| Bill Ruger: A Man on a Mission - Page Two | |
Page Two
ST: What are your thoughts about other famous designers like John Browning and Samuel Colt?
WBR:
First of all, you should include Arthur Savage, who designed a very significant
firearm (the Model 99).
Well, I think perhaps Colt’s business and inventive characteristics are something that I’d have to say I’ve always wanted to emulate. Not Sam Colt alone, but people like that who had a great idea and built a great thing out of it. Of course, it’s particularly true for me with Colt (the company) because it was in the gun business.
You’d have to say, really, that Browning created the most amazing bunch of firearms designs, much more so than the Colt people ever did, and, of course, they (Colt) made a lot of Brownings—pistols, machineguns, and so forth were all Brownings. Browning’s ideas were so sound, so numerous that there was never any room for anybody to be as good as he was. He almost preempted all the great ideas. Nobody’s been able to outthink him.
Today,
we’re really perfected to a high level, from a manufacturing point of view.
I learn something every time we make a gun. You know, making a gun to do the
job it was intended to do is quite difficult.
They (Browning and Colt) weren’t designers in the true sense of the word. I think those two gentlemen were inventors more than designers.
ST: Is that what separates you from them?
WBR: Right. Well, I think I have done some of that. I’ve come into the gun business so late in terms of evolution of firearms. There aren’t a whole hell of a lot of ideas left that keep popping out at you.
It’s really a matter of perfecting designs. I think my strong suit as a contributor to technology of firearms is getting the logic sorted out, the shapes of components, their adaptability to production, to shooters, to collectors.
I’m a tooling expert. I’ve proven that. I make guns that are both sound designs and are commercially feasible or they won’t exist...otherwise it becomes a museum piece and nothing more.
I’ve taken advantage of new manufacturing technology. Take forged steel versus investment casting. The decision to go to investment casting was easy.
With casting you very nearly have a finished part. Forging, to my mind, is still a very crude process. Forging is a complicated thing. Plus there are metallurgical differences. The metallurgical structure (of precision investment castings) are stronger. Plus it’s more economical.
ST: Is that what sets Ruger guns apart from its competitors?
WBR: It’s hard to improve on this description: superiority of design, strength, and value. I can’t really improve on that. Those factors were my goals early on in that we wanted to make guns for the average man, the average hunter and shooter.
Page One - Intro,
Birth of the Company, First Steps
Page Two - Thoughts on Colt & Browning, Competitors
Page Three -
Why
Buy Ruger, 50 Years, Failed Designs, Single-Six, Flattop
Page Four - Bearcat,
No. 1, Red Label, Super Blackhawk, Redhawk, Old Army, Security-Six
Page Five - .44
Deerstalker, GP100, SP101, Super Redhawk, Mini-14, 77, 77 MK II, 77/22
Page Six - 10/22,
Model 96, P-Series, Looking Ahead
This article was originally published in Shooting Times magazine in March, 1999.
