RoninPA:
I have been collecting the various Ruger Six Series revolvers for many years. In my research over these years, I had found several sources not only touting the superior strength of these Six series revolvers compared to their competition-but, the fact that there was distress inside the Ruger Company regarding Bill Ruger's decision to discontinue these revolvers in favor of his newly introduced GP100. Many of the Ruger Engineers felt that since there were no strength problems with their six Series revolvers holding up under the continued firing of .357 magnum's, they thought that there was no need to offer the GP100 to the market. But, Bill Ruger had insisted due to wanting to compete directly with an equal Ruger firearm to the S&W L-frame revolvers. All of my sources are in bits and pieces stored away. It would take me awhile to find this documented information? However, I can assure you that in this documentation it was made clear that the GP100 was not needed due to any inherent strength problems with any of Ruger's Six-Series revolvers and that the GP100 was only put on the market to compete head on with the S&W L-frame revolvers. There had also been other reports indicating various inaccuracies reported in the book entitled, "Ruger and His Guns" including inaccurate serial numbers etc.! This was still a very good book-but, does contain a few errors in it! I tried to report all of the information above, in my prior posting, from memory-but, I will dig into my sources to report back here to give you some accurrate source information, if you would still be interested? But, it will take time to research this again! One thing to consider, is that with over one million Six Series revolvers having been produced, that Ruger only had one man in their Service Department with very few reports of their Six series revolvers ever coming back to Ruger for repairs! Although any gun can be shot loose with the hot .357 magnum rounds, the Six Series revolvers have held up far better than the Smith & Wesson Model 19's over the years! And, you read about the Model 19's problem with their cracked forcing cones quite often. Not true, regarding Ruger's Six Series revolvers!