Glock Slide Milling

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Into the rabbit hole we go!

So I recently purchased a 48, and have been thinking about having the slide milled for a Vortex Venom. Anyone here have that kind of work done on their Glock/firearm? Pictures please?

If you have had this done to a 48, what sights did you put on it to get it co-witnessed?
 
Into the rabbit hole we go!

So I recently purchased a 48, and have been thinking about having the slide milled for a Vortex Venom. Anyone here have that kind of work done on their Glock/firearm? Pictures please?

If you have had this done to a 48, what sights did you put on it to get it co-witnessed?

48 is just a skinny 19 for the slide, so I don't imagine it being all that different in terms of expectation. That means you'd probably need suppressor height sights to co-witness on the Vortex Venom, or to check out the Shield RMSc, which I heard sits lower for a better potential for standard site height co-witness (although, not guaranteed). Keep in mind that Vortex is 1.1" wide while the G48 is .87" wide, meaning the Vortex will hand over the slide a bit, nearly 3mm on each side. Shield RMSc is closer to .90
 
48 is just a skinny 19 for the slide, so I don't imagine it being all that different in terms of expectation. That means you'd probably need suppressor height sights to co-witness on the Vortex Venom, or to check out the Shield RMSc, which I heard sits lower for a better potential for standard site height co-witness (although, not guaranteed). Keep in mind that Vortex is 1.1" wide while the G48 is .87" wide, meaning the Vortex will hand over the slide a bit, nearly 3mm on each side. Shield RMSc is closer to .90
Yeah, I just got that email from Steve at JagerWerks. They won't mill the 48 for the vortex, and the Shield will cost as much as the pistol did....

It was a thought
 
Yeah, I just got that email from Steve at JagerWerks. They won't mill the 48 for the vortex, and the Shield will cost as much as the pistol did....

It was a thought

RMSc is kind of pricey for a non-glass RMR, but I hear good things about it. Brownells has the best pricing I've seen so far at $400., but 4 MOA is backordered.
 
try this guy, ncengravers NCEngravers NCEngravers

a member here had work done there and posted about a while back with pics, can't remember his name. anyway, it's how i heard about him. i've actually been in touch via email, this guy gets right back to you within a couple hours.

but i'm afraid i agree with some, it might be cost prohibitive for some of our more skinflinty nes members. this shop has a youtube channel also where he shows off some of his latest projects. i keep saying he cause it appears to be a one man shop and i believe the guys name is mark. take a look.
 
Suarez does. RMR cut only it appears. I think. $300 for the slide. $150 to put internals in it. ROFL!!!! I'm sure it's ONE MEEEEEELLLLLIYUUNNNN dollars for one of their barrels. But $300 for the slide isn't terrible.
 
Is this for serious use or a range toy? Not disparaging range toys, I have them. It affects recommendations for optics.

The remainder assumes you realize the independence of your two sighting systems, if not I can clarify more. Also be aware that different companies represent Glock rear sight heights differently: either from the top of the slide (like Dawson, I think) or from the bottom of the dovetail (Ameriglo). The dovetail is 0.079" deep, plus or minus (not sure what actual spec is).

On the sights question, you will probably need to do some research and testing on your own. Even purchasing generic suppressor height sets from Ameriglo (GL-429 set) I found POI way off POA where I wanted to zero, so I had to mess with individual sets. The first thing will be to decide on the optic and milling depth, and any adapters needed. From this you can determine "deck height," or the height of the optic's body above the slide's top surface. This changes with different optics, the RMR body is thinner than the DPP, for instance.

You will need to decide how much iron you want to see in the window, from "just the tip" so you can see just enough of the irons to get a reasonable POA, towards having the top of the irons in the middle of the window when aligned. If you define X% cowitness as "top of irons are at X% of the window height, and assuming you align the dot at 50% of your window height when zeroed and presented, I think my cowitness is about 10%. I originally had about a 30%, and I wouldn't go over that as you start to lose one of the dot's advantages, which is not covering up what's below your POA. Going too low, you start to lose the light between front and rear sights...so a 1% cowitness would have you struggling to align a tiny slice of sights... I think of the traditional "absolute cowitness" as a 50% cowitness in my world, where the "lower third" is a 33% in my terminology. Again, they are independent, it's really about where you want the irons in your window when the irons are properly aligned.

So once you figure that out you need to start looking at sets of sights that will give you the correct POI at your desired zero distance. I'd go with black serrated front and rear, as dots are confusing with dots, and you're also limiting yourself to seeing more irons in the window, else your iron dots are useless.

