Category: COOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Tank holding the sentimental sixgun, S.S. 1.
Storytelling has been around since mankind. It was the original entertainment until fire was discovered. Combining the warmth and glow of fire accentuated storytelling. What could be better? When man learned about fermenting berry juice, things got really cozy. Sitting around the fire, sipping a beverage and hearing stories is still a popular tradition.
No matter how many times a story is told, new details emerge, new listeners hear it for the first time, and older listeners remember the past. Whatever stage of life you’re in, gather around and hear the tale of S.S #1.
S.S. 1, field stripped, revealing its many hidden secrets.
S.S.1 and Skeeter’s gun engraved in the grip frame.
More engraving validating the gun, along with
Bill Grover’s logo of Texas Longhorn Arms.
Raton, New Mexico Territory
The story starts one day this past June. While in the outskirts of Raton, NM, at the NRA Whittington Center, I was enjoying myself with a special group of people originally brought together by John Taffin.
One day, Bobby Tyler approaches me, turning sideways to show me his holster, a Barranti Leather “Hipshot” shuck with the Bar-T stamp carved on it. “Notice anything special?” he asks. I mention the Bar-T stamp, and he says, “No, about the gun?” The gun was an old 3-screw Ruger with Ram stocks. Being holstered, it was all I could tell. Bobby draws the gun, checks it, then hands it to me.
Skeeter’s gun posed on some fine Barranti Leather.
S.S. 1 holstered in a Barranti Leather Hipshot shuck with
cast bullet handloads, a combo not to be overshadowed
by today’s standards.
Who’da Thunk?
It’s a .44 Special conversion, nicely done, but then I noticed something that set me to trembling. Rolling the gun over, I see the serial number on the bottom of the cylinder frame. It’s S.S. 1! Holy cow! Bobby has Skeeter Skelton’s famous #1 gun. I’d read everything about this gun, heard stories about it from Skeeter’s son Bart, but never laid eyes on it, not even pictures of it, and now I am holding it in my hands, dumbfounded.
All I could say was, “How?” Bobby explained he got the gun from Bob Baer’s estate. Bob got it from John Wooters some time ago.
The story starts with Skeeter being in the hospital before he died. Wooters would visit his buddy, showing support and comfort. He came up with the idea of having one last custom conversion built in hopes of cheering his old amigo up.
He got others involved, but Skeeter died before the gun was completed. Wooters decided to have the gun finished anyway. Along the way, other friends wanted a “special” Skeeter gun in honor of the man responsible for Ruger .44 Special conversions.
Bill Grover’s roll marks on the gun. Notice the front sight
has brass soldered on top to enhance sight and has a
“holdover” mark for long-range shooting.
Bob Baer flat-filed the frame, removing sharp corners,
for a Colt-like appearance.
A good shot of the serial number and Keith #5 base pin.
The Start
John Taffin wrote about this event in GUNS magazine, and through his article and John Wooters’ own words, we repeat the cycle. By retelling the amazing, heartwarming story, so others may learn, while some will be reminded of the events.
John starts, “Skeeter passed from us in 1988. Shortly thereafter, in 1989, I did an article on Ruger conversions for our sister publication, American Handgunner. Soon after, I received a letter from our mutual friend, John Wootters, and he related the tale of Skeeter’s last sixgun.”
“Your recent Sixgunner piece about the ‘little Rugers’ inspires me to tell you a tale. The so-called ‘little Ruger’ in .44 Special was the favorite type of sporting pistol cartridge of my late buddy, Skeeter Skelton, who spent much of his terminal illness in a hospital here in Houston.
Together with another friend and single-action expert, Bob Baer, we passed a lot of time plotting the creation of just such a pistol, of which he’d done several only to sell or trade them all away. We even acquired the 3-screw, .357 Mag Blackhawk for raw material. Sadly, Skeeter had to fold his hand before the last race, and the project never went further until recently.
Stone ram stocks from a “deadhead” found by Wooters and Skeeter while on a hunt together. More fitting stocks couldn’t be possible for such an emotional custom build.
The Details
“The gun was re-chambered and re-barreled (4-5/8″, from a slow-twist, proven-accurate .44 Douglas premium blank) by Houston pistolsmith Earl Long. Bill Grover (Texas Longhorn Arms) then took over. He recut the forcing cone to suit himself, put a Colt-style crown on the muzzle, and installed one of the front sights he makes for his Grover’s Improved No. 5 Keith gun.
He also re-chambered the cylinder and adjusted the cylinder gap to less than .002″ (which makes it the tightest Ruger, even customized, I’ve ever seen!), and then hand-fit one of his No. 5 basepins. Finally, he broke the leading edge of the cylinder all around to make it easy on holsters.
“Bob Baer took over from there. He installed a bolt-block and hand-tuned the action… and he is as good at that as any living man. He also performed his trigger magic, producing an exquisite 2-pound let off. Then he flat filed the frame, removing all markings, and rounded off the square corners of the topstrap, sort of ala Colt SAA.
“Many years ago, Skeeter and I shared a hunting trip in northern British Columbia, during which we jointly discovered the skeleton of a mature Stone ram, probably killed in an avalanche.
