New sights for Colt Defender

[grock]

I have a Colt Defender with the "old style" sights. It has the front pinned and the rear dovetail. I am not sure what the correct title is for this type of sight. There are so many different cuts and type of sights available, i would like to try to put a low mount carry type sight without major cutting and/or machine work. I am new to the 1911 world. Any advice or ideas would be awesome.

[RobL]

The front sight is referred to as "staked," or "stake on," or "tenon," the tenon being the little part that you mash out of shape to hold it in place. I think yours may be "wide tenon" (there are 3 sizes) but I am not sure. The rear is most likely the standard dovetail which is often called "Colt" or "standard" or "GI" or "government" or similar (anything but "Kimber" or "Novak" or one of the other proprietary ones).

Brownell's and Midway are the usual sources for sights that don't need milling. Places like Novak and Fusion will do the milling for you if you decide to go that route. I've got some MGW white-dots on backordrer for my RIA; I didn't want to mill it either. There are stickies on installing them, so I'll probably attempt it myself.

Frankly, I know only a little about this, so hope that you get somebody competent to reply.