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Some people have recently asked some questions about this Ruger Red Label conversion so I thought I would add a couple of remarks and bring it back up to the top. Some folks out there seem to doubt the strength of the Ruger action, but I can tell you for sure that it is plenty strong enough. Tom Ondrus had one of the original Rugers in 45-70 that was built by Dietrich Apel. Apel worked with Bill Ruger when they first brought out the Red Label and Bill was going to make the 45-70 a Ruger two barrel option right from the beginning.

Tom told me that they made up 12 to 15 of them in 45-70 and one in 300 H. & H. Dietrich said he would not do another one in 300 H. & H., not because the gun wouldn't stand the recoil, but because it was so hard to get it regulated. The project finally was called off by Bill Ruger himself because it was said that they couldn't get them to regulate well enough to suit Bill.

I personally think that another reason is the fact that regulating these guns is very time and labor intensive, and that by the time the guns were finished, there may not have been the profit margin needed to cover the expense. Bill Ruger was a gun designing genious. He had the habit of forcasting what would sell well to the American public before other gun companies could think of them. People constantly told him that the models he planned to bring out next, would not sell at that time. He was way ahead of the curve on several things. This one proves that he brought up the idea of a combination 20 gauge over and under combined with a set of double rifle barrels. The problem was that on this one, he was just too early for the public to be interested in them yet

I have seen pictures of one of the original Ruger 45/70's. Tom Ondrus had it for sale and offered it to me, but at the time we converted this one, I had not seen it. I didn't even know that Bill Ruger himself, had authorised the building of them. Ironically, this gun was built in conjusctiopn with the ideas of the present owner, and between us we decided to keep the gun as close as possible to the original 20 gauge. The barrels were turned to the same diameter as the 20 gauge barrels, up to the front of the forend wood. That way the forend could be reused and the spacers would still fit.

Then I turned them down to the rifle diameter at the muzzles and blended them together to get the current profile. After getting the spacers back on it, and the top rib fitted, the gun looks just like one of the Ruger original rifles. Aside from building up the ejectors, the only new parts used were the barrels, the top rib, the swivels, and the sights. The donor gun for this project was a Red Label that someone had tried to put screw in choke tubes into, and had drilled out the sides of the barrels, ruining the factory chokes. The owner of this gun uses it to hunt wild hogs and deer down in Florida, very successfully, I might add.