In about 1989, Ruger continued their tradition of releasing sturdy, well
built revolvers onto the American market. The SP101 was a snub nosed 5
shot revolver, with either a three inch, or two and a half inch barrel.
The revolver was chambered in 38Special, and was listed as being safe
with "+P" loads.
I bought one on a whim, I wanted something I could toss in a coat
pocket when walking in the desert (I lived in southern california at the
time, and spent a lot of time in the Mojave desert) Something for
plinking, that would also do for snake in the event I needed to.
Since then, I haven't put more than maybe 1000 rounds through the
little revolver, most of them light target loads. The sights are crude,
and although the pistol is quite capable of decent accuracy, it's hard,
at least for me, to maintain good groups past about 15M.
The gun is sturdy, being stainless, it's easy to maintain. You can tear
the revolver down with nothing more than a dime to unscrew the grip
screw. Everything else comes apart with no tools. It's about the easies
revolver to detail strip I have ever seen. The design is very modern, it
doesn't look like another warmed over Smith and Wesson, but the trigger
isn't quite as nice as a well setup Smith and Wesson's either.
Recoil can get a bit stiff with hot loads, the relatively light weight
of the gun goes against it there, but it's not too bad, (it's not too
light for one thing) and the grips are well designed and fit my hand
well. Reliability has been excellent, with no failures or breakage at
all in the years I have owned and shot the gun. It's a bit bulky
compared to some of the smaller 5 shot snubbies, but not too bad. Like
many snubbies, the ejector rod is short enough that it takes a good
solid stroke to eject the empties reliably. For a pocket gun, I would
wish that the hammer had no spur, and the revolver was double action
only, this is a modification that a competent smith can make, and Ruger
has the parts needed to make it. In fact, I believe that was an option
in the year after I purchased mine.
Last modified on
Fri Mar 12 01:12:29 PST 2004