doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Anything wrong with Ruger Gold Labels?

Nothing wrong with them if they're used as intended, good hunting weapon and an excellent balanced round body gun for the sportsman.
My beef with them is that they diverted valuable resources away from the Red Label projects. Projects that would trim it down, upgrade the fit and finish and provide a custom shop to order them according to customer's specifications.
Now Ruger has suspended the Gold Label and may not continue with it and we still have the same basic Red label a real waste of time and effort!!!

Howdy Postoak,

I would like to reserve my place in line to shoot your special 16 that you have signed up for. I'll let you shoot my RGL in return.

My sons and I ran into Brent and Mike at EF last Saturday. We looked for you, but you must have been somewhere else. Look forward to seeing you next time.

Happy trails,

HHH

HHH - that is a deal - should be delivered in about 4 months - in gun time that is a year I think.

I handled them and looked at them at the Grand American at the Ruger booth for two or three years. I didn't think they looked that bad and I thought they looked and felt like pretty decent guns for the money. But I believe they were a hit and miss item as far as dependency was concerned. You either got a good one or a bad one-were the complaints from the people who bought and commented on them. Some said theirs was unfixable. As I said, I remember one person saying that Ruger ended up sending him a Red Label because he had it break so many times and Ruger couldn't fix it. Oh well.

How a gun balances is pretty much like how a gun fits: different shooters have different needs/preferences. But if you locate the balance point on your GL, you will find that it is a good bit farther forward than is typical on sxs game guns. You can see, in the receiver, where Ruger removed metal to save weight. While they accomplished that goal, the end result was a gun with more of a weight forward or barrel heavy bias than is typical. That's neither good nor bad, just depends on a shooter's preferences--but it is a fact.

I like mine. Paid $1800 plus tax (new) at a local shop just about the day they got it (ES, SG). The fore end didn't fit quite right and the turn around time was about 48 hours. No other problems that I can find. Wood is nice, if not fancy. I had a recoil pad added to reach my dimensions and I'm pretty happy with it. It may be the only thing I have ever purchased that seems to be worth more than I paid for it (sadly, including the other kind of "stocks").

Ruger developed a new process for soldering the barrels on the Gold Label. The barrels were placed in a jig & hot air is piped through the barrels to melt the solder. Then the flow is changed to cool air to cool the barrels. I would think the jig would align the barrels to that point of impact would be almost guaranteed. My GL is aligned properly.

The engineers at Ruger are no dummies & they would not develop a process that would give a large percentage of unusable barrels. The Gold Label is a production gun, made to sell for a lower price (with Briley chokes!). The receiver is investment cast with CNC machining & I'd be the stocks are CNC inletted so close that little hand fitting is needed. That is just state of the art production methods. Go ahead & demand traditional machining from forgings, but wasn't that the business model of Ithaca Classic Doubles (3-5 times the price & out of business).

From the beginning, I think it was clear the Gold Label was almost a special project for Ruger & that the production would not be high. When you see something like that, it's a sure bet that in 10 yrs, collectors will drive the price out of sight.

With the Gold Label keep your choke tubes clean & be careful screwing them in.
Regards, Ron

Ruger also used some parts from the 28ga Red Label, if I recall correctly. Nothing wrong with that, as long as it works.

I would not be too quick to bet the farm on the Gold Label being highly sought-after by collectors. More of them made, I think, than Winchester Model 22's (short-lived sxs made for them in Spain). Now there's a gun that says "Winchester" on it, which normally drives prices up, but although I haven't seen more than a couple Model 22's, I don't recall a price that would indicate very much collector interest--and that's a gun on which production ceased over 30 years ago.

I don't recall reading or writing a word about the percentage of barrels with problems. What the writer observed and wrote is that some barrels weren't right, and it would cost more to rework them than to make another set. He saw barrels that were being scrapped, and people at Ruger told him what that was about. There was no implication of any dummies being involved.

My hunting partner has an RGL and likes it and shoots it well. No problems at all. Somewhat weight forward as Larry sez. A 3 inch chamber on that gun is really stupid, but hey it was made by a corporation.

I bet no one ever sees a twice barrel shootgun of equal quality made in the USA for $2k. Ever again.

It may not be everyone's cuppa tea and I think the safety and barrel selector is really dumb, but as I said, you will never see the like again at that price point.

JMHO.

Quailnut