Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns It really pains me to say this

Well, got a brand new replacement revolver back from Ruger today. And the evidence is conclusive, the people who make the SP101 product line really don't give a flying leap about their QC.

First, they never told me they were sending it. My FFL dealer emailed me out of the blue this afternoon and said he had a Ruger waiting for me.

Ran over, picked it up and ran straight home to examine it.

The Good
- The barrel is on straight(er). You can see it's still coming out of the frame just a teeny tiny bit off to the right but at least it's more straight then the other previous three.
- The chamber throats seem to be okay, at least not way undersized. They are not consistent but few factory throats are, they will all allow a .357" bullet and some allow one .3575". I'm going to get a set of real pin gauges in .0005" increments after the New Year and get exact measurements.
- And that's it for the good.

The Bad
- The cylinder still slides off of the crane. It's absolutely not supposed to do that.
- There are gross machining marks in the forcing cone and at the start of the rifling. Not just scratches but deep circumferential grooves. They test fired some jacketed bullets and even after cleaning you can see the jacket material embedded into those grooves.

The What the Bleep?
- There is an alien life form encrusting the inside of the revolver. Okay, maybe not alien but what in the world is this? It looks like mold at first but it scrapes off readily with a dental pick. I'm pretty sure Ruger uses a lost wax method of casting but could this be old wax? In 52 years of owning Ruger handguns I've never seen anything like this.

This is the 4th substandard Ruger SP101 in a row. Four. In a Row. I can see one bad one slipping through and I can see four bad ones in circulation throughout the country, but four owned by me? My karma just isn't that bad, instead I'd say one could predict a fairly reliable trend here and it does not point to a good place.

Not sure what to do. I'm not going to send it back to Ruger, they've effed up their chances to make things right 4 times now. I do like the model design, I like it a lot, so will probably just clean this one up and shoot it.

I will rip Ruger customer service a new, very large ass hole for this, complete with glossy digital photographs. I pity the nice lady I dealt with but she definitely said this would be reviewed by management before being sent out. Apparently checking for a cylinder that comes off and alien growth inside the revolver is not part of their check list.


This revolver is absolutely brand new. I got it home, disassembled it and found all this.

Front of the fire control unit






Crane assembly





Inside frame



Special custom two piece cylinder/crane assembly