TargetTalk

The adjustable sights on the front and rear of the FWB are nice but at the same time our team has seen multiple scenarios where one of the screws stripped out either the screw itself or the portion of the barrel/base it gets screwed into. Is there a mod where you can put a dovetail on the front/rear and use something like the TEC-HRO?

This is a “coach dad” asking so please speak slowly and use small words, my shooting days are from 30 years ago.

In all seriousness, thank you in advance.

CAREFULLY put the LONG end of the HIGH QUALITY wrench all the way STRAIGHT into the screw head. Hold the SHORT end of the wrench and turn with your FINGERTIPS.
Screws do NOT have to be EXTRA TIGHT on MATCH DAY...don't ask how I learned that one.

Not completely sure what damage has been done, 1) hex has been stripped out, 2) threads have been stripped out.
So you need to get everything removed and apart. Dremel cut wheels/cut bits, work well with skill. Cut a slot in hex for removal.
Small drive pin with hammer for screw removal of stripped screw thread, and/or apply pressure with pin and unscrew
at the same time.
Once removed, it may be possible to re drill a new hole and tap new threads, new screw....?
Careful, that very small screw tap is extremely delicate to be successful. and if you break it, you lose.
Drill another hole time.
Pictures will help for more complete advice, solutions. You need to resize the pictures to small to be able to post them here.

Thank you both for the advice. On one rifle we had a Stripped screw another we had a stripped thread on the base. My question is can you change the sight risers from something stock to something a bit more durable or adaptable like an Anschutz. Is there a “mod” to the FWB that would allow for a dovetail rail on the front and rear sight? Basically doing away with the stock risers. If that makes sense…

First, my little rant about how for the money we spend on these rifles they could do a better job with the strength of the metals where adjustments are constantly made. A steel (stainless steel) screw into aluminum threads is pretty much a recipe for failure.

In my experience, the metal used for mounting the rear sight bridge on the FWB 800 is particularly soft. If I was gonna guess, the screw stripped on the front riser mount and the threads stripped out on the rear bridge that holds the riser. The front barrel shroud / extension is made from much better metal.

If you remove the front barrel shroud / extension you will probably find a set of dovetails on the front and likewise if you take all the hardware off the receiver you will find a set of dovetails milled into the receiver itself. Now, if you take off the front barrel shroud / extension you clearly lose the ability to extend the apparent length of the barrel and sight radius and will need to add some weight. Assuming you get some FWB riser blocks (Front dovetails are different between FWB, ANS, Walther) I expect you can dink around for a while and find an acceptable solution for front vs rear height combinations to get everything to work and be more or less in the middle of the adjustment range for the sights.

Someone like Neal Stepp (International Shooter Service) (817) 595-2090 or Oberlie Enterprises (720) 670 6818 would likely have the stripped bridge and screws in stock. If you had a local machine shop that did small jobs, you could have the bridge repaired with threaded inserts. (Heli-Coil) This would replace the soft metal with stainless steel threads, much harder for eager young shooters to strip out. (If tight is good, tighter must be better does not always work) Sitting at my desk, I am pretty sure that is a M3 thread.

When you get past this, take Bob Foth's advice, finger tip tight levering on the short end of the allen wrench. This is one reason I am not a fan of the MEC multi-tool. Too easy to get too much torque on fasteners that need only a little bit.

'dude

Thank you, exactly the explanation I was looking for, I’ll do some research and talk to both you mentioned, thank you very much.

Thanks, I try for my posts to have some nutritional content. ;)

'dude

I had a shooter who's gun went into full gymnastic mode on the storage rack, and bent the bridge up.

My first choice to get them back into service was to just drill and tap the extension for a Tec-HRO top rail, in a dovetail format that matched their SB rifle (Anschutz in this case) for commonality. I didn't see any real physical issues with doing this (I was planning on using 4-5 screws), but the shooter wanted something more along the lines of the factory setup.

We ended up going with this heavy duty version of the bridge, with just a few holes that matched her usual height adjustment (why remove metal if you don't have to). This ended up being heavy duty enough to be used in hand to hand combat if needed, and added a few grams to the front, that they wanted.

In the end though, we could have saved a bunch of R&D and machining time, by just attaching a dovetail... so I would seriously consider doing that for the front.