The grip frame was virtually identical to the Colt SAA, and although the new Single-Six had the traditional loading gate and ejector rod for shuckin’ empties, the lockwork was redesigned to use all coil springs, eliminating the breakage-prone flat springs of the Colt. Instead of chambering the gun for an expensive-to-shoot centerfire cartridge, he scaled down everything but the grip frame to.

Ruger was savvy enough to bring out one that operated and felt like a Colt SAA. 22’s and Western movies and single-handedly resurrected the single action sixgun. Now four years later he combined the natural appeal of. 22 semi-auto pistol, the crowds would come. Bill Ruger knew in 1949 if he built a quality. The quality of both movies and TV were pretty mediocre but they created a demand for single actions.

Our family was poor as poor could be (we couldn’t even afford a church mouse!) but by 1950 we had a black and white TV sitting in the corner, cranking out hour after hour of old B Westerns from the 1930s. Television started to appear in the late 1940s and was pretty widespread by the early 1950s. The single-action sixgun may have been dead and buried in 1941, but it wasn’t going away. In fact, with the coming of the modern double-action revolver and the 1911 semi-auto pistol - both of which came before World War I - the Colt SAA was, in reality, dead long before the funeral was held on the eve of World War II.įortunately, history does not always ride a straight freeway but rather has a habit of taking strange twists and turns. Colt had stopped manufacturing the Model P in 1941 with no thought of ever producing it again. In the early 1950s, the Colt Single Action Army had a great history behind it (emphasis on behind).

Six guns review