to fill the pocket would be necessary.  

This 1"/11mm UTG offset mount was also selected from the pile for my carnage.   Reasoned that it would be lighter than a separate rail and a set of rings.  Especially after I mill the dovetail clamp off.

Struggling to hold the mount, I used small insert vise to clamp the mount then clamped the insert vise into the milling vise.  Used a shop made fly cutter...









And shaved the mount down until it was completely flat.









Leaving this.

Checked the bottom to the lowest part of the radius at each end.  They're within half a thousandth of each other.  

A small piece of 12L14 free machining steel will be used to make the adapter.   I'll mill the thickness first.

Found some parallels.

They're used in vises to get short work above the tops of the vise jaws.

Here's the bar of steel  on the parallels clamped into the milling vise.

A few minutes later, the bar was 0.236"  Roughly 0.005"/0.006" taller than the pocket in the gun. 

Milled the 0.705" width down next.

I intentionally left the end hanging out of the vise to make it easy to measure as I worked it down.

Now we're here. 

The scope mount--I think it's now just a scope "base" will be bolted to the adapter, which will be bolted to the gun.

If you look at the pictures #3 and #4 above, the original sight is narrower in the front and wider in the rear--at the grip.  The front needs notched to fit.  A stop was clamped to the fixed jaw and the work butted against it.  The vise stop allows the work to be removed and relocated to the same place in the vise. 

Milled the first side.

Flipped the part over and cut the same depth/length on the second side, finishing at 0.550"-- a bit under the 0.5515" for some additional clearance.

Now I've got this cute little plate. 

That almost press fits into the gun's rear sight pocket.

Measured the hole locations from the gun and transferred that to the adapter.  Spotted, drilled, counterbored to recess the screw heads.

Uh, twice.

After I add a couple threaded holes to this plate, I can simply drill mounting holes into the scope base.  If that doesn't work out, I can drill a chunk of 11mm dovetail or picatinny rail.  With this adapter plate, the top of the gun becomes modular.

More in a couple days.