A whole lot of people have used red dot sights, but how many actually understand how they work? Let’s see if we can fix that today…
© 2026 Forgotten Weapons.
Site developed by Cardinal Acres Web Development.
A whole lot of people have used red dot sights, but how many actually understand how they work? Let’s see if we can fix that today…
© 2026 Forgotten Weapons.
Site developed by Cardinal Acres Web Development.
That clouded plastic optic could be fixed by a Cerakote Headlight Restoration kit. $16 at Walmart, and work great.
“(…)World War I, both the British
and the Germans started working on
rudimentary but real and functional
cullamating optical sights for fighter
aircraft for the machine guns on early
fighters. At this point, this sort of
site was fairly large and clunky. It was
something that could be used on say
artillery perhaps as well as built into
aircraft, but it wasn’t small enough to
put on individual small arms. That would
come several decades later.(…)”
Actually reflex sight suited for hand-held fire-arm was developed more than decade earlier. This was A New Collimating-telescope Gun-Sight For Large And Small Ordnance developed by Sir Howard Grubb https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Howard_Grubb_Reflexvisier_2.jpg around 1901 and patented, U.S. patent is US734060A and can be seen at https://patents.google.com/patent/US734060A
I have mistakenly linked wrong patent by same inventor, it should be US683203A Sighting device for guns. https://patents.google.com/patent/US683203 filed in 1900, which mean said invention is from 19th century. British patent Improvements in Sighting Devices for Guns. https://patents.google.com/patent/GB190022127A can also be seen and also was filed in year 1900.
Bloke on the Range did a great video on the Occluded Eye Gunsight. Will put a link here so you can watch it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNqLfYB5N34
Years ago, I had a Marlin 1895 .45-70 with a Bushnell 1.5X-5X variable on top.
With the magnification dialed down to 1.5X, All i had to do was keep both eyes open, bring the rifle up, and the scope looked exactly like a “dot” sight in my field of view, except with a crosshair.
Out to 100 meters, it put the 300-grain JHP right where the crosshair was, every time.
The effectiveness of low-or-zero-magnification “dot” sights has more to do with how your eye reacts to something in your field of view than the exact mechanics of each individual type of sight. This is as true of the modern ACOG as it is of the old Nydar shotgun sight.
Or “field expedients” like mine.
clear ether
eon