A Tale of Two Old Army Black Powder Rugers

Good buddy Paul is a black powder enthusiast.  I am, too, except I’m completely inexperienced as a shooter in the blackpowder world.  I owned an 1858 Remington reproduction (it was a Pietta, I think, and it was beautiful).  Good buddy Duane wanted one and I sold mine, new in the box, to him without ever firing it.  I’ve seen it fired, as Duane is a range regular and he’s had it out a few times.  And I have a beautiful reproduction Colt Walker (made by Uberti; you can read that story here), but I haven’t fired that yet, either.

But I digress; this story is about the Ruger Old Army.  Two of them, in fact.  The name notwithstanding, the Ruger Old Army is a completely modern gun, with the exception of it’s being a cap and ball revolver.  Ruger made a few variations of this fine weapon, with the variations being barrel length (the ones Paul owns are both 7 1/2-inch barreled guns; Ruger also made 5 1/2-inch barreled versions), blue steel or stainless steel construction (the ones you see here are samples of each), satin or highly-polished stainless steel, and fixed or adjustable sights.  Ruger also offered a brass grip frame on the blue steel version (those are beautiful handguns).  Ruger also offered the Old Army with simulated ivory grips for a while.

Paul added custom grips to his Old Army revolvers, and in both cases, the grips add considerably to the revolvers’ appearance.

Big bore percussion revolvers have simultaneously been called either .44 caliber or .45 caliber.  They are not a .44, though.  They are all .45s, and you can fire either a .457 lead ball, or a .454 conical lead bullet.

Ruger introduced the Old Army in 1972 and discontinued it in 2008 as sales slowed.  From what I’ve read, Ruger Old Army revolvers can be extremely accurate.  I can’t tell you that from personal experience, however.  As I said above I have absolutely zero range time with the Old Army or any other black powder firearm.  Caps are difficult-to-impossible to find these days with the pandemic-induced components shortages (I haven’t fired my Walker yet for that reason).

Paul’s two Old Army Rugers are beautiful.  One of these days, when components are flowing freely again, we’ll have to get them and my yet-to-be fired Colt Walker on the range.

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