Smack Your Front Sight To Make It Zero Correctly- WHAT?
Ok, so a fellow I know does a lot of his own work to his ARs, and in this regard he's way ahead of me, so I figured I'd run some stuff he's said recently by the folk here and see if I'm right or not in thinking there's something a bit off...
So a while ago he was talking about zeroing a new AR he got. It had a fixed USGI-style front sight, as usual, and I think an ARMS #40 rear. Or it may have been some sort of fixed rear- I don't remember 100% as this was all a month or so ago, but he likes the ARMS so it was probably that.
It would not zero correctly, as he said he turned the rear sight all the way to one side, and still could not get it on paper. I figured it was either a bent barrel, bad barrel alignment, or rear sight not on straight/out of spec upper- said so to him, but he said it was ok.
So he said he took the front sight, and gave it a couple wacks with a mallet in the direction it needed to go to get it to zero in. Apparently that's how someone he knows does/did it in the Army....
Needless to say, I was like...

Is this legit?
I actually had this same type failure to zero issue with my DD, and it was a gun issue, not a FSB alignment issue...
Second thing was he installed a new FSB- one of those folding ARMS ones. He did the same "whack it into zero" with that too- according to him, the FSB pins did not engage the slots in the barrel....or maybe he said it was the slots were cut to shallow to engage- whichever it was, I was still enough of a "WTF" moment to have me scratching my head over it for the last month or so.
I read a couple threads- one by BCM and the other with some info by a guy from AR15 Barrels (https://www.m4carbine.net/showthread...ment-Of-Sights) (https://www.m4carbine.net/showthread...er-vs-straight)
and neither of those seem to support the "whack it" technique, or pins not engaging, unless, as I surmised, it's a gun manufacturer issue, or misinformation on his buddy's part.
Thoughts?
"Once we get some iron in our souls, we'll get some iron in our hands..."
"...A rapid, aggressive response will let you get away with some pretty audacious things if you are willing to be mean, fast, and naked."-Failure2Stop
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