Click here to download the catalog as a PDF file. To view this site you need Adobe Flash Player and your browser must allow javaScripts. Go here to get the latest Flash Player. TAFFINTESTS John Taffin 50+ years of Ruger’s .22 Single-Six is represented by an original flat gate from 1956, a Super Single-Six from 1963 and a 21st-century New Model Hunter. THE SIXGUNNER HIMSELF: GUNS, GEAR AND MORE An early ad shows how Ruger tugged at potential customer’s guts with ads appealing to outdoorsy-types. “T Single-Six hose were the days, my friend. We thought they’d never end.” It was 1956 and I had purchased my first very own handgun. In those days firearms were easily accessible to kids; 16 was the legal purchasing age in my area with no forms to fill out, and there was no question what the first sixgun would be. All of us paid a hard-earned $63.25 for the relatively new Ruger SingleSix .22. By then we were old enough to appreciate the smell of perfume, however, even this was not quite as sweet to our sense of smell as powder smoke and Hoppe’s #9. We had not yet learned that sixguns did not have to be cleaned after every shooting session, so the standard procedure on Saturday afternoons was to shoot all the .22s we Bill Ruger gained his inspiration for the .22 Single-Six from the Colt Single Action Army. Ruger’s .22 could afford — in my case it was through a Marlin 39 Mountie as well as the Single-Six — followed by a cleaning session with Hoppe’s. The Single-Six was Sturm, Ruger’s first revolver after successfully introducing their .22 semiauto pistol four years earlier. When Bill Ruger decided to offer his first sixgun he went against all conventional wisdom. The SAA from Colt had been dead and buried for more than 10 years, having been dropped at the beginning of World War II. The already worn machinery had been moved to the parking lot into the ravages of weather to make room in the factory for wartime production. Colt had no intention of ever producing the Model P Single Action again; they had not counted on the powerful influ- The flat gate, drift adjustable rear and original style grips are evident in this early gun. Notice the smaller cylinder and frame on the .22 Single-Six. The .22 Single-Six joined the Standard Model .22 semiauto in 1953. ence of television and Bill Ruger. In the late 1940s television arrived and began to spread throughout the country from both coasts. Those early networks had to fill their time slots in those wonderful days before 24-hour newscasts and infomercials. Live performance variety shows, sporting events, wrestling and more wrestling, and old movies were the mainstay of television at mid-century. Many of those old movies were “B” Westerns. We have progressed so far here in the beginning decade of the 21st century I now pay for cable TV and buy videos and DVDs so I can watch the same old westerns I watched as a kid. They don’t quite have the same effect today as they did, but I do enjoy going back to those wonderful days of my childhood even if only for an hour at a time. Those old western movies featured the likes of Roy, Gene, Hoppy, Wild Bill, Tim, Buck, Rocky, Lash and dozens of others all of whom used single action sixguns to tame their part of the West. Anyone who doesn’t know all of these men by their first names is definitely lacking a truly solid basic education. A demand arose for single action sixguns, often fueled by those who had never even fired a revolver. The only Colts available were on the Continued on page 77 26 WWW.AMERICANHANDGUNNER.COM • JULY/AUGUST 2009