Colt SAA ... Why So Much?

[StrikeEagle]

"Now, the good news is that according to the various gunsmiths, the underlying metalurgy on a Colt is top-notch, so a fairly minor tuning session will ALWAYS get you something better than the Italians."

Ohhhhhh, now THIS gets my attention. Can you please provide a list of a few smiths who can do this? Guys who do a lot of this and are established and won't do anything... unforeseen?

And how much dough are we talkin here... ballpark? You know... every time I handle that 3rd Gen Colt, the action bothers me... I just can't love it.

I'm on the East Coast if that makes a diff as to who you'd recommend.

many thanks!
StrikeEagle

 

[Gunsnrovers]

FWIW, it sounds like the USFA Rodeo's have dramatically gone up in price. What was a $450 ~ $525 SAA clone (happy everyone? ) in the Rodeo, may be in the $650 range now (MSRP is now $658 per USFA). A lot of the CAS folks on the SASS forum are saying that appears to be the going rate now that USFA has restructured their sales network. I tend not to window shop prices when I'm not in the market myself and since I'm not looking at SA's, I hadn't noticed a price changes in the last year or two.

While that puts the pistol on the high end of the SA clone realm, it makes their SA at $949 and the really nice $995 Turnball version a lot more atttractive cost wise.

I'm wondering how much the recent large hike in the cost of steel has created pricing problems in the gun industry. I know it has for me in construction. Or, more likely, the huge demands for CAS is driving up prices. The costs of the replica 1873 Winchesters is staggering for an Italian clone.

 

[ruger357]

Have owned both the Single Six and the Vaquero. I just bought a .44 mag. Super Blackhawk. They are great guns for what they are intended for. You can't find a better plinker than the Single Six. I would stay away from the color case on Rugers because I have heard that the "finish" is not durable. I usually stick with stainless.

 

[mattx109]

Advice noted.

I'll be looking into the stainless Single Six with a 5 1/2" barrel and notch rear sights, I think. Should know for sure after Monday.

 

[Jim March]

Big comment on the Ruger "color case" setup: it's a disgusting mess. It's a "colorization" process, NOT "case hardening", it does absolutely nothing to prevent rust, it looks, crappy, there are some suspicions that it AIDS rust.

Many people have tried to clean their guns only to find that the coloring comes off with too many cleaning products. Esp. if the hapless user is also trying to remove surface rust.



Many people are just deliberately cleaning that "color' off down to bare white and doing a home blue kit treatment on them instead. You'll find used specimens on the SASS wire classifieds like that all the time.

Guns'n'Rovers: there's now two grades of Rodeo, one with really high-quality wood single-piece grips. Which look out of place on a Rodeo, but this probably caters to the "buy a Rodeo, strip the Parkerization off and do a high-end blue" crowd. That's the gun in the $650 range. The cheaper one still exists, although it might have gone up a little.

StrikeEagle: somewhere, I recall a gunsmith page which went into why he won't work on Italian guns but works on Colt SAAs and Ruger Vaqs. I've come across numerous complaints about the basic metalurgy of at least some of the Italians.

Sadly, the limited googling I had time for just now didn't come up with anything .

 

[Hawk]

StrikeEagle:

In TX, there's plenty of smiths that sponsor the local SASS clubs. Here's a link to some MD clubs SASS-MD

I just did a quick check and this shop popped up. I don't know how close you are to Frederick - I'm sure there's others - good luck.

It's pretty much a "given" among the CA shooters around here that a brand new Colt SAA needs attention if it's going to see serious use. I have a hard time coming to grips with that. If the cost is related to all the hand fitting, and I have no reason to doubt that it is, how much more would it have been if they fercryinoutloud finished the job?

I've been told that if you really want to see some fine hand fitting and finishing, you should direct yourself to a cherry gen 1 SAA. Pocketbook should brace for impact.

 

[mattx109]

Is it just the color case bluing that's no good from Ruger, or are the plain blued guns also bad?

According to the website, there's no fixed rear sight/notch version of the Single Six .22 in stainless, only in color case and regular blue.

Edited to ask:

What were the original lengths of the SAA? As I understand it, it was originally made with a 7 1/2" barrel (the cavalry version), then with a 5 1/2", then with a 4 3/4" (the artillery version). Is that correct?

 

[Jim March]

Ruger's regular blue is fine. The color case is a disaster.

But it's not ALL bad news. Ruger's customer service to the rescue: if your color-case gun develops rust spots and/or comes off under cleaning, when you send it back to Ruger you can ask that they just re-blue the whole thing and they will .

I personally wouldn't do that. If I got a good deal on a color-case Ruger, I'd strip it, polish the "novel's worth of text" off the barrel, high-polish it myself and use one of the better home blue products. Wouldn't cost much. Would take TIME but that would be worth it to me to get what I wanted.

But if you don't want to spend that level of time, Ruger will fix you up.

Edited to add:

Matt: the 7.5" barrel was standard military issue, the 5.5" became known as the "artillery model" (there's some dispute as to how accurate that is) and custom jobs chopped flush with the ejector at 4.6" or so became known as the "gunfighter" configuration (again, not with all that much accuracy). Shorter barrels were sometimes referred to as "Sheriff's models" or "shopkeeper models", with or without ejector rods.

Longer than 7.5" became known as "Buntline Specials" and were not at ALL common.