JCCVaquero":32v5ekb5 said:
So is it black or stainless?
Will the engraver engrave something on both cylinders?
What is the overall amount coverage? 25% 50% 75% 90%
Who is the Engraver? How long has he been engraving?
Have you seen any of his previous work? long guns or revolvers or pistols
Did he do a drawing of the project proposal?
Is this going to be a shooter or will it be a gun box heirloom?
John
Both guns shown in the pic are stainless.
Unfortunately, Ruger's Studio of Art and Engraving is a thing of the past, but I hear that several of Ruger's engravers went to Baron Technologies to work. Baron is who does most of Ruger's custom work these days...namely the selectively gold layer projects you see on items like the 50th Anniversary Bearcat and 50th Anniversary Super Blackhawk.
I'm not sure how the engraving process works right now...if you can still order your gun to be engraved through Ruger who then turns it over to Baron or if Ruger just sends you directly to Baron without the factory intermingling (would be nice if you did this if you could actually get a letter from Ruger saying the Ruger company had something to do with the work, instead of the work only being placed and done through Baron...again, aftermarket customization to me).
All guns are meant to be shot. If you can get Ruger to sanction the engraving work I would be more tempted to put it in a safe, but to each his own.
I.M.O. the engraving on the Vaquero is maybe around 25-30% coverage. The Single-Six higher...maybe 50% or a little better.
As far as I know, all of the engravers that were employed by the Ruger studio were "Masters" or at least nearly so...Very talented people!!! The top engraver at the studio was Paul Lantuch who did many guns for the factory from the 1980's up to just a few years ago.
Ruger used to have a slideshow of engraving examples that the Studio had done while it was in operation. No need to worry about qualitiy of engraving there as all were exquisite!! Just depends how much you want to spend. And yes, the studio engraved anything with the Ruger name on it.
Chet15