Patent Application
20100212208
The present invention relates to novel, improved sighting devices for such diverse firearms as hand guns and long guns including rifles, shotguns, paintball guns, and pellet guns. The principles of the present invention can be employed to advantage in both front and rear gun sights.
Disclosed in previously issued U. S. patents are gun sights which make use of optical components variously described as a light-gathering plastic rod, a luminous rod element, a light-gathering fiber, a scintillating fiber, a transparent, light-diffusing element, and a rod-shaped light guide.
Those patents disclosing sighting devices as described in the preceding paragraph and known to applicants are:
The patented sights have significant deficiencies, including the specifics of the optical element and the mechanism for attaching the sight to a firearm. These deficiencies are remedied in the novel optical gun sights disclosed herein.
Sights embodying the principles of the present invention have a hollow, tubular, optical fiber component which can be used by an archer or gunner to acquire, frame, and aim at a target and has the advantage that it does not block the user's view of the target. Optionally, a second optical fiber of a different color or a set of such fibers can be installed in the tubular fiber to optimize the sight for use in different light conditions—for example, an inner fiber might be a luminescent green and used in poor light conditions while the outer, tubular fiber might be a contrasting color such as red and employed in conditions where the ambient light is better for quicker target acquisition.
The sight is mounted to a selected, magnetizable firearm component which may, as examples only, be the muzzle or breech end or another region of a gun barrel, the rib of a ribbed shotgun barrel, the slide of a pistol, or the breech of a rifle or shotgun.
Combinations of sights which embody the principles of the invention can be employed. For example, the rear sight of a long gun may be one with a hollow, tubular optical fiber component; and the front sight of the same gun one with a contrasting color, optical fiber insert in a tubular optical fiber.
Another feature of the present invention, as realized in sights for shotguns with ventilated or solid ribs and other firearms with a comparable feature is a novel magnetic mount for attaching the sight to the gun. The mount utilizes interchangeable supports which, as one example, make the sight compatible with shotguns having ribs of different widths and/or vertical dimensions.
Referring now to the drawing,
The major components of optical sight 26 include: a fiber optics assembly 28, a support 30 for the fiber optics assembly, and a pair of interchangeable mounting/sight alignment brackets. The mounting/sight alignment brackets are typically provided in pairs with the brackets of the pair configured and dimensioned to fit a particular rib. This means that optical sight 26 can be very inexpensively mounted to virtually any shotgun with a ribbed barrel simply by supplying an appropriate pair of brackets or a set of brackets which includes a pair of appropriate configuration and dimensions.
The brackets of one representative pair are illustrated in
As is best shown in
Optical components 36 and 38 can be manufactured from any desired, appropriate material. A number of such materials suitable for applicant's purposes are identified in various ones of the patents cited above, perhaps the main criteria being that the end of the fiber optics assembly where light is collected be as light as, or lighter than, the exterior of tubular, outer fiber 36. Components 36 and 38 can be manufactured by any appropriate process. Examples are molding, extrusion, and drawing.
Representative colors of the fiber optical assembly components when the outer optical fiber 36 and the optical fiber insert 38 have the same color include red, green, and yellow. Representative color pairs of these components when the colors contrast are:
Hollow and solid optical fibers are however available in a considerable number of other colors, and one or a pair of fibers with such other colors or combinations of such colors with those listed above can be employed instead, if desired.
Both the outer optical fiber 36 and the optical fiber insert 38 of fiber optics assembly 28 have round cross-sections. This is not necessary, however. Essentially the only limitations on the configurations of these two components are that they be round or a regular polygon and that they be symmetrical with respect to a common axis of elongation. Representative arrangements are the following:
A representative common axis of elongation is identified in
As is shown in
Rail 40 is fixed to the muzzle end 20 of gun barrel 22 with: brackets 32 and 34; magnets 54, 56, 58, and 60; and fore-and-aft clamp plates 62 and 64.
The two brackets 32 and 34 are alike; and only bracket 34 will be described in detail, it being understood that this description is equally applicable to bracket 32.
Referring then primarily to
The distance D between the depending flanges 74 and 76 of bracket 32 is substantially equal to the width W of shotgun barrel rib 24. With optical sight 26 mounted to rib 24, the depending flanges 74 and 76 of bracket component 66 fit over and engage the sides 78 and 80 of rib 24; and top plate 70 is seated on the upper surface 82 of the rib. This arrangement keeps bracket 34 in an accurately fixed relationship to rib 24.
Referring now most specifically to
Brackets 32 and 34 and the rails 40 supported on the top plates 70 of those brackets are clamped to the rib 24 of shotgun barrel 22 with magnets 54, 56, 58, and 60. Magnets 54 and 56 are located between the muzzle end and centrally located, fiber optics assembly-associated units 42 and 44 of rail 40; and magnets 58 and 60 are located between central element 44 and the breech end, assembly-associated element 46 of the rail.
Each of the four magnets 54 . . . 60 has integral, lower and upper, circular elements 100 and 102 with different diameters defining an annular shoulder 104. The lower element 100 of each magnet is magnetically engaged with the top surface 82 of shotgun barrel rib 24, and rail 40 is seated on the shoulder 104 of the magnet. The upper element 102 of each magnet extends upwardly through an aperture of complementary configuration 106, 108, 110, or 112 in the bottom 114 of rail 40 and into magnetic engagement with one of the two clamp plates 62 and 64 seated in wells 84 and 86 of the rail. This novel arrangement securely fixes fiber optics assembly support 30 to rib 24.
Fiber optics assembly support 30 cannot move in the z direction relative to shotgun barrel rib 24 as the rail 40 of the support is trapped between the annular shoulders 104 of magnets 54 . . . 60 and magnetizable clamp plates 62 and 64, and movement in x and y directions relative to the rib is blocked by: (a) the matching configurations of the upper magnet elements 102 and the rail apertures 106 . . . 112 through which those elements extend, and (b) the matching configurations of upstanding bracket elements 68 and the muzzle and breech end apertures 116 and 118 in the bottom 114 of rail 40 into which bracket elements 68 extend when optical sight 26 is mounted to gun barrel rib 24.
The principles of the present invention may be embodied in forms other than those specifically disclosed herein. As examples only, gun sights embodying the principles of the present invention may be mounted to a gun component such as one of those identified above with a glue-on, double-sided tape, snap-on, dovetail, or bolted-on arrangement. Therefore, the presented embodiments are to be considered in all respects as illustrative and not restrictive, the scope of the invention being indicated by the appended claims rather than by the foregoing description; and all changes which come within the meaning and range of equivalency of the claims are therefore intended to be embraced herein.
