French Police Surplus Ruger SP101

Has anyone here picked-up one of the French Police Surplus Ruger SP101's? If so could you tell me a bit about the condition and how well it "cleaned-up. Abused or not etc. I'm thinking an older SP is what I want rather than a recent one....The newer hammers and triggers just look a bit cheesy to me.

The Preacher

Guess not.....

The Preacher

LOOK what a search found......
http://www.rugerforum.com/phpBB3/search.php?keywords=french+police&terms=all&author=&sc=1&sf=all&sk=t&sd=d&sr=posts&st=0&ch=300&t=0&submit=Search

Thanks much recumbent; but I was hoping for a bit more information.

The Preacher

Maybe someone else will jump in.

One thing I've noticed on the newer 101's (other than the mim hammer and trigger) is that there seems to be more metal on the left hand side of the frame just in front of the cylinder release button and around where the cylinder frame opening (for the cylinder) is. Around and below the small screw hole. Some look neatly done, others not so much. A design change? Were there issues with earlier renditions? The French surplus 101's don't have that extra metal there.

The Preacher

The change you describe is directly related to ease of manufacturing.

SP-101s as originally designed had a round raised boss that was completely separated from the left side recoil shield. The purpose of this boss seems to me to be cylinder retention.

Fast forward 20 or so years (early 2010s, I think) and the SP is now produced entirely on CNC equipment, and the round boss becomes a shaped extension of the recoil shield.

Skip forward another 5 or so years and some bean-counter realizes that there are fewer machining operations to just cut that extension in a straight line with the recoil shield.

I've never heard of or encountered any issues with the old SP models related to the round retention boss.

The new design is so ugly I would not consider buying a new SP-101. MIM isn't a big issue for me, ugliness of manufacturing is.

The intermediate design isn't so bad but it only lasted for a few years to my knowledge.

Thanks NikA. To me the newer ones look like "straw through the cow" for a number of reasons and I will not buy one. That's why I was wondering if there were issues with the earlier ones. I want one, but won't buy a new one.

The Preacher

I suppose it's nitpicking on a cosmetic, but the cylinder flutes look odd as hell to me. They curve inward as they go to the cylinder face. Was there something wrong with plain old straight cut?

dfletcher said:

I suppose it's nitpicking on a cosmetic, but the cylinder flutes look odd as hell to me. They curve inward as they go to the cylinder face. Was there something wrong with plain old straight cut?

Click to expand...

That's another recent cosmetic change that counts new guns out for me. I believe it's a holdover from the additional cylinder chamfer on the SP-101 Match Champion edition. Why they added it to the entire SP production line, I do not know. They had a similar "feature" on the GP-100 Match Champion in 357 that luckily did not propagate to the other GP models.

I'm about done with my interest in the SP series, still looking for one of the original 6-shot .22s in nice condition but I can afford to live without it indefinitely. I don't have one of the French police surplus guns but I have at least one of similar vintage which has no problems.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I don't have an issue with the new MIM hammers and triggers. Having handled both pre-MIM and MIM examples in "like new" condition, the pre-MIM hammers and triggers are relatively sharp and uncomfortable out of the box and can definitely use some polishing/melting. This is typically not an issue with the MIM specimens.