Ruger Single Six .22

When I was a kid the best shows were the westerns, the best screen heroes were the Lone Ranger and the Cisco Kid. Of course, we had cap pistols but the goal was to someday own a real western revolver, a single-action sixgun. As I got older, practicality took over and a .22 rifle was more useful than the revolver, dittos for a shotgun and a Marlin .30-30 which took all my available money, the handguns would have to wait!

Then, I went into military service and on my first assignment in the Republic of Korea had as my supervisor Specialist 4th Class (now 1SG USA Retired) Verne H. who happened to have a photo of himself with his Single-Six and a Winchester 1901 10 ga. leveraction shotgun.

That got my interest up even though I'd been reading about them for years. Still, I didn't buy one. Well, I almost did. While stationed at Fort Hunter-Liggett, CA I was offered one I turned down. This one had had the serial, ummm, "altered" and in just a couple of days the "owner" was arrested for theft of the gun.

Later, I got the urge for a .22 pistol again. By that time I'd shot the Ruger Government models of their .22 auto and was more disposed to buying a semi-auto. Still the Single-Six occupied a space in my consciousness and when I finally resolved to buy one, two came my way in the space of a week. The first was a Single-Six chambered in .32 H&R and the other is the .22 version about which this post is written.

Here's my gun side-by-side with my New Vaquero. You can see that the grip frames are very similar and the guns are of a similar size but the layout of the frame/receiver is different due to the different requirements of the different cartridges. I felt the single-Six would be a good understudy for the bigger New Vaquero. That has been true to a point. Unfortunately, I haven't yet been able to shoot either gun as much as I would have liked. That's getting to be, unfortunately, normal around here.

I tried the gun with all the ammo I had on hand and, as seems to be the trend, the SGB point modified Winchester Dynapoints and the Winchester PowerPoints proved to be the most accurate. The Aguila Super Colibris don't shoot for beans in this gun and it won't stabilize the 60 gr. bullet of the SSS load either.

Of course this gun has a .22 WMRF cylinder as well and that ammo had to be tested. Well, "tested" is a bit optimistic, truth be told. But some preliminary range work seems to show that the premium ammo is all usably accurate to 50 yards or more and the most accurate load might be the Remington 40 gr. SP load. I also want to try out some of the 6000 rounds of Remington made .22 WRF (.22 Rem Special) ammo I recently procured but just haven't had the range time. I've yet to shoot anything with the Mag cylinder other than paper targets or plastic drink bottles.

Links:
- Ruger Parts Booklets
- Ruger New Serial Number History (all models)