History of the Octagon-Barrel Ruger Old Armies Pistols.

Tennessee Hoss

Click for Larger View Early on in Cowboy Action Shooting I was drawn to the black powder side of things and at the same time I have always felt strongly about shooting new good metal safe handguns. I don’t collect, I shoot this stuff and if I fall in love with something and can afford it I’ll try to buy sell swap for it and visa versa if I fall out of love with something. So one day I was down at T-Bone Angus’s gun shop and he showed me an Old Army. Sometime recently Ruger began putting a high polish finish on the stainless ones. Prior to that the finish was a dull sandblast or matt. So I really liked this Old Army. Almost kidding I ask him what kind of deal he could get me on a sequentially numbered pair like that and later that evening went on my way. The next day he called to say he had located a sequentially numbered pair and if I wanted them I had better get them.

So I broke the piggy bank and ordered the pair. When they came in a small amount of investigating convinced me that cap and ball wasn’t as much fun as I had thought it would be. Then Kenny Howell of R&D came out with the conversion cylinder for the Old Armies and I bought a pair of those. The timing wasn’t just right and I sent them to R&D and Kenny did some special thing to the grooves in the cylinders that allows them to lock up perfectly every time. Then one day I was talking to Ajax about some plastic grips and the guy said “do you have any real Sambar Stag grips”?. I said no that I thought that they were all gone and incredibly high priced. He said that he had one pair of grips for a Ruger Old Army that he would sell for the regular price so I bought them.

Click for Larger View Then some time later I had a pair of Bisleys operated on by Larry Crow and he did his usual incredible action and accuracy job on them and during the conversation I mentioned this pair of Old Armies. Larry had built the Old Armies for Red River Drifter who won EOT two years in a row now in Frontiersman category so I knew that Larry knew his way around an Old Army. Larry mentioned to me that Mike wanted to include some Old Armies in his series of black powder CAS handguns. He offered me a one time special deal to allow him to put octagon barrels on my Old Armies so that he could send them to the American Pistolsmith Guild and show them off at the meeting where he was inducted into the guild and send them to Mike and have them photographed and written about. The special deal was that I would pay for his materials and work – so it turns out that those darn high tech Shilen barrel blanks cost about as much as a new Vaquero before you do the work on them.

But the Old Armies went off for 8 months and worked their way from here to Larry Crow to APG to Mike to Guns of the Old West and back here.

I wouldn’t even consider duplicating this type of expense on a pair of pistols because every step of the way I got another piece or part or work for a steal. I’ve still got about $1,575 per gun in these big guys. With the R&D Cylinders they will both shoot in one ragged hole at 25 yards all day long off a sand bag. The point of impact on them is about 6:00 as I have not yet filed the sites down for my 200 gr. Hogden 777 Loads.

So there’s the story on the Old Armies with the Octagon barrels.

More Photos of the Ruger Octagon-Barrelled OLd Armies 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Harpoon Grips

Click for Larger View This past May the redhead agreed to go with me to Maui, Hawaii and get married. While we were there on our honeymoon, which took in the Whalers Village, and in there saw an amazing scrimshaw shop that was full of high priced knives and bone and whale teeth etc. all decorated with antique scrimshaw. One pattern really interested me and I told the lady there that I liked it, as it was Indian Arrows. She laughed and said no that’s not arrowheads. That is whale harpoon heads. Oh! Harpoons, well they look a lot like Western Art or Indian Arrowheads. The difference she said is that these are one sided, not two sided like an Indian Arrowhead would be…. So anyway I liked the idea of the lines with the arrowhead looking points on them. I left the $4,500 knife laying in the shop and went about my business. I looked around and did some research on the Internet when I got back and found that the shaft with a point on it had been used in a lot of art work with either one side or two sides.

So, as somewhat of a memory jogger from our trip to Maui and the Whalers Village I decided that I wanted to decorate a pair of pistol grips with this type on image.

T-Bone Angus did the action work on the 5.5" barrelled Rugers, installed the reverse spin pawls and jeweled the hammer and triggers. On this pair of pistols one of them shot dead in the center of the target at 6:00 out of the box, and the other was slightly to the left. Rather than turn the barrel as I have had done on other match guns I decided to file open the rear notch on the gun but only file it on one side. Using digital calipers I opened the rear sight up .006 on the right side. This makes the center of the slot move over .003, which should be about half enough. One more trip to the range and we should have this baby printing in the middle.

Lett Hybrid Grips were selected, the black insert inside the panel makes the grips a little thicker and a better fit for my big hands. I contacted Russ N Hound the lazer engraver of grips and we started to form a pattern. I described to him what I selected and he drew up a preliminary design and e-mailed it to me. The design went back and forth a couple of times with me adding to it or taking away from it and him suggesting things that would and wouldn’t work. Finally I received the grips and sent them off to him for the laser engraving. What you see here is the result of his high technology equipment and his great artistic ability combined with my memory of that scrimshawed knife in Hawaii. I hope that you enjoy looking at these photos of the Russ N Hound, Laser Engraved, Hawaiian Harpoon grips. The best part is that they were a lot less expensive than that dog gone antique knife.

More Photos of the Harpoon Grips 1 2 3 4


Stag-Gripped Rugers

Click for Larger View Recently I decided to set up two sets of match pistols. One set would be the 5 ½” Stainless Ruger Vaqueros and the other would be a pair of 7 ½” Stainless Ruger Vaqueros.

Shooting Black Powder Cartridge gives you a great appreciation for stainless pistols at clean up time. Especially if you discover one of those little steam blaster machines. So anyway this pair of 7 ½” pistols was acquired one at a time, one used and one new from my pard T-Bone. Jackrabbit Bob from Knoxville, TN did one of his action jobs, accuracy jobs and installed reverse spin pawls.

Jackrabbit Bob always range tests his accuracy work so he sent the guns back to me with two targets. Both of them showed point of impact at dead on six oclock. I believe in filing in the elevation yourself as it is easy to do if you are careful and no one holds a gun exactly like the next guy.

The funny thing is that I shoot .454 diameter bullets to reduce the black powder blowback in the .45Colt (the case is already expanded the first .002 that way) . Jackrabbit Bob sends back a note with these two targets each showing one ragged 5 shot holes dead in the center line and the note says “You should be shooting .452 bullets in a Ruger – they are made for that” – So Thanks for the warning Bob, But I’ll settle for the one ragged 5shot hole accuracy smack dab in the center of the targets.

More Photos of the Stag-Gripped Rugers 1 2 3 4 5