For reference, I had ATEi mill my Gen4 19 for an RMR with sealing plate. They are widely regarded as one of the gold standards in milling work. Not saying there aren't other companies that are as good or better, this is just who I chose to go with.

I'd have to go back and check my notes to see all the measurements and garbage I needed to go through, but the long story short is the original recommended suppressor height sight set (GL-429) had 0.315"F and 0.394" rear, and shot high at 10 and 25 (my two reasonable zero distances), and from memory was like a 30% of the way up the window. Based on my calculations, I figured I needed to change 0.035", either taller front or shorter rear to zero at 25 yards. This left me with the closest standard sights being a 0.360" rear (GL-408) with my 0.315"front, or a 0.350" front (GST-350) with my 0.394" rear. The first choice (keep front, lower rear) put the irons lower in my window (desired) while still giving me enough notch visible to shoot the irons, whereas the second choice (keep rear, raise front) put the irons higher in the window, more than I'd want, so I ordered the 0.360" rear and everyone lived happily ever after.

I can take pictures of the new setup and dig up pics of the old if you want, but my slide looks like anything off the ATEi gallery page: they reprofile the serrations (wider troughs, narrower peaks, and they leave them SHARP), add front serrations, add the fish scale top, and mill for the optic. Their pro cut is milled for YOUR specific optic, so the optic is press fit down into the cavity, basically puts all the loads on the optic housing rather than the little lugs.

edit: Doug at ATEi is a smart dude, I would reach out and talk to him, and listen to his advice. If he won't mill slide X for optic Y, it's probably a dumb idea to do so.
 
Is this for serious use or a range toy? Not disparaging range toys, I have them. It affects recommendations for optics.

The remainder assumes you realize the independence of your two sighting systems, if not I can clarify more. Also be aware that different companies represent Glock rear sight heights differently: either from the top of the slide (like Dawson, I think) or from the bottom of the dovetail (Ameriglo). The dovetail is 0.079" deep, plus or minus (not sure what actual spec is).

On the sights question, you will probably need to do some research and testing on your own. Even purchasing generic suppressor height sets from Ameriglo (GL-429 set) I found POI way off POA where I wanted to zero, so I had to mess with individual sets. The first thing will be to decide on the optic and milling depth, and any adapters needed. From this you can determine "deck height," or the height of the optic's body above the slide's top surface. This changes with different optics, the RMR body is thinner than the DPP, for instance.

You will need to decide how much iron you want to see in the window, from "just the tip" so you can see just enough of the irons to get a reasonable POA, towards having the top of the irons in the middle of the window when aligned. If you define X% cowitness as "top of irons are at X% of the window height, and assuming you align the dot at 50% of your window height when zeroed and presented, I think my cowitness is about 10%. I originally had about a 30%, and I wouldn't go over that as you start to lose one of the dot's advantages, which is not covering up what's below your POA. Going too low, you start to lose the light between front and rear sights...so a 1% cowitness would have you struggling to align a tiny slice of sights... I think of the traditional "absolute cowitness" as a 50% cowitness in my world, where the "lower third" is a 33% in my terminology. Again, they are independent, it's really about where you want the irons in your window when the irons are properly aligned.

So once you figure that out you need to start looking at sets of sights that will give you the correct POI at your desired zero distance. I'd go with black serrated front and rear, as dots are confusing with dots, and you're also limiting yourself to seeing more irons in the window, else your iron dots are useless.

For reference, I had ATEi mill my Gen4 19 for an RMR with sealing plate. They are widely regarded as one of the gold standards in milling work. Not saying there aren't other companies that are as good or better, this is just who I chose to go with.

I'd have to go back and check my notes to see all the measurements and garbage I needed to go through, but the long story short is the original recommended suppressor height sight set (GL-429) had 0.315"F and 0.394" rear, and shot high at 10 and 25 (my two reasonable zero distances), and from memory was like a 30% of the way up the window. Based on my calculations, I figured I needed to change 0.035", either taller front or shorter rear to zero at 25 yards. This left me with the closest standard sights being a 0.360" rear (GL-408) with my 0.315"front, or a 0.350" front (GST-350) with my 0.394" rear. The first choice (keep front, lower rear) put the irons lower in my window (desired) while still giving me enough notch visible to shoot the irons, whereas the second choice (keep rear, raise front) put the irons higher in the window, more than I'd want, so I ordered the 0.360" rear and everyone lived happily ever after.

