Using the lyman 57 sml

I just wanted to start a conversation about using the lyman 57sml. By all means if I miss something or something is wrong please feel free to correct. I know that installing the sight on guns has been talked about, but once you get the sight on the gun, and sighted in then what. If you were like me and picked up your sight off ebay and it didn't come with instructions, Then that leaves you hunting the internet looking for instructions. Lyman doesn't do a good job of explaining all of the functions of the sight and how it can be used, at least what I found. The best information that I did find was from idahoRon in I think it was 2008 on the muzzleloader forum. so feel free to check that out as alot of the information I am writing here came from that and if he ever reads this I thank him for writing that.

the sight adjustment on this sight is in 1/4 MOA just like a rifle scope. So 4 clicks equals 1" at 100 yards. The scale on the side of the sight is adjustable so once the sight is zeroed in you can moved the scale to 0. There is a small stop screw on top of the sight by the elevation screw . once you have zeroed the rifle and moved the scale to zero you can put alittle BLUE locktite on the little stop screw and turn down intell it gently touches. Then allow the locktite to set up.

The next thing you can do is go out to the range and shoot your rifle at known distances and record the number on the scale that it take to hit the target. The scale on the side of the sight is 0 to 45 MOA in increments of 3
Each mark represents 3 MOA
Example
my rifle is sighted in at 50 yards and the scale is at 0
to shoot a target at 150 yards target I have to move the sight to 9

this means for my gun and my load I need to come up 9 MOA to shoot at 150 yards.

let's say the target is at 200 yards you move the sight up intell you hit the target and record the number. For my rifle and load this is 15MOA

you can keep doing this at different ranges ALWAYS record the number it take to shoot at a certain yardage so you can biuld a cheat sheet something that looks like this

when you are done shooting or you just want to return the sight to its Initial 0 simply push the button down on the front of the sight and slide it back down to its stop

this takes the guess work out of shooting longer ranges with black powder you don't have to guess were to hold simply adjust the sight and hold dead on target and shoot

If you are a numbers person you can take the data that you collect and enter it into an online ballistic calculator to predict the drop at longer ranges. Always shoot the verify the data if you are going to use the data for hunting

Just a finer point on the sight. The1/4 “MOA” clicks in the sight are only 1/4 MOA if your sight radius is Exactly 28 inches. I started to make a table to upload to help out, but Lyman has already given the necessary info if you can interpret the sight correction table given in the product manual. In short if your sight radius is longer than 28 then one click is worth less than 1/4 min and if the radius is shorter, then 1 click is more than 1/4 min. At 28” sight radius 1” is about 0.008” sight movement so 1/4 min is about 0.002” sight movement. Just to give some feel for the numbers we’re dealing with here.

That's some really good info. Thanks. I'm going to have to play with my sight when I get back up north. But except for shooting steel I don't have too many places where I hunt where a shot will be >100 yards. Most shots avg about 50 yds in these eastern laurel covered mountains!

Going to mess with this sight and my 45 cal LRH barrel this summer. Always wanted to see what I could do at 200-300 yards with it. This information is super helpful. 2023 going to burn up 7 points for an antelope muzzleloader hunt and think this may be the rifle that gets the call for that one.