44 FT plum beauty

Picked up this 44 flattop at the gun show in Yuma last weekend. Went kinda over the edge looking at the plum and grabbed it up thinking it was a .357 FT since it has a short bbl. After recovering my wits and looking closer, sure enough it's a .44 with a short bbl. Onliest problem the short bbl is 4 and 3/4 instead of 4 and 5/8 which really don't make no never-mind since Ruger only made 4 or so short bbls with sn# 13788 not being one of them. Also non standard is the very nicely polished XR3 grip frame which is adorned with a perfect set of varnished black eagles.

On the plus side, along with the fantastic plum frame is the offset ERH with large concave ejector rod, capped base pin screw, uncollared base pin and Micro rear sight with adjustment notch along with the thin trigger. Gun shipped in Dec 58 but the nice lady at records said, after a very long wait on hold, there is no invoice for the gun so there is no way to know what bbl it shipped with.

Shore is purty.

Heckuva shooter.

Good score.

Hey I remember that one when it lived in Tucson. I know where you got it

Its a nice one

Dan

Chance,
Good score! I can tell that the pictures do not show
just how "Plum" that frame really is.
Terry

Tucsonite said:

Hey I remember that one when it lived in Tucson. I know where you got it

Its a nice one

Dan

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Yup, Dan, got this right after I bought 2 of your old display cases for 40 bucks more than you offered them to me a few months ago.

You have any idea what bbl it came with? Ya know I seem to be getting a lot of your hand-me-downs accumulating in my safe. Have fun in Tulsa.

Plumb frame .44 flattops are a lot harder to find than plumb .357's.
Chet15

That seems strange. Weren't they made of the same steel and blued in the same tanks?

Damn, they just sold a pretty nice .44 Flattop barrel on Gunbroker, would have relly went with that plum frame and restored the piece if you wanted to.
HH

C---that is one fine Ruger-----A GREAT shooter,nice grip panels :!: Great FIND

Larry,

It seems to me I bought that gun as is up in Prescott around 5 years ago. When I get home from Tulsa I will go back in my pictures and files to see what I can Find.

Dan

Ale-8(1) said:

That seems strange. Weren't they made of the same steel and blued in the same tanks?

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By the time the .44 Blackhawk (flattop) got around to production, most of the purple framed .357's had already rolled out of the plant. By the end of 1956 Ruger was up to about #7300 on the .357's, several thousand past the Ross guns even.
I don't recall seeing too many early .44 flattops (usually not even a hint of brown or dark purple) in the first run of .44 flattops that left in 1956 which ran to about sn 1000 or a little more. Of Course the loading gates usually always show good purple (maybe this is where Ruger decided to use that metal???). So by the time the .44 came out, the problems must have been worked out of the steel in the cylinder frames. Sure, there were other short runs of purple colored steel later on, but its pretty tough finding one in a .44 FT.
Chet15

That's one good looking shooter! Nice score!

Way to go Chance, leave a few for us fellow Arizonans.

Awesome score Chance. I visited Sun City once..had to drive over an hour to get to a shooting range. Bummer. I love your plum FT.

Here's a shooter FT44 I picked up..a mish-mash of 'other' features. Turned out to be a perfect combination of comfort and shootability.

44

That is one pretty flat top. I like it alot, and with all the extra features, just as it is!

I looked back in my files and it was December 2004 when I bought it. I had some fun with it while I had it, and configured it a few different ways. here are some pics, the way Chance bought is the way I got it.

Dan



I really liked it with brass & ivory