About Me: A certified yet non-professional gunsmith learning the trade through trail and inspiration

Tuesday, July 30, 2024

Ruger Vaquerito Upgrades

I performed some upgrades to my .45 Vaquero and my .357 Bird's head Vaquero and now I am going to perform some similar upgrades to my .32 Single Six Vaquerito.

 Here is what the gun looked like when I got it:

This the .32 H&R Magnum Single Six Vaquerito (see my write up on Ruger's Vaquerito here). This gun was made in 2006. It has the color case finish with the birds head grip and a 4 5/8" barrel. What really makes the gun unique is that it uses the .22 Single Six frame, with a barrel & cylinder bored out to 32 caliber, the frame is a rounded with fixed sights, just like the Vaquero, only smaller.



My plans include:
  • Nitre blue the trigger & hammer pins
  • Add a dimple to the factory ejector rod button and nitre blue it.
  • Perform an action job on the internals.


I had a friend of mine help me modify a couple of factory ejector rods by adding a dimple to the center, like the original Blackhawks came. I'll polish them and nitre blue them.

 For those that don't know, nitre bluing is a type of heat bluing, getting the metal to the right temp in which the metal turns an "electric" or "peacock" blue.



It is surprising difficult to capture the color with a camera, you need lots of natural light......keeping the camera in focus helps too....



Here is a good picture of the ejector.


I could not find the photos of the trigger/action job, I am sure I took them, but I must have forgotten to take them off my old phone.
It was the same as I did on my Vaquero