When firearm enthusiast Ashley Emerson grew more dissatisfied with the night sights and the aperture hunting sights that were being offered on some of his favorite firearms, he decided to take matters into his own hand.
In 1996, Emerson reached out to his friend, the late Ed Pastusek, who owned Horizon Tech Industries, a second-generation family-owned and operated custom manufacturer of CNC precision parts in Fort Worth, to see if they could come up with something better.
A year later, they formed A&E Manufacturing to start making their own sights, often bouncing ideas off the best gunsmiths in the area as well as countless law enforcement officers.
Today, the company now known as XS Sights makes sights for handguns, with a configuration that is a “V” rear blade with a dot front sight that gives the user considerable advantages in the highly dynamic world of threat situations.
Unparalleled Speed of User Acquisition
Zack KinsleyThe large white area around the tritium in the front sight allows the user to better see the front sight in the mid to low light conditions that are so prevalent in these situations too. The large size of their Big Dot allows an unparalleled speed of user acquisition and indexing onto threats in all sorts of light and stress conditions.
XS Sights still has HTI machine the sights and finish them in a black oxide that also helps to prevent rust. But recently, they ran into a production problem when the product they had been using for finishing the part was now causing smut to rub off, marring the final finish and causing issues in its coating process.
Zack Kinsley, Vice President of Business Development for XS Sights, says they added their own in-house coating line in 2017 to save on costs and to get improved quality, but the smut issues sprang up and caused everyone to take a step back.
“The rub-off was always apparent from the beginning, but it really started to amplify itself quickly,” Kinsley says. “Our previous chemical supplier was out working on it for a few months trying to dial it in, but we still weren’t getting the finishing results we wanted.”
Need to Improve Corrosion Protection
XS Sights parts are coated in Hubbard-Hall’s Black-Magic Infusion.Worse, XS Sights wasn’t getting the corrosion protection results they desired in the process, which sent them looking for someone else besides their then supplier to help them fix both the smut rub off and the rust prevention.
“We finally decided to stop trying to polish this thing and moved on to trying to figure out what we needed in order to go to that next level of quality,” Kinsley says. “We are chasing more military contracts, so we really needed to get this finishing issue solved so we can meet those close specifications. It was a no-brainer for us.”
Since adding the coating line, Kinsley says XS Sights’ business has tripled, making it paramount that they find a solution to the finishing and corrosion issues, a situation that wasn’t improving with their previous supplier.
“We were just having a lot of growing pains,” he says. “You can only change things around so much until you realize that this isn’t really working.”
The Pastusek family that owns XS Sights and HTI had partnered with Hubbard-Hall on some cleaning and coating projects with some other businesses they were involved with, so they called in the Connecticut chemical manufacturer and supplier to see if they could determine the cause of the smut rub-off and the corrosion issues.
Looking Closely at Black Oxide and Finishing Oil
Ted Saltzman, Sales and Business Development Manager at Hubbard-Hall, says they began by examining the existing cleaning and finishing process for the XS Sights products, which included looking closely at the black oxide coating and the finishing oil that was used to stop rust.
Parts were sent to Hubbard-Hall’s South Carolina research lab, where they were cleaned first with a low foam, heavy-duty caustic, soak cleaner that Saltzman says is excellent for steel, stainless steel, nickel, copper, and copper alloys.
“The product does well at removing light surface oxides and also removes light rust on steel and 400 series stainless steel,” says Saltzman, who adds that the parts were immersed in AquaEase PL 918 heated to 160°F and at 10% concentration for five minutes, followed by a cool, clean water rinse and then immersion in Hubbard-Hall’s Black-Magic Infusion heated to boil at 285°F for 15 minutes.
The final application was Hubbard-Hall’s Metal Guard 560 for two minutes to prevent rust, and the parts were allowed to air dry. The parts were subjected to an ASTM B-117 salt fog test for validation of rust prevention and pass with no issues and — more importantly — no smut rub off.
Surpassing 300-hour Salt-Spray Tests
XS Sights makes sights for handguns, with a configuration that is a “V” rear blade with a dot front sight.“XS Sights’ desired goal was 96 hours in the salt fog chamber,” Saltzman says. “Happily, almost all the parts made it past the 300-hour mark before the failure point was reached.”
Hubbard-Hall’s Black-Magic Infusion converts outer micron of steel to black oxide passive phase for corrosion protection acting as a microlayer to hold corrosion inhibitors and oils. Saltzman says its unique formulation also allows the user to decrease the immersion without a sacrifice in quality. In fact, Black-Magic Infusion is designed to minimize the common problem of red iron oxide adherence to the work
To prevent the XS Sights parts from rusting, Hubbard-Hall’s Metal Guard 560 is designed to be the final finish on an engineered black oxide coating where 150 to 200 hours of salt spray resistance is desired, yet dimensional change cannot be tolerated.
Kinsley says XS Sights spoke at length with Saltzman and the Hubbard-Hall team about whether to stick with black oxide or go to a quench-polish-quench (QPQ) process to get the desired results.
“We are still doing a mix of black oxide and QPQ,” Kinsley says. “We are looking for the best corrosion-resistance possible for our products, as well as the hardening of the material surface.”
Material Surface that Can Withstand Filing or Modification
Since most XS Sights are dovetailed into the firearms, having a material surface that can withstand some filing or modification is essential to avoid corrosion or other surface issues.
“Taking one-thousandth of a material off is not a problem with black oxide, but it can be with black nitride,” Kinsley says.
Now that the rub-off and corrosion issues have been solved, XS Sights is happy to get back into speeding up production and being able to bid on more contracts knowing that their products are protected and will look great, too.
“Hubbard-Hall came in and really owned what they do, which is providing the right chemicals,” Kinsley says. “We went through numerous salt-spray tests with them where they tested our current products and oils, and then tested their Black Magic and their Metal Gard to meet our specs. It was very thorough.”
XS Sights is working on a contract now where the specs call for surviving at least 10,000 rounds of continuous fire. Kinsley says that means that having all of their parts degreased properly and coated to ensure reliability is of the utmost importance.
“As we grow, there are tons of learning curves,” he says. “But through all of this, we have come to realize that having our parts cleaned and coated correctly is such a critical factor.”
Visit https://www.xssights.com
