single six help!

[rugerguy]

watertender, it would behoove you to actually measure the thickness of the cylinder frame, so see if it was in fact "polished out" any and all rollmarks or serial numbers removed, we have seen this done, in fact by some gunsmiths,or shops in a salvage or saving a gun from badly rusted ( I know we had to do this at one time on some guns that had been stolen, and much later recovered from the Grand River in Painesville,Ohio, and yes our shop "saved" them took LOTS of material off in places where it could come off with no harm to the integrity ( strength)of the surrounding area, such as on the sides of the receiver or the barrel even...heck folks remove the "warnings' off Rugers ever since they started to rollmark them

[Watertender]

Rugerguy I was being sarcastic in saying they were polished a little too much. A lot of guns have had the Dremel treatment where the serial number used to be. A friend of mine was on a large suburban police department for 36 years & had an idiot detective he was working with use a carbide scribe to scratch his initials into the barrel of a Colt SA Presentation Model that had been stolen from a gun collector.... This turned a $7500 piece into something worth 1/10th it's original value. When the owner saw those initials carved on his prized Colt he went off bigtime... The detective said he did it to be able to identify the evidence in court..... In the words of Homer Simpson.... "D'oh"!!

[Hawkeye28]

It remains my perception that those who do such "inscribing" should be served equal portions of tar, turpentine, and splintered rail, on their way out of town............

[rugerguy]

I wasn't at all, I simply said to measure the thickness as I have seen many "restorations" that the receiver was milled down and looked like NOTHING was ever there.......material has to be removed to do this, and thats why one "needs" to measure, if its FULL size, and within plus or minus .002 " then there was nothing ever there...simple, quick ,easy check. YES, obviously when someone takes a grinder or a file to any surface and does a "bubba' job it stands out, and if its in ,on or around the SERIAL numbers, OH-oh..........walk away..........
Back to the thickness, look at some of the custom guns put out there, and they "restamp" their logo or caliber change, they had to remove material first, before 're-marking" or even leaving it 'blank'............

[Watertender]

Hi Rugerguy I know that material can be removed by many means when working on a piece of metal & when properly done the only way to tell is by measuring it. I work in .001" fine increments a lot of the time to set tolerances on blowers & pumps. When something weighing close to a ton is spinning at 3400rpm you have to be pretty close or there can be real problems. Engraving & tattooing are something that can ruin the object being decorated or desecrated depending on the wielder of the tool doing the work. Anything with a serial number that has been removed is something to run from as you said. As far as I know anything that Ruger ever made has had a serial number. Removing the idiot declaration on a Ruger does improve the look for sure. You can't make someone smart by a warning label if they fail to follow basic safety rules. Until the GCA of 1968 there were many cheaper models of firearm with no number on them. Large retailers sold them by the carload. Now I don't think anyplace sells their own house brand like years ago.