About 10,000 copies left the factory in 1954 and another 20,000 made it out the door the following year. Demand for the Single-Six steadily increased. By the end of the year, only about 100 Single-Sixes had made it to dealers’ shelves. The Ruger Single-Six began selling to the public in July of that year. 22 LR revolver that closely mimicked the Colt SAA externally, but was far less expensive to produce. Yet the newer guns were usually far more robust and reliable than their predecessors. The remarkably consistent genius Ruger demonstrated throughout his lifetime was the ability to produce firearms that often replicated existing guns externally, but in such a way that manufacturing costs were a fraction of the originals. 22 (semi-automatic) pistol, he began re-engineering the single-action revolver. Ruger saw the trend, and with some investment cash from the production of his successful. Demand for thumb-busters went through the roof, as wannabe cowboys and western heroes pined for the guns of their own heroes. Virtually all of these shows featured some gun play in them, and all-more or less-of the handguns were single-action revolvers. Roy Rogers, started a 30-minute weekly show that often melded the Old West with somewhat modern technology-automobiles, telephones, electric lights and such.

In 1951 one Leonard Franklin Slye, a.k.a.

A gaggle of short, relatively low-budget western films were also produced. “Hopalong Cassidy” and “The Lone Ranger” were leaders of the genre starting in 1949. Then came the 1950s and this newfangled entertainment contraption called television. It made absolutely no business sense whatsoever to continue to make single-action revolvers. Besides, the tooling to build single-action revolvers was worn out and obsolete. Only a relative handful of rank, old cowboy types still clung to the thumb-buster, and most of them couldn’t scrape together enough cash to buy a new gun. After all, its Model 1911A1 had been the handgun of choice during the worldwide dustup, and double-action revolvers largely ruled the law-enforcement community. During the early post-World War II years Colt had decided to finally move on from single-action revolvers. Old Bill Ruger was a cagey guy with a hand-and heart-sensitive to the pulse of shooters.

Ruger serial numbers single six