I'm glad that I was not available to answer your question right off. It appears that Toy has given you some very sound advice.
First let me say I can describe the process for drilling and tapping your pistol's scope mount. But the question is: Do you really want to take this project on? For the first time there is an equal chance of messing it up as there is successfully adding the mount. Those odds exponentially decrease as the lack of proper tools and knowledge enter into the picture. Since you sent back a mount that you didn't like the appearance; I'll assume that cosmetics is an important factor in how you want to proceed.
The required tools. This is not a job for a 12" Craftsman table top drill press. You'll also need some specialized taps and some high quality cobalt screw machine length drill bits. The machine length bits are stiffer and have a reduced wobble factor, thereby increasing your success rate. You'll need the proper sized taps, that's right more than one. A starter tap, taper tap, and bottoming tap, high speed steel taps will work fine for this application. I use a center point drill for finding the exact location of the screw holes and to also prevent bit walking when I drill later with the screw length drill bit. You'll need adequate padding for your vise jaws to prevent damage to the finish of your receiver. A good tap handle for using the taps and to reduce the chance of one from breaking in the receiver. I use the end mill to drill all my holes and align my taps, but you don't have one, so a good tap guide is needed to ensure straight and level threading and no cross-threading of the hole. You'll need some quality tap lube ( like Tap Magic) to ensure proper lubrication of the tap's cutting flutes and decrease the chance of binding or breaking a tap.
The set-up is the key. A poor set-up will result in a poor job. I use a machinist's level to ensure all my work is aligned/mounted properly before I ever start drilling or tapping anything.
Ok, I think you 're probably getting the picture here, there's a lot more to this than just drilling a few holes in some metal. I'm a DIY advocate, but this is not really a DIY job, at least unless you're really confident with your skills and tools. You can easily spend a lot of money to buy the right tools for the job, or wait the month and a half for the gunsmith, who already has the right tools, to do the job for you. He has the advantage of economy of scale, the more scope mounting jobs he does, the more cost effective his original outlay for the tools and materials to do the job was.
I'm not saying don't do it, but what I'm saying is do some serious risk analysis before doing it. Is the risk worth the effort, or is waiting the more prudent thing to do? Your call. I'll tell you more on how exactly to do this, if your choice is to proceed. Or there is another option.
You could install a no-gunsmith mount onto your receiver. This type of scope mount uses the receiver's dovetail to affix the mount to the pistol, and these work very good. There are a couple out there on the market like Weigand or MGW.
These mounts just require rear sight removal and then tightening up the allen screws for a secure fit. This type of mount works great and is easily owner installed. By the time someone acquired the proper tools for a drill and tap job they would've exceeded the price for one of these mounts. Usually they retail for around $39.95 and you can see how to remove the old sight at my detailed stripping page. http://www.guntalk-online.com/detailstrip.htm#sight
Here are the options available to you, now you have to decide what is next.
Hope this helps.
R,
Bullseye
You guys are tops!
