red eagle grips.

Hey guys, i recently picked up what I thought was a red eagle. Turns out that it isnt but according to the serial# 175+++ Its a very clean gun from 1959. Someone has swapped out the grips, and I think they may be original red eagle grips. my question is- how could I tell if they are the real deal.? They do appear to be old and only have the red on the left grip. I dont know how to post pictures on here but I can email them to someone if that would help. thanks.!

if any doubt, send them to Chad at the RENE, after all he wrote the book on the .22 semi autos and could give you the low down on them......if you know of any Ruger 22 auto collectors in your area, they too may be able to show you and compare them to some originals.................
here is a picture of some early ones, note the aluminum escutcheons around the screw holes, they were removed from the later 'red eagle eagle, and then the screw heads were enlarged to 'fit" this hole, and make up the 'space' left around the early ,smaller grip screws.......





the color of the 'red' in the picture is too reflected, and does not show up 'correctly" these are off of a 2 digit serail number gun #003x........

Red Eagle grips are easy to tell if they are like the ones that Rugerguy shows above, the ones with aluminum escutcheons around the screw holes. Only the type 1, 1A and type 2 Red Eagles had this grip, up to around serial number 3700. As usual some few lower numbers won't have the aluminum escutcheons around the screw holes. Just normal overlap, as most types have. Now for the rest of the Red Eagles, it just like the Ruger Factory Stags. You can be 100% sure if they are not right, such as wrong size med., with the fat neck Eagle painted red, or the wrong color red in the Eagle. Or the wrong grips, as they should be the solid hard rubber grips not the later hollow grips.

Now if someone get the Black Eagle grips that are made just after the Red Eagles stopped being made, and gets the right color red to paint over the Eagle after removing the black, then it's going to be hard to tell that they are fake. It's just like the Factory Stags. You can tell the ones that are done wrong but you can only guess it it is done right.

Yes, there are two types of red eagle medallions. The earliest was two-piece of brass, the stem and the medallion part, brazed together, plated and the eagle in red enamel. On that one the eagle is flush with the silver portion of the surface, so the red enamal is very shallow. This type of medallion often broke away from the stem, so there are many early red eagle autos out there without any part of the medallion still in the grip. The highest I've heard of with that type is sn 9327.
Then Ruger started having the medallions made of one piece, cromed then red painted. On this type the red portion of the eagle sits below the chromed surface (incuse). The medallion portion of it though wasn't nearly thick enough so when the employee staked the back of the stem to hold it taut to the grip, the stem would try pushing through the front of th eagles breast and in 99% of all cases, you can see a hump on the eagles breast which even cracked the paint at that location.
In 1951 Sturm died and the last of the RE medallions were finally used up in March 1952....but Ruger didn't make the medallions thicker until 1-2 years after that.
Chet15