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Ruger 22 Cal Single Six Serial Number Search

RUGEROLDMODELSINGLE-SIX “MAGNUM ONLY” REVOLVERS

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PRODUCED1959 - 1962

GENERALOVERVIEW

Cal

May 9, 2009 - I have owned a Ruger Single Six Revolver for several years. It is serial number 805XX. I know the Single Six was manufactured 1953-1973. Model: New Model Single Six Convertible Serial Number: 64-82311 Year of Manufacture: 1976 Caliber. The left side of the receiver is marked “Ruger.22 Cal. / New Model Single-Six”. The right side of the receiver is marked “64-82311”. The cylinder is marked “3 1 1” on the front face. The top of the barrel is marked “Made in the.

The .22 Magnum cartridge was introduced by Winchester in 1959.Ruger introduced its Single-Six single action revolver in .22 “Magnum Only” around June of that same year.

The Magnum guns had 6-1/2 inch barrels, round loading gates, checkered black hard rubber grips, and no firing pin groove in the rear of the cylinder.They were roll-marked“RUGER SINGLE-SIX WIN. .22 RF MAG. CAL” in two lines on the left side of the cylinder frame.In early 1960 the Magnum Only guns were also made available with varnished walnut grip panels.

These Magnum Only guns were put in a special serial number range of their own beginning with 300000 and ending at 340XXX.About March 1961 Ruger began to produce these Magnum Only marked guns with an extra .22 caliber cylinder.The extra cylinder, the .22 caliber in this case, had the last three digits of the gun’s serial number stamped on its front face, close to the cylinder base pin hole.The idea of producing these dual cylinder guns or a “convertible” came from customers requesting that Ruger retrofit their “Magnum Only” single-cylinder guns with a .22 caliber cylinder or their .22 caliber only single-cylinder guns with a Magnum cylinder.

The “Magnum Only” marked guns came in a black and red box with a yellow wreath on top like the standard Single-Six but designated with Cat. No.“RSSM” on the box end labeling.

The production of these “Magnum Only” Single-Sixes ended sometime in August – September 1962.The 6-1/2” barrel length soon was made available in the standard “Single-Six .22Caliber/.22 Magnum Convertible” model.The boxes for these 6-1/2 inch barrel convertibles continued to be marked with the catalog number “RSSM”, not RSS6, throughout the Old Model Single-Six production that ended in 1972.

There are several rare or scarce variations of these guns, some with only one or twoknown, that I will not attempt to cover here.If you are interested in learning more about these guns, I suggest you become a member of the Red Eagle News Exchange.The publisher of that newsletter has done extensive research and study and goes into considerable detail describing those and many other rare Ruger models and variations.

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