I can take pictures of the new setup and dig up pics of the old if you want, but my slide looks like anything off the ATEi gallery page: they reprofile the serrations (wider troughs, narrower peaks, and they leave them SHARP), add front serrations, add the fish scale top, and mill for the optic. Their pro cut is milled for YOUR specific optic, so the optic is press fit down into the cavity, basically puts all the loads on the optic housing rather than the little lugs.

edit: Doug at ATEi is a smart dude, I would reach out and talk to him, and listen to his advice. If he won't mill slide X for optic Y, it's probably a dumb idea to do so.
I love this site.

This post is awesome.
 
Is this for serious use or a range toy? Not disparaging range toys, I have them. It affects recommendations for optics.

The remainder assumes you realize the independence of your two sighting systems, if not I can clarify more. Also be aware that different companies represent Glock rear sight heights differently: either from the top of the slide (like Dawson, I think) or from the bottom of the dovetail (Ameriglo). The dovetail is 0.079" deep, plus or minus (not sure what actual spec is).

On the sights question, you will probably need to do some research and testing on your own. Even purchasing generic suppressor height sets from Ameriglo (GL-429 set) I found POI way off POA where I wanted to zero, so I had to mess with individual sets. The first thing will be to decide on the optic and milling depth, and any adapters needed. From this you can determine "deck height," or the height of the optic's body above the slide's top surface. This changes with different optics, the RMR body is thinner than the DPP, for instance.

You will need to decide how much iron you want to see in the window, from "just the tip" so you can see just enough of the irons to get a reasonable POA, towards having the top of the irons in the middle of the window when aligned. If you define X% cowitness as "top of irons are at X% of the window height, and assuming you align the dot at 50% of your window height when zeroed and presented, I think my cowitness is about 10%. I originally had about a 30%, and I wouldn't go over that as you start to lose one of the dot's advantages, which is not covering up what's below your POA. Going too low, you start to lose the light between front and rear sights...so a 1% cowitness would have you struggling to align a tiny slice of sights... I think of the traditional "absolute cowitness" as a 50% cowitness in my world, where the "lower third" is a 33% in my terminology. Again, they are independent, it's really about where you want the irons in your window when the irons are properly aligned.

So once you figure that out you need to start looking at sets of sights that will give you the correct POI at your desired zero distance. I'd go with black serrated front and rear, as dots are confusing with dots, and you're also limiting yourself to seeing more irons in the window, else your iron dots are useless.

For reference, I had ATEi mill my Gen4 19 for an RMR with sealing plate. They are widely regarded as one of the gold standards in milling work. Not saying there aren't other companies that are as good or better, this is just who I chose to go with.

I'd have to go back and check my notes to see all the measurements and garbage I needed to go through, but the long story short is the original recommended suppressor height sight set (GL-429) had 0.315"F and 0.394" rear, and shot high at 10 and 25 (my two reasonable zero distances), and from memory was like a 30% of the way up the window. Based on my calculations, I figured I needed to change 0.035", either taller front or shorter rear to zero at 25 yards. This left me with the closest standard sights being a 0.360" rear (GL-408) with my 0.315"front, or a 0.350" front (GST-350) with my 0.394" rear. The first choice (keep front, lower rear) put the irons lower in my window (desired) while still giving me enough notch visible to shoot the irons, whereas the second choice (keep rear, raise front) put the irons higher in the window, more than I'd want, so I ordered the 0.360" rear and everyone lived happily ever after.

I can take pictures of the new setup and dig up pics of the old if you want, but my slide looks like anything off the ATEi gallery page: they reprofile the serrations (wider troughs, narrower peaks, and they leave them SHARP), add front serrations, add the fish scale top, and mill for the optic. Their pro cut is milled for YOUR specific optic, so the optic is press fit down into the cavity, basically puts all the loads on the optic housing rather than the little lugs.

edit: Doug at ATEi is a smart dude, I would reach out and talk to him, and listen to his advice. If he won't mill slide X for optic Y, it's probably a dumb idea to do so.

Never really thought about tritium dots making the sight picture too distracting with a red dot. That's a good bit of advice, and the irons are really only there as back up, where all black should be enough in a pinch.
 
Just found some pictures. I don't have any of the new sight picture, as I installed the new ones and declared success. Just imagine seeing a little less irons in the window, but not so little that you're struggling to find the light in the notch.

Obviously I'm not against effort so if you have questions PM me or whatever, I can talk by phone as well.

The sight picture attempts to show the original GL-429 irons in focus (so the dot is blurry) and how they sat with the dot presented. When both are independently zeroed, the irons look misaligned when your dot is presented, and when the irons are aligned, the dot is generally bisected by the front post's top, and it's wherever the cowitness "height" is chosen. So my new setup has the irons at about 10 or 15" of the window height, aligned, and the dot naturally rests down there on the top edge of the post. Again, they're independent, just saying what your sight picture will look like.

