bigbore45colt said:
Good find, Bob. Those are quite scarce.
I have a few notes on these plated guns from back when I was doing research on my plated guns.
505129 shipped to Sutcliffe Company, Louisville, KY, on August 20, 1965. It was part of a 20-gun "special" order of "SC6 (nickel)"
BB45C
I concur...the Super single-Sixes are nickel (not that it matters...plated is plated), but nickle has a distinctive yellow color to it and nickle plating also appears very thick on a surface. Chrome is generally bright white, highly reflective and appears to have a very "thin" look to it...like a car bumper.
You know, some of the Super Single-Sixes I've seen have a label on the end that says chrome. To me it doesn't mean they were chrome, maybe somebody at the factory didn't know either and just figured they were chrome, and anyway....if the factory is trying to rid themselves of something - would they market it as "nickel plated" or "chrome plated". The industry standard is usually "chrome", which I would think would be easier for Ruger to "dump" onto the market...more attractive to the distributor.
I have a letter here somewhere from Ed Nolan who stated that they had considered a regular production run of plated Super Single-Sixes, but that they had issues with the mechanics of the guns once they were plated. The nickel went on so thick that there were other machining/polishing operations that had to be done prior to them being plated in order for them to function properly. Maybe if Ruger had used chrome they wouldn't have had those issues and they wouldn't be so rare today? And you'd think if there were issues with chrome platiing, Ruger wouldn't have chromed as many guns as they did in the '50's, or even considered the thought of plating a group of "purple framed" Super Single-Sixes in 1964.
Chet15