I was happy to get my new revolver out of jail until I found that the front sight is crooked.


Further inspection shows that the dovetail and the blade are not square which leaves the front sight some degrees off center.  

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I asked for them to send a new front sight and I’d tap it in and out with a brass drift.  No dice, they want it back.  

Well ok, that is a nuisance but I will see if they will also address the gap between the barrel and frame.  I can see daylight between the frame above the barrel shank as well as daylight between the frame and the ejector shroud.   At the top of the barrel it looks like it is an undercut on the barrel face and not a flat surface.   corners, they’ve been cut.

Even worse, what I thought was the factory test firing leaving streaks of lead ........well it’s bore pitting apparently.

It would not clean out and in fact got bigger the more I cleaned.  After several hours of on and off again scrubbing I broke down and felt the spots with a soft chinese dental pick.  It stopped right there like in a pothole.

I am glad they didn’t want to just send me a replacement sight like I desired.  I am going to need a new barrel.

I like Ruger revolvers and have bought a bunch of them over the years.

I’ve bought 5 single actions and two SP101s over the past two years and every one went back for warranty work to make them half assed right.  

They’re a good design, just poorly built.  

I really hope they just bring this one to where it should be versus just replacing it,   In a perfect world the spin on a new barrel and send it back.

I said so in my letter that I would prefer that to a replacement presuming everything else is to spec.  A person whose job it is to identify and remedy defects going through it beats a pot luck blind replacement.

I've bought 2 new Ruger revolvers in the past 5 years.  One had to be replaced all together, the other they fixed.  They covered shipping both times.  Id be hesitant to buy a new Ruger revolver nowadays though.  Quality control seems lacking and Ive been reading reports of Ruger recently not paying for shipping to fix their mistakes...

I sent a Ruger SFAR back about a month ago. 100% free, and they fixed the problem first trip. I've never heard of anyone not getting a shipping label.

Ruger has gotten a lot more picky about providing prepaid shipping labels in the last 2 years or so.

The details and requirements seem to vary depending on the customer service rep you deal with, but it seems like you've got a much better chance of Ruger covering shipping if the gun is less than two years old and the problem is an obvious manufacturing defect.

Some people are now being told that they have to pay $45 to ship a gun back to Ruger. Usually on guns older than 2yrs. To me this is unacceptable.

I hate to see Ruger go this route. Their QC has always been a bit spotty at times, but it was reassuring knowing that any issues that occurred would be handled promptly by their legendary "unwritten warranty" policy.

I'd love to have a new 357 magnum Redhawk, but most of the ones I've seen in gun stores have obvious manufacturing defects... and I hate the idea of paying $1400 msrp for a gun that is immediately going to be sent back to the factory for warranty work.

Please keep us updated on how things go...

The machining on that barrel and front sight dovetail are completely unacceptable.  

It's not like SP101's are inexpensive guns these days either.

All I can so to people that have run into this problem is demand it. If they still say no, hang up the phone and try again. It sucks to wait again, but at least they answer quick unlike some companies. I guess there may be limits to to that, maybe don't expect your 1985 Blackhawk to be looked at for free, but for sure anything under 10 years old you would expect them provide a shipping label. As far as I have heard, and experienced, Ruger has never been difficult to deal with. If you get that one asshole from customer service, call and ask again. At least they do the work for free. Some people don't like that they won't sell parts very often, but the upside to that is they don't charge for it.

Here's a crazy story, this was less than 10 years ago. I bought a Ruger Old Army in a store for really inexpensive. That is a cap and ball revolver for anyone who doesn't know. This was used, as they had been discontinued for years by this point, but it was in great condition. It seemed perfect in the store, but when shooting it wouldn't always set off a cap, maybe 5/6 would go. I tried a few different things, different caps, nipples, etc. but nothing seemed to help. Even a new hammer spring didn't help. One day while messing with it I noticed the hammer was dragging on one side of the frame for some reason, and not just brushing, but pretty bad. I must have pulled the hammer and determined it wasn't square or something, I don't remember exactly. I was thinking of shims or something to fix, but for whatever reason decided to call Ruger and see if they would sell any parts. I was upfront about buying it used, and what I had done to try and fix it. I'm pretty sure they said they don't really work on them, they haven't had parts for them for many years, but was told they would look at it, and if it could not be fixed they would give me a certain value towards a brand new revolver. That is beyond fair, and I of course did it. Not only that, they gave me a free shipping label. On top of all that, the old army came back a couple weeks later with a note saying they replaced the hammer. It has been 100% reliable since that day. I like to imagine some old guy with a hammer floating around in his tool box smiled that day. So I am biased, but Ruger made me a die hard fan that time.

I’ll keep updating this.  I have been looking for an email but I haven’t seen anything yet.   One week there but I really don’t expect anything until 2-3 weeks have gone by.

and it’s on its way back.  I got a Fed Ex text message that I better be 21 by Monday to sign for it.  My 9am they revised delivery until tomorrow.

Oh well, I shot my s&W 631 in .32 long today.   It did quite well on the bench with my new load, 1.7 grains of WST under a Speer HBWC.  

25 yard baseball size group with a single flier.  Two may be three cylinders full in to a tight ball.  My off hand wasn’t as tight.

I got it within the hour.

They replaced the barrel.

No crooked front sight.
New barrel is better fit to the frame.
No lines of pits down the barrel, a couple small spots of minor waves after I cleaned out the lead left from their test firing.   It should be serviceable.

