Very interesting and economical as well. Nice job!

 

I LOVE IT! What a great idea! I have a hunting rifle with recessed sights like that, I think I will try it.

 

Great share!

Definitely useful across various platforms!

 

The white dots on the PPQ are little plastic cylinders that come right out leaving holes. I filled the holes with "Kosmic Kreations super green paint, and the strontioum aluminate phosphor glows very brightly for hours. www.kosmickreations.net

I have a Mini-Maglite with a UV LED that really brings the phosphors to life. Ten seconds and it is good for several hours, and the UV does not reduce your night vision.

 

Hey thanks for the kind words.

I'm sure there are other competitors in the Glow paint industry but I found this to be the strongest / longest lasting paint that I could find. It's not the cheapest and I fully understand most expensive is not always the best product out there.

Both products are made with a similar compound called "strontium aluminate" so both should perform similarly.

I will report back after a few months of usage.

 

Not nearly as nice a real night sights with the vials, but certainly alot nicer than white out. I'll have to find a bottle and try it on my other guns, including hunting rifles. Thanks for the review. Ed

 

I'm ordering some 'pure' strontium aluminate powder from Ebay to see if I can't improve on the brightness by making my own paint by simply mixing the powder into either clear epoxy or acrylic or whatever I have that best creates a hard strong surface with as much of the powder suspended as possible.

This powder is purported to be the highest grade so we'll see if I can get a better result than the pre-made paint. I'll report back my results.

 

Let us know how that goes -- and what it set you back (if it works), please?

 

Well, I got my Krypto Nyte powder from the seller by the same name. This has to be the cheapest option out there- I got 2.5 grams of 'pure' strontium aluminate powder for a buck(!), and for that price, the results are perhaps a little better than I expected. This stuff is inactivated by water, so don't mix with water-based paint, and keep it sealed from the air if at all possible.

While I was waiting for the stuff I researched optically-clear epoxies and found a seller on ebay for that also. I didn't get it in time, however, and so today I mixed the Krypto-nyte powder with glow in the dark Krylon spray paint to try to up the glowness.

The powder is very inert, and does not 'like' to stick to anything, so my initial plan of painting the sights with a thin layer of krylon (I just sprayed some onto a sheet of newsprint and dipped a fine brush in it) and then sprinkling the glow powder on them didn't really work.

I ended up mixing in as much powder as the paint could hold and still be somewhat paint-like. It became more like liquid bondo or paste. Not the best medium, that's for sure. I'll likely scrape/sand off this effort when my epoxy shows up. I 'painted' the entire rear of the front sight and most of the rear, making a bit of a mess (I'll clean up the excess after it dries).

Anyway, in the short run, this is the result I got:

This is after setting the pistol on my windowsill for a few minutes. The initial result is very bright, much brighter than the glow in the dark paint I had tried before. The stuff still fades pretty quickly, but since it is much brighter to start with, my sense is that it will remain at a usable brightness for a while longer. The craft paint I had tried was only effective for a few seconds after being illuminated by a flashlight.

Note: apparently this stuff responds well to UV (as per Fuego also), so I'm going to convert an old Mag light pen light to a UV LED with the hopes that it will be a good way of charging my sights at night.

Last note: The best glow-stuff out there is strontium aluminate doped with dysprosium and europium (Empirical Formula (Hill Notation): Sr0.95Eu0.02Dy0.03Al2O4). I wasn't able to get a straight answer from the folks at Krypto Nyte if theirs was thusly doped, so judging by the price, I'm thinking probably not. It's pretty good, but not insanely bright like I was hoping for...

Edit: I was just reading up on tritium, and apparently it emits in the UV range that this stuff likes. I was thinking that maybe the best night sights would be a tritium tube with a ring of strontium aluminate (Dy,Eu) paint. Then the tritium would charge the glow paint continuously, and you'd get more bang for your buck. Come to think of it, is that what the TruGlo sights have?

 

I used a quality acrylic florensent orange paint and a toothpick on the front sight only. World of difference! Granted, they are not night sights, but it did provide me with a much better sight picture for my old eyes. It was cheaper too.

 

Some additional information and a caveat regarding using the strontium aluminate powder mixed with paint:

I should mention that when you paint your sights, be sure to thoroughly clean/degrease the sights before you paint. Granted, this experiment was sort of a slap-dash job I was doing because I hadn't received my epoxy yet, but because I didn't perform said prep, part of the 'lume' (and this is really what the concoction I made reminds me of, is the consistency of the watch dial paint you see on virtually every analog watch out there) chipped off the left side of the rear sight during use.

I cleaned the chipped area with some acetone and reapplied a fresh mix of Krylon glow spray paint and Krypto-nite powder (this time the powder mixed with the paint better- I'm wondering if it is because the powder had some time to absorb some moisture from the air). The fix was simple, and if it continues to adhere, I might not even mess with the redoing the sights with epoxy when it arrives. Instead, I might just seal both sights with the epoxy. I guess I'll see how thick it is.

The brightness and duration is much better than I anticipated for such a cheap source for this powder. I took the pistol out to an outdoor private range at dusk/dark, and the lume was bright enough to not be washed out by my headlamp. (I didn't have a tac-light, but I imagine it would do equally well or better with that set-up) I'm very impressed with this stuff so far. You do have to put the lume on fairly thick to get the kind of brightness that I did, however, so for purists, I'd say just stick with the Truglo tritium/fiber-optic. This has a decidedly DIY feel to it, but if you aren't an 'operator', and like shooting in low light conditions, the sight picture this lume gives when liberally applied is pretty amaze-balls. My aesthetic sense will probably force me to redo this to get closer to professional appearance/durability, but for now, this home made lume is pretty damn good (for less than $10!).

Here's the rather slap-dash Krylon/KryptoNyte version I hope I will have an improvement for eventually when the epoxy shows up (note how thick the application is):
http://imgur.com/a/ZqmBY

 

I decided to add a little contrast to the lume on the rear sights by painting a very thin layer of orange paint over the rear lume so I could pick up the front sight faster in the daytime. The all-glow works beautifully in low-light or flashlight illuminated darkness, but in the daytime it helps to have some contrast (obviously ) between the front and rear. Btw, the orange paint diminishes the glow somewhat in the dark, but it actually works better because of additional contrast:

 

Update

Well the front lume came off after a few trips to the range. The rear is still intact, but the orange paint washed off after cleaning the gun with gun blaster. ; )

I'm just going to wait to do the front with epoxy when it arrives. I might try to preserve the dot somehow. Been thinking of ordering a tritium capsule of the right diameter, to do my tritium/strontium aluminate combo experiment.

 

If you want to increase the service life of the luminous paint, it is best to add a small amount of curing agent. After drying the luminous paint, apply a layer of transparent protective film, which can play a role in waterproof, antifouling, and wear resistance.

Best Glow In The Dark Powder Manufacturer|Glow Technolgoy

Professional in glow in the dark powder for 20 years. The brightest glow in the dark powder, paint, and stones with factory price and guaranteed quality.

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Oh man this is cool. I have seen something like this. One fella I shoot with often said he accompanied his little lady through the nail polish aisle at Target one time and picked up glow in the dark nail polish and did that. Hobby Lobby by me has glow in dark hobby paint cans, legitimately like 1 oz of paint for $0.89 and the tiny tip brush to apply it for another $0.50, so for $2 with tax and some elbow grease, two birds one stone.

Very cool!!

 

I was gonna say mix it with clear nail polish.