Very nice! I hope these catch on enough for someone to make speedloaders for them.
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I just saw this thread, so I'll add some comments as a 7 shot GP100 owner who hangs around the Ruger DA Revolver forum. I've had one of the early ones for over a year now. It has the rim fussiness that you refer to. Ruger cut things a little too fine when they spaced the chambers in the cylinder. The SAAMI specs for .357 case rims are: minimum .430; maximum .440. The top half of the range, .436 to .440, won't work in the early 7 shots. There's not enough space for the rims, and if you force them into place, they wedge and you have to pound the extractor rod to get them out, even without firing. Rims under .435 are trouble free. I've kept my gun because I don't have a problem with only feeding it cases that work. However, many buyers wanted to be able to go in a store and buy whatever ammo was cheapest/available without worrying if it would fit in their gun. A lot of them called customer service, and ended up swapping their 7 shot for a 6 shot. Ruger apparently tried a couple tweaks last year that didn't work. In December, a Ruger forum poster said he was told by a Ruger rep that the new production guns would be fixed. Since then there have been roughly half a dozen posters who report buying new production 7 shots with no rim problems. Not a large enough sample size to be dogmatic, but enough to cause optimism. Two buyers posted measurements of the new cylinders, and it appears Ruger slightly increased the outside cylinder diameter, and moved the chambers slightly outward in the cylinder to gain rim space.
Speedloaders - HKS model 687 has been on the market for years for the S&W and Taurus 7 shots. I've been using it for over a year in my early 7 shot GP100, and it works perfectly. In fact, because the chambers are closer together, it works slicker than any of my 6 shot speedloaders.
The grips are nifty. I assume they'll fit on any GP.
I think they'd look really nice on my 3" 44 SPL.
They did the same with the Bisley Flattop 44spl's and many of the other Lipsey's specials that began as small runs and became cataloged items. Ruger will continue to make anything that sells--and that's a good thing. I prefer a company that exists to serve shooters rather than collectors. One thing I have noticed, however, the guns that are initially made as limited runs tend--and it is only a tendency--to exhibit higher fit and finish than the same guns made when the model becomes a standard cataloged item. So there still may be some incentive to get in on the ground floor of these "limited" runs.