DO NOT USE A DREMEL TOOL TO REMOVE YOUR SIGHTS
Sights on the Springfield Armory XD are notorious for being hard to remove. Most gunsmiths across the country will not even touch an XD to remove the sights. I have removed and installed thousands of sights on all different versions of XDs over the years. From my experience I can tell you that the dovetails can have a very tight tolerance and can take extra effort to remove and install sights on them. One technique circulating on the net is to use a Dremel tool and cut or grind the old sights out. This sounds good but you can easily slip and damage the finish. Also, once you get to cutting how do you know when to stop? Let’s ask my customer how the sights removal went for him. Kudos that the customer actually got the sights out so I guess we can count that as a win. Buuuut take a look at what else they removed….half of the dovetail! That’s one way of adding a muzzle break.
No one can say that this was not one determined DIYer. If cutting the front of the slide were not enough the rear dovetails exhibit more damage from the misguided sight removal. You can see that the dovetail is actually dinged and damaged. On the top tips of the dovetail you can see that material is removed. If you were to install a new set of sights on top of this damage, you would scratch the new sights and still have visible damage on the slide. The only lesson to take away is that you need to realize your skill sets and what your abilities are. A sight install sounds easy, but that sense of simpleness can quickly get out of hand.
