Round Butt Service Six?

I may be wrong, but as I understand it, there werent very many Service sixes made with round butts correct? I'm pretty sure mine is Squared but I guess I've never really seen the difference in a round vs squared butt Service/Security/Speed six model. Anyone have a link or picture they could throw up which would help me identify mine? Thanks

If it has a "round butt" it should say Speed Six on the right side of the frame. All Speed Sixes were round butts.

If it is a Police Service Six, and it has a round butt, it means someone ground the corners off the grip frame to make it a "Speed Six" grip profile.
All Service Sixes are a square butt.



These are square butt Service Sixes.



This is my 4" Speed Six, with a Tyler T-grip. The 4" Speed Sixes are a little rarer than the 2 3/4" models.

I strongly suspect that all Speed Sixes started life as Service Six frames, but Ruger techs just knocked the corners off the grip frame and then just make grips with rounded corners. I looked at both my Speed Sixes and I can see grind marks on the rounded corners, that look to have been polished out.

Jake Bauer said:

I may be wrong, but as I understand it, there werent very many Service sixes made with round butts correct? I'm pretty sure mine is Squared but I guess I've never really seen the difference in a round vs squared butt Service/Security/Speed six model. Anyone have a link or picture they could throw up which would help me identify mine? Thanks

Click to expand...

Welcome to the Ruger Forum. Lots of folks way more knowledgeable than me here.

That said, at the risk of sounding ... well, uh. Consider examining the butt. If it is not squared off, but is rounded off, you just might have a round butt Service Six.

Consider giving the nice folks at Ruger Customer Service a call. Be sure to have the serial number handy. Here's a link for contacting them:

http://ruger.com/footer/contact.html

Stranger things have happened.

It is possible that Ruger mis-marked a Speed Six as a Service Six.

It's also hard to tell, someone with skill and a grinder can easily make a Service Six into a Speed Six. Like was said, only Ruger would know for sure.

The Speed Six was Ruger's version of the S&W K-frame Round Butt, made for easier concealment so the grip wouldn't "print" as much under clothes.

There have been some round butt service sixes turn up. One of the experts should be along shortly to give you all the details :wink:

I'm not one of the experts but think I've read here that a few Security Six's had round butts too.

I believe you're correct hittman.

Ruger admits to taking Service sixes and round butting them to fill orders for Speed Sixes. Not all will letter as such or so I've heard.

I have at least two Speed Sixes that were "round butted" but they are both marked as Speed Six.....but there are obviously grind marks on the corners of the butt. Maybe all the Speed Sixes are just round butted Service Sixes?

The Round Butt S&W K-frames have an entirely different grip frame, much different than the Speed Sixes.

As the owner of 3 speed sixes mis-marked as 'police service sixes', I can verify that the mis-stamping has occured.

I measured the floor plate of the grip of a post scalloped service six and a correctly marked post scalloped speed six and found that the floor plate on the speed six is 1/8" thicker. Therefore, it would be impossiable to grind off a police service six frame and pass it off as a speed six mis-marked gun.

Ruger records identifies all my guns as GS- models, in other words, speed sixes.

Normally, a square butt fixed sight gun is a 'police service six' and a round butt gun is a 'speed six'.

There was a small special order of round butt adj. sight security sixes and the early fixed sight square butt guns with the 150- prefixe and the low back frame were marked 'security six'. Ruger did not start using the name 'police service six' until after the first 100K were produced.

Are we confused yet? :shock:
Terry T

Thanks for the help guys. I removed the rubber grips from my Service Six today and I'm pretty sure its squared. All sides and corners looked squared off to me.

Thanks for the help guys. I removed the rubber grips from my Service Six today and I'm pretty sure its squared. All sides and corners looked squared off to me.

I almost think of the Service Six and Speed Six as the same gun.....both came in 2 3/4" and 4", in .357 and .38.

I believe at first Ruger intended the Speed Six to be made only in 2 3/4", which makes sense with the "Speed" Six name and rounded butt for easier concealment. But then customers wanted them in 4", and so those are around too.

The Service Six was likely intended to be only a 4" service revolver, but again, people wanted them in 2 3/4", so there those are.

stantheman86 said:

.....both came in 2 3/4" and 4", in .357 and .38.

Click to expand...

Not to mention .380 Rim, 9MM, and the occasional 3" barrel!

I can't imagine how many guns one would have to buy in order to get one of EACH possible variation. Fun to try though!

One day when I was really bored, I figured out how many guns you would need for a "complete" collection of the Security, Service, and Speed Sixes. Including the real rare stuff, like the early prototype Security Six 3" fixed sight DAO .38 Special that was sold by Ruger on GunBroker for like $2,000+.

It was over 400 revolvers, with one for every variation.I don't even know how to get a complete list of every variation.......you have early light barrels, heavy barrels, Heavy Machined barrels, "transition" guns that have ribbed triggers, non-scalloped recoil sheilds but have heavy barrels. For example, just to get the 1976 BiCentennial guns, there would be like 30+ of those alone.

Then you have the ones marked for the FDA, the ones marked "U.S.", various police marked guns......

Basically, in short, unless you have deep pockets and can afford to buy 20-30 of them a month, it woud take the better part of a lifetime of devoted collecting to amass a "mostly complete" collection of the Six revolvers. Some would be very hard to find, if not impossible, since the rarest ones are buried deep in Ruger collections and probably will never be seen again.

I myself am happy to keep buying the holster worn 4" PD and security trade Service and Speed Sixes. The Security Sixes never got me all that excited, but neither does any adjustable sight revolver.

Just to be certain, here's some pics of my Service Six's butt.






Look square enough?

Kinda interesting, it's definitely a square butt, but not as "square" as my Service Sixes, which have sharper corners......it almost looks like someone "half round butted" it, or someone started to turn it into a Speed Six but stopped. Might be someone just "de horned" the corners for concealed carry, and then probably sanded the corners of the grips to match, without going full round butt with it.

Got a pic with the grips on the gun?

I just went downstairs and looked at three of my Sixes. It looks like someone may have knocked the edge off the rear part of the butt. It looks like a square butt, not a round butt.

None of the three that I checked are marked S8H though; they have different letter/number marking. One was a 4" stainless Service Six .357, one was a 4" blue Security Six .357, and one was a 6" blue Security Six .357.

Here's the butt of my Security Six, for some reason it looks squarer than the one above.