Mike89

I have a Ruger Stainless 44 New Model Super Blackhawk. It has a 7 1/2" barrel and the square trigger guard (at the back). I notice at the Ruger website, the New Model Super Blackhawk is now shown with the round trigger guard.

Anyone know when it changed (what year)? Kind of makes it a bit confusing when both say "New Model Super Blackhawk" on the gun yet they are different. I believe even the grips are different between the two.

caryc

Nothing has changed. What you saw was probably a picture of a short barreled SBH. The 4 5/8" and the 5 1/2" barreled Super Blackhawks have always had the same grip frame as the regular Blackhawk, the XR3-RED grip frame..

The 7 1/2" and the 10 1/2" barreled Super Blackhawks have the larger dragoon style grip frames with the square back trigger guard on them.

If you look at a 2010 Ruger Catalog it even tells you the trigger guard style of each model listed in the catalog. Ruger seems to do some things for which there is just no explanation for example the markings they put on their grip frames. They do confuse a lot of people. But they do know how to make a great gun. I've had customers telling me the calibers of their guns thinking it made a difference in the grips. But it does not. Ruger uses a "whole lot" of interchangeable parts. Probably one of the reasons they can sell their guns at the prices they do. There are only the three basic plow handle type grips shown below on all Ruger's guns even now.

The drawing below shows you the difference between the two grip sizes.

Mike89

Thanks for that info. That cleared things up. The picture on the Ruger site does have the round trigger guard and it is the shorter barrel. I didn't know they had different trigger guards for different barrel sizes. Looking on their site in the "manual" section (I got the gun used recently), by my serial number my gun was made in 1982. Love the quality of the gun and for those who have never shot one, "it does kick like a mule". It lets you know real quick what a powerful gun it is. I reload for it and I reload light loads. Much more enjoyable to shoot than the stock thumper loads.

hutchman

Cary, some place I read that the XR3-RED grip frame is essentially a shortened Dragoon style. From your illustration, it appears that may be correct with the grip frame being the same at the base and shortened on the top.

Is this true........or close?

caryc

Not true or even close.

As you can see in the pic below of an XR3-RED grip on a SBH frame. The front strap and back strap are lined up. As you can see there is more material on the bottom and the front of the SBH frame.

The base or "butt" of the super frame measures approx 2.340" whereas the XR3-RED measures 2.235". Of course this measurement depends on the person doing the final finishing on the frames. I've seen some that had nice big radiuses on the corners and some that were quite pointy.

hutchman

Excellent image and thanks for clearing that up. When you do a set of grips, do you prefer the grip frame be sent to you?

caryc

I fit each set of grips that I make to a Ruger grip frame. Naturally I'd rather fit them to your frame than mine.

The people that make Ruger grip frames are not magicians. Naturally their grip frames will vary some. Most of the problems I've seen are shown below. They are with the grip locator pin being drilled incorrectly. In the pics you see a set of stock Ruger plastic grips on a bad frame and a good frame. You can see how they stick out over the back strap on the bad frame.

I have a theory for this. My guess is that Ruger uses some kind of drill jig that they put the cleaned up frame into for drilling that hole. If the worker has a hang over on a Monday morning and does not clean out all the drill shavings from the previous frame and puts the next frame in, it may not go into the drill jig correctly and the hole would be off as you see in the pics. On Ruger's "Contact the CEO" email thing I actually sent those pics to him and said it's too bad a customer would get a brand new gun with grips that fit like that because of carelessness of a worker and asked him to check into the process of drilling this hole. Well, I never heard back from them so I don't know if it really had any effect on anyone.

If you buy a stock set of grips from anyone and they don't fit quite right because of that pin and are sasitfied because after all they are off the shelf grips, I can practically guarantee that a month or so after you receive them, you'll be wishing that you had sent the grip frame to the maker to have the grips fitted when you had the chance

I understand how people don't want to take their gun apart and be without the grip.frame so I try to keep the grip frames for the shortest time possible. I can guarantee that my grips will fit my Ruger grip frame but let's be honest here, I can not guarantee that they will fit your grip frame the same way. Any grip maker will tell you that.

slugdog

My wife bought me a Super Blackhawk in 1980. Absolutely the best shooting revolver I've ever had. The square trigger guard does eat up my middle finger every now and then, though. I shot silhouettes with it, and almost could not miss. She also got me a Redhawk when they came out, I put a Leupold stainless 2 power in it, and could not hit sh*t.

Iowegan

caryc, That is an excellent pictorial that explains a lot!!!