I already swapped the grips for Hogues.  My hands are small and having my finger hanging half off was not good.  I get it on a snubbie but this is a 4.2” gun.

Edit.....I just noticed that the hammer checkering is a lot less than the crazy sharpness it had when I first received it.  I believe they put a different hammer on it.  I appreciate that.

The unfortunate truth is due to "cost savings" or lack of trained personal most firearms mfgs do a piss poor job of inspection. Not just hard to see stuff inside but obvious stuff like leaning sights and other stuff that should be weeded out by somebody picking the gun up , sighting down the barrel and looking at both sides of the gun. Maybe something like 40 seconds for each gun before it gets dumped into the box.

Back about 18 months ago I decided I needed a mid length S&W 357 revolver. I would have taken a 686 or a 66. I went to several decent sized stores and passed over about a dozen guns that had obvious flaws. blems in the finish or barrels/sights that didn't line up correctly. Didn't surprise any salesmen , their answer was for me to buy the gun and if I wasn't happy with the way it shot it could be sent back. To be clear , this was not any used guns but brand new factory guns.

Very frustrating

Agreed!

I was glad I got the same gun back that had been gone through versus a new gun.  I dreaded starting all over again.

I just ran two cylinders each of two different rounds.  12 rounds of 78 grain round nose in .32 Long and 12 rounds of .32 H&R with 98 grain Keith style bullets.  Being a .327 I hard to use a fair amount of elevation with shooting the shorter rounds.   I want to say the first barrel was not as low shooting with .32 long wad cutters.  The windage was off about six inches at 25 yards.  Unfortunately no screwdriver I had on me fit that tiny windage screw.  I dialed a few clicks of  L windage with an eyeglass screw driver when I got back to the house.  

I did not stay on the range long as I had a pot of freezer clean out stew on low on the stove.  Turkey, italian sausage, fresh zucchini from the garden, an onion, two carrots, a can of corn a year beyond the best by date, a can of butter beans, beans always make a soup a meal, and a large can of whole tomatoes and one of purée.  chicken and beef boullion powder, garlic, onion powders, crushed red pepper and cayenne.

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Well I finally got it zeroed.  I ran out of windage.  My MGW frame wrench has no inserts for this.  I did the old school rotate the barrel with a few good raps with a bar of 40:1 Babbitt lead.   Just a scant pencil line of movement on my pencil marks on the top strap. With such a tall sight it was a bit more than needed.  Anyways I am zeroed and have some clicks remaining.  

The frame was supported with more lead Babbitt bars in a vise.  90% of the clamping was on the frame at the barrel shank.  Very low odds of frame bending.  

Wiley E. Coyote school of gun smithing.

It kind of pissed me off that I had to do this on a new gun AFTER sending it back.  The tech that rebarreled my gun did pretty good work, cleaned out the usual factory metal filings and it appears upgraded my hammer from the more  MIM cast looking type.  I only noticed when shooting it the other day and saw that the serrations weren’t trying to cut my skin like when I first got the gun.   Pretty sure the techs rebuild and test firing and targeting are done by other persons in the plant.   I had run out of adjustment on the edge of a 25 yard bull which was 3” off on an adjustable sighted gun.  ....but I can see how the factory missed the mark seeing how minimally I moved the barrel, really not a full pencil line thickness on the top strap and that the result was a touch farther on the other side of the target now.  The extra tall front sight moves farther than a shorter one for the rotation.  

I had to try some hot jacketed loads to see if they were just as off before making the barrel adjustment.  It was the same laterally.

Only thing left is to put a Wolf spring set in. I already buffed up the parts inside when I had it down to the frame for the barrel adjustment.

The low shot in the five ring was all me, I saw as I broke the shot that the front sight was dipped lower than the rear.

My vision gets fuzzy trying to focus and that green bar in the front sight makes it real hard to focus on the tip of the front sight.

Getting old is not for the weak.

Jesus.  Sometimes I wonder if we're watching the death of American manufacturing and QC in real time.

Yea, it was not real good to get a brand new gun back from the factory that needed a new barrel and it wouldn’t hit center even with an adjustable sight.  That’s after they reworked it.

That said, I know how far I rotated the barrel, not much.  I had two pieces of tape, one one the top strap and one one the barrel sight plane.  I drew a very thin pencil line with a metal rule from one to the other.  The lines were not fully separated when I was done.  A frogs hair movement on the tape....about 3/4 to 7/8ths of the pencil line if I had to say.   The really really tall sight amplifies the rotational movement.

That said it would seem two minutes in the test firing facility with a target up would have told them it was off still.

Call me lazy or just sick and tired of guns that have to go back, I made the tweak myself and took on the risk of causing damage.  I don’t like clamping the frame in lead in a vise.  Clamping the barrel and using a proper frame wrench is much nicer.  It’s still easy to keep missing the mark with a wrench.  If I was really planning out how much I needed the front sight over I could simply measure the radius off the bore center line of the tip of the sight and the radius to the top strap where i tape and do a simple ratio to calculate the distance I need to move one marked line from the reference.

Next time I might.  I got lucky and it worked out close enough.  I rotated the barrel a skosh too far and was off target the other side of center but would have hit center at max sight adjustment.  But I had tried to adjust the front sight first but it was insufficient before it would look ugly hanging out of the base.  So tapping the front sight back to dead center got me close enough to center on the rear sight windage and on target.