Firearm Factory of the Month: Sturm, Ruger & Company

This month we take a look at Sturm, Ruger & Company

We start the story with the man whose dream was to build affordable guns with quality that surpassed more expensive arms.

William Batterman Ruger was born on June 21, 1916 in in the Flat Bush area of Brooklyn, New York. As a young boy he would trek to the public library to read every book he could find on firearms. He and his friend would shoot .22 rifles in his friend's basement and even ordered a surplus rifle to shoot in the woods.

On his 12th birthday his father gave him a Remington model 12. 

In high school he joined the Alexander Hamilton High School Rifle team and was one of the best shooters.

At the age of 20 he enrolled at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Two years later (1938) he dropped out of school, got married and began working at a gun shop in Hartford.

A short time after his son was born, Ruger received a job offer from The Springfield Armory (the government armory). He worked at the armory for a few years then left to design a machine gun on his own.

When his machine gun was "ready for prime time", he began shopping for a buyer. This led to a job offer from Smith & Wesson (also in Springfield, MA). He turned it down, but did accept an offer from Auto-Ordnance, makers of the Thompson Sub-Machine Gun. 

The year was 1940, war was raging in Europe and there was a need to replace the aging Browning designed machine guns. Despite being of the age to serve, Ruger spent the war working on gun designs, including a design for a .22 autoloading pistol.

In the letter below, dated November 1st, 1945, he is asking for patent attorneys in Boston to look at his design and file a patent application.

photo courtesy of Don Findley of the Ruger Owners and Collectors Society

In 1946 Ruger started the Ruger Corporation with partner McMillan Clements to make carpenter tools, one of which is the hand drill pictured below. You will notice the similarity in the design of the hand drill and the Ruger Standard Pistol. Although they were making tools, Ruger had hoped that this venture could launch his gun company. 

It was not uncommon during the late 19th century for tool and die makers to become arms makers. 

Ruger had created the prototype for what would become the Ruger Standard Pistol while designing/building these hand tools.

In 1949 the Ruger Corporation goes bankrupt, that same year Bill Ruger meets an interesting character named Alexander McCormick Sturm. It turned out that Alex and Bill had lots in common, including a love of firearms. After showing Sturm the prototype, he had built, Sturm agreed to partner up on a new venture to make .22 pistols based on Ruger's prototype, but that is not the whole story.

There was a third party. A mister Norwick R.G. Goodpseed. Goodspeed was a friend and attorney to the Sturm family. Alexander showed Goodspeed the pistol and asked for his opinion, asking the question: should he invest the money or walk away.

Goodspeed looked the pistol over and met with Ruger before giving his blessing to the investment.

It is hard to say if Ruger would have gotten his gun company off the ground without Sturm's help, but the story would be much different had it not been for Goodspeed's confidence in Bill Ruger.

Alex Sturm provided $50,000 seed money to start Sturm, Ruger & Co. (about $500,000 in today's money). Rumor has it the money was actually from Sturm's wife, Paulina, who happened to be the granddaughter of former President Theodore Roosevelt. 

Alexander "Sandy" Sturm was a Yale graduate, an accomplished artist and author. He was a bit eccentric and being a gun collector was excited about the possibility of being partner in a gun company.

When queried many people in the industry scoffed at the idea of starting a gun manufacturing business with such a small amount of money. 
By way of comparison, H&R firearms started their gun business in 1871 with $75,000 (worth about $151,000 in 1949, three times the amount Bill and Alex had to work with).

Other "experts" told Bill Ruger and others that the market for .22 semi-auto pistol was already saturated with three big gun makers (High Standard, Colt and Smith & Wesson). 

Undaunted they purchased the assets of the failed Ruger Corporation and went to work in the same red barn, using some of the same tooling that the hand drills were created on.

one of the most famous pictures of Strum & Ruger together, at the Red Barn giving a tour to the Ambassador from Brazil, in 1950

Bill Ruger suggested that Alex use his talents to create a company logo, font and letterhead. Using his knowledge of heraldry, he created the eagle logo and stylized "S R". 

The font was borrowed from (or at least inspired by) Giambattista Bodoni, an 18th century Italian typographer (printer). 

 

The factory was this little red "barn" at 75 Station Street Southport, Connecticut

The old red "barn" has been used in company literature and marketing pieces over the years.

In 1951 a new model was added. The Ruger Mark I pistol, it was the Standard pistol with the adjustable sights and a longer barrel option 6").

In the fall of 1951 Bill Ruger went hunting in Canada, when he returned, he found his partner had been hospitalized with viral hepatitis. Alexander Sturm died ten days later on November 16th. He was just 28 years old.
After his death Bill Ruger ordered the red eagle logo changed to black to signify the mourning of his business partner. With few exceptions the eagle remained black until 1999 when the 50th Anniversary model was released.
The Sturm family remained partners in the business, trusting Ruger to run the company. 