The slide pics are of the slide after milling but before refinishing (I had them send me the slide back so I could attend a course). I tend not to take glamour shots of my guns so I don't have final pics other than ones of the gun with something else being measured on it, for instance, so nothing that shows you what you want to see. The long and short of it is that ATEi does it right. Added bonus if your 48 has the nDLC coating is that it will come back with the standard nitrocarburized finish, which is WAY grippier and so far hasn't almost WIPED OFF if I breathe on it wrong. My Gen 5 19's finish is slick as hell (like hard to manipulate with wet hands slick) and both barrel and slide looked like more wear than my 15k round guns when it had less than 1k on it. The actual hard candy shell is still intact, it's the cosmetic oxide layer that wore off almost immediately. Functionally fine, but some people are sensitive to those things.

IMG_4640.jpg
UNADJUSTEDNONRAW_thumb_2e5d.jpg

UNADJUSTEDNONRAW_thumb_2e5f.jpg
 
Never really thought about tritium dots making the sight picture too distracting with a red dot. That's a good bit of advice, and the irons are really only there as back up, where all black should be enough in a pinch.

Not only distracting but blacked out sights work great in the dark as well. You need a light, weapon-mounted or handheld, to figure out what you're shooting at, so there's no real problem with not having tritium or whatever on your irons.

There are some people that shoot a fiber front, or three dots with a RDS...I'm not saying they're wrong, but for my purposes I made the decision for blacked. I've taken the gun through low light coursework and shot in the dark with it and it seems to work well. If you have a strong use case (or just want them) for tritium or fiber or dots, I say go for it and train with it. Listen to yourself or your metrics if it is going bad for you, though :)
 
I've got a Gorilla slide for my G19 that I put my RMR on. I've yet to shoot it, but I'm not sure I'll bother with conventional sights on it.

There are only 2 occasions that this gun will be used:

1. Range. RMR or nothing. Once the sight goes, am I really gonna try and squint a few rounds with the irons thru the glass??? No.

2. Home defense. RMR or too-close-to-need-anything. Room distances having a consistent "feel" for a gun's natural point of aim and that window means hit after hit after hit.

The only time I'd consider having iron sights is if I pulled hte RMR off. It's a spare slide. That won't happen either.

So consider what you are going to do and plan your firearm accordingly. There is nothing wrong with conventional height sights and then pulling the sight off when you want to use it "normally."
 
I JUST HAPPENED to have the gun with me and JUST HAPPENED to be driving by the range...

Pictures are real hard to take with a phone...trying to lock focus distance and such. The pics should show you the amount of rear notch above the RMR deck, what an aligned irons picture looks like, and sort of what the normal dot picture (centered in window) looks like, though the sights are blurry as hell in that one. None of these do any justice to what it looks like to your eyes, if you haven’t shot dots before these are terrible examples. Anyone’s welcome to shoot my guns whenever, Harvard or Nashua area. This is just to try to capture the irons configuration etc.

In reality you don’t see the gun or the optic body when you’re shooting just the dot, your left eye shows you the target and the dot just shows up, in focus, over it from your right eye...can’t explain it. Doesn’t even matter if the glass is dirty or cracked :)
78BCC46A-4A10-4009-803A-D78109CD9941.jpeg 138A4C8F-BFDD-4B31-8F3A-D34852037CB0.jpeg 0716CEA2-DCE3-4D3A-87C8-238A7FC1411F.jpeg E9B33C98-7B32-482D-B392-C7CB9633A55C.jpeg
 
48 is just a skinny 19 for the slide, so I don't imagine it being all that different in terms of expectation. That means you'd probably need suppressor height sights to co-witness on the Vortex Venom, or to check out the Shield RMSc, which I heard sits lower for a better potential for standard site height co-witness (although, not guaranteed). Keep in mind that Vortex is 1.1" wide while the G48 is .87" wide, meaning the Vortex will hand over the slide a bit, nearly 3mm on each side. Shield RMSc is closer to .90

I highly recommend the Shield RMSc. Very small and has a notch that can be used as the rear sight and allows you to see the front sight without the need for suppressor height sights.

I had my P365 milled by NC Engravers. They did great work, and fast. I think I got it back less than 2 weeks after sending it to them.

P365.png
 
So the intent for this firearm is range and limited carry. There's a ton of good advice here, but I think this might end up being a carry piece after more trigger time, and am thinking I might go a different route.

Thanks again everyone, the information in one page has been fantastic, and I hope it keeps going!
 
A Blue Whale's Johnson is over 7 feet in length yet its brain is only about 15lbs.


Oh, you meant GUN information. Sorry Ron. LOL
 
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