Pistol Sight Upgrades Made Easy

The new Real Avid Master Sight Pusher lets you install aftermarket sights on most any pistol

by Lou Patrick and Rob Reaser

By now, most EDC and CCW practitioners appreciate the benefits of having tritium sights on their defensive pistols. Hanguns designated for home defense, particularly, offer expanded performance when outfitted with night sights. After all, most home-defense scenarios will likely involve marginal or extreme low light conditions. And if you can’t see your sights, you can’t hit your target.

What has kept many pistol owners from transitioning their handguns from standard open sights to night sights is the installation process. In almost every case, the factory rear sight must be pushed out with a purpose-built sight pusher and the new sight installed in the same manner. Traditionally, that meant a trip to the gunsmith or the purchase of a pistol-specific sight pusher. Yes, there are universal sight pushers on the market, but our experience has shown these to be frustrating tools to use effectively.

This year, the folks at Real Avid came out with a sight pusher that re-envisions what a universal sight installer can be. Designed to work for most common pistol platforms, the Real Avid Master Sight Pusher was developed to make the job a breeze while incorporating several features that address the hassles we’ve experienced when using universal-style sight pushers. The setup is simple enough when you follow the included instructions, and we were able to get our new sight installed right on the money in the first go.

For our demonstration, we installed a Rival Arms tritium sight set onto a GLOCK 23. In this video we show how to use the Master Sight Pusher to remove a factory sight and install an aftermarket unit in no time. We also provide several tricks of the gunsmith trade that you will definitely want to be aware of any time you do sight replacement work in your home shop.