During the early 50's Ruger had been working on a single action revolver design. Ruger saw a void in the market when Colt quit producing their Single Action Army in 1941. The Ruger Single Six was introduced in 1953. It was chambered in .22 Long Rifle (and later .22 Magnum) and was 2/3s the size of a Single Action Army. 

Two years later they announced a full-size version named the Blackhawk, a tribute to the logo, that is now black, created by Strum (also an homage to one of Bill's favorite automobiles: The Stutz Blackhawk). 
The following year Ruger beat Smith & Wesson by marketing a .44 Magnum revolver before S&W could get their's built. Ruger simply opened up the cylinders and re-barreled his .357 Blackhawk

In 1958 Ruger introduced a compact single action, styled after the 1858 Remington New Police.

They now had a trio of single action revolvers for the American Sportsman.....Ruger next targeted the long gun market.

 
By the late '50's the production capacity of the red barn had reached its limit. Ruger built a new state of the art facility on Lacey Place about 3/4 of a mile from the red barn

The move occurred over the Christmas Holidays in 1958, the ad below showed the new facility

In 1959 Ruger introduced a larger .44 Magnum Blackhawk, called the Super Blackhawk. The grip frame styled after the Colt model of 1847 "Walker" revolver.

In 1960 Ruger introduced one of the best brush hunting guns ever developed. It was a carbine, chambered in .44 Magnum, a "perfect companion to the 44 Blackhawk". Bill used it on safari in Uganda, the Warthog below was taken with it.

Bill Ruger inspecting a carbine at the Lacey Place factory
 photo courtesy of Tactical Life

In 1963 A single shot version of the Blackhawk was introduced. Called the "Hawkeye", it was chambered in .256 Winchester Magnum.

In 1963 Bill Ruger began a program of bringing the subcontracted work in house. Up to this point some of the machine work, stamping and casting had been done by others.
A new factory was built in Newport, NH to manufacture rifles and next to it (across the river) a casting plant.
Bill created the casting company, Pine Tree Casting, to be a separate endeavor that could seek work from other gun makers and manufacturers of metal parts in which casting could be a time and money saver. Pine Tree Casting made frames for many gun makers and even made the heads for golf clubs.

Not willing to rest after creating the 44 Carbine. In 1964 Ruger introduced its little brother: the 10/22 Carbine and the world of .22 rifles has not been the same since. See my write up on this model here.

More long guns followed. 1967 saw the introduction of one of Ruger's favorite guns, the Ruger Number 1. It was a falling block rifle styled after the Farquharson.

The following year Ruger introduced a bolt action rifle. Using the action of the Mauser '98, Ruger refined the gun into a rugged, yet beautiful hunting weapon. Ruger named it the model 77, this was in reference to the competitors it sought to displace. The Remington model 700 and Winchester model 70.

In 1969 Ruger went public. This was probably to raise money for new ventures and also to build brand awareness. Ruger had set his sights on the law enforcement market, a market owned by Smith & Wesson and to a lesser extent Colt.
In 1971 Ruger introduced a new line of double action revolvers. They were similar in size and style to the Smith & Wesson K-frame models, with some huge advancements. One of which was that the disassembly required nothing more than a penny or a dime. See my blog post on this model series here.

That same year Ruger began building its rifle stocks in house at a new building in its Newport, NH complex.

In 1975, another move was made to get more of the law enforcement market when Ruger introduced the Mini-14 rifle. A smaller version of the M-14 chambered in .223 Remington. I authored a blog post on this model, see it here.

In 1977 Ruger got into the shotgun market with the introduction of the Ruger Red Label over-under shotgun.

In 1985 Ruger, again chasing military and law enforcement contracts began work on a 9mm pistol, see my write up on that story here.

In 1989 Ruger built a new 200,000 sq ft factory in Prescott, AZ

In 1991 Ruger ended all firearms production at the Lacey Place factory.

This is where we will end the story, there have been many more milestones and models introduced since 1991.


What remains.

In the year 2000 Bill Ruger officially retires, he was 84 years old.

On Saturday morning July the 6th, 2002 Bill Ruger passed away, just three weeks after his 86th birthday.
He had outlived his partner Strum (who was 7 years his junior) by more than 50 years. The company still bears Sturm's name.

The old red barn at 75 Station Street in Southport still stands, it was rebuilt a few years back

during the remodeling workers found empty brass casings in the window sills.

Here is what it looks like today

The Lacey Place factory is also still standing, it is still used as the Corporate Headquarters for what is now the largest and most profitable gun company in the history of America.

Sources
CT Post

Funding Universe
Tactical Life

 

Wilson, R.L., (2007), Ruger & His Guns, New York, NY: Chartwell Books, Inc.  

Lee, Jerry, (2014), The Standard Catalog of Ruger Firearms, Iola, WI: Gun Digest Books.