Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Ruger M77 Mark 1 Factory Barrels

I'm interested in a history lesson about the original Ruger M77 barrels. I know that the barrels were supplied by multiple vendors over the years but I do have a question regarding the chambering of these, was this done at the Ruger Factory, or did the vendors do this before shipping the completed barrels to Ruger?

I'd also appreciate some input on opinions as to the chambers themselves being cut on the generous side, and then afforded some freebore like Weatherby does with theirs. My thought is old man Ruger may have done this to keep pressure down as these are hunting rifles & not target guns.

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Why keep the pressure down? The Ruger 77 is a very strong action.

Exactly. Also Ruger never made a m77 "Mark 1". Not exactly sure what he's referring to, unless he means the tang safety Ruger m77? The chambers should not have been cut on the "generous" side either. Manufactures are required to stay within the limits of SAAMI spec. If the chamber is out of spec, that is not a good thing. Also the reason they make no and go gauges to check said chambers.

Ahh, but SAMMI spec’s usually have 10 thou between minimum and maximum chamber. So if the chamber was 4-6 thou over minimum, I would call that nominal. 7-10 would be generous.

In regards to vendors, Wilson used to supply barrels for Ruger which then Ruger cut the chambers.

Some decades ago, Ruger was chosen to supply the U.S. Palma team with rifles. Ruger made the mistake of tapping Badger for the Palma barrels and they were a disaster. Competitors dumped the rifles and went to their own personal rifles during the match.

Overall Ruger has made some very accurate rifles and still do.

As far as I know they make their own barrels now.

The outsourced barrel vendors were Douglas from 1968 to 1973 and then Wilson from 1973 thru 1990. By 1991, Ruger started producing their own hammer forged barrels. My early 1971 era M77 in 7x57 Mauser with a Douglas barrel has a long throat to accept the then common long 175gr. round nose bullets that were being loaded in factory ammunition at that time. I'm thinking Ruger did the cartridge chambering of all barrels supplied by a outsourced vendor.

Yes, and there is one member here who has pictures to demonstrate it.

Ruger used Wilson barrels on tang-safety 77s until the early 1990s, when they finally started making their own barrels, using hammer-forging machines purchased in Germany.

The Wilson barrels could shoot very well--but also varied considerably. My first tang-safety 77 was a .30-06 that would group it's best loads into less than 2"--at 200 yards.

But also owned a tang-safety 7x57 that would NOT consistently group anything into much less than 3'' at 100 yards. Finally slugged the bore, and found the TIGHT spots in the grooves measured .287"--and there were plenty of loose spots.

Part of the problem, however, was that the chamber throats in some (not all) of the Wilson-barrel 77's (and No. 1s) were VERY long. This also changed about the same time Ruger started hammer-forging their own barrels.