We slipped the horns, and Skeeter took one and I the other. Later, I traded Chubby Hueske, the custom knife maker of Bellaire, Texas, some of the horn material for his work and skill in flattening and rough-shaping a pair of single-action grip blanks from it. I’ve been saving them for the right gun for 15 years.
“This is the right gun. Baer fitted and shaped the grips to my order, leaving the aluminum XR3-RED grip frame bright-polished, which was the way Skeeter liked them. That sheep horn is spectacular, a beautiful, creamy, smoky gray with subtle striping. Bob says it’s harder than ivory!
Now the gun went back to Grover for marking and polishing. The only markings are ‘.44 SPECIAL’ on top of the barrel, ‘T.L.A., INC. RICHMOND TEXAS’ in two lines on the topstrap, a tiny, stylized longhorn steer head on the right side of the frame (Grover’s logo), and the serial number ‘S.S. 1’ (for Skeeter Skelton), on the underside of the frame. Finally, Grover’s man, Lee, did an inspired job of polishing and bluing.
“The little .44 is a sweetheart, quiet and pleasant to shoot, accurate (naturally, in that chambering), light as a feather, and pretty as a yellow cactus Blossom. It leaps to the hand of its own will and seeks a target with the eagerness of a pointer pup. I will cherish it ’til the day I die, and I may even have it buried with me!
“I think you’d like what I’ve come to call ‘Skeeter’s Gun’. I know Skeeter would have loved it… It’s his kind of sixgun… and mine. It’s also a sort of tribute to an old and dear friend. He comes to mind every time I buckle it on, which is daily when I’m at my ranch on the border. He’d have liked this memorial better than any other kind, I expect. Baer told Sally and young Bart about it, and they agreed; they’re touched.”
This could have been the end of the story; however, Bill Grover, who is now also gone home, had a great idea. This was the first Skeeter Skelton Sixgun, and since Bill was a manufacturer, he could change the serial number to S.S.1. He contacted several of us, and the end result was a few more, six in all, Skeeter Skelton Sixguns.
They went to Bill Grover himself and Bob Baer, Terry Murbach, Bart Skelton, Jim Wilson and me. Mine is numbered S.S. 4. Only the theme of a Skeeter Skelton Sixgun and the S.S. serial numbers are of the same style and sequence, as these sixguns are not identical, as each man incorporated their own ideas into what they wanted their Skeeter Gun to be like.
“All seven of the Skeeter Skelton Sixguns came together in 1992 as we all gathered, including John Wootters, and held a memorial service for Skeeter in the mountains of Colorado, each of us firing off a .44 Special salute to our friend. As I said, although all seven of us have S.S. Sixguns, they are all quite different, revealing the individual taste of the owners.
The “other” men who had Skeeter guns made in their own style. Tank had the honor of handling 4 of the 7 guns and meeting 4 of the 6 men pictured.
A picture of Skeeter before he died, showing signs of his illness.
Revealing Facts
One of the coolest revelations came when Bobby removed the ramshorn stocks. On the one stock panel is a note confirming the story. Written is “Skeeter’s gun for John Wooters by Bob Baer, 1990.”
Also, the grip frame is scratched with “Skeeter’s gun” and “SS1.” Just as stories are passed down from generation to generation, special guns are passed from collector to collector. We don’t own these items; we’re simply keepers of such treasures for the next lucky collector.
Just as guns pass from hand to hand, stories are passed as well. This one sparked from Skeeter and John Wooters’ friendship, was shared by John Taffin, and is now shared by me, adding a few more details and photos for others to marvel over.
I may be getting softer and more sentimental the older I get, but it’s a good feeling learning and sharing stories like these. Up-and-coming sixgunners need to know these stories to emulate, learn and remember the great sixgunners who lived before us, in hopes that the fire never dies out.
Some things aren’t just tools. They’re carried.
The first thing Earl Briggs did every morning was reach for two things: his coffee and his Zippo.
Not his phone. Not the remote. His Zippo.
It was a 1968 classic brushed chrome, worn down to raw brass on the corners where his thumb had worked it ten thousand times. His father brought it back from Vietnam with three words scratched into the bottom panel in uneven letters:
still standing here
Nobody knew if the old man carved it himself or bought it off some kid in a Saigon market. Didn’t matter. It said what it needed to say.
Earl set it on the kitchen table next to his mug every morning the same way some men set out a Bible.
He ran a small gunsmith shop outside of Zanesville, Ohio — the kind of place that didn’t advertise, didn’t need to. Word got around.
A hand-painted sign above the door read:
BRIGGS FIREARMS — REPAIR & CUSTOM WORK
We don’t call 911.
The regulars loved that. Earl had put it up as a joke fifteen years ago and never took it down.
Most days it was trigger jobs, action smoothing, the occasional stock refinish. Sometimes a farmer would come in with a Model 94 that hadn’t been cleaned since Reagan, and Earl would spend a quiet afternoon bringing it back.
He didn’t mind.
His apprentice, a twenty-three-year-old named Danny, noticed the lighter on the bench one afternoon while Earl was fitting a new barrel.
“That thing got a story?”
“Everything worth keeping has a story.”
Danny picked it up. Turned it over. Read the scratched letters on the bottom.
“Your dad’s?”
“Mm.”
“What’d he carry over there?”
“A 1911 and that lighter.” Earl didn’t look up from the vise. “Said the lighter never let him down. Said the same thing about the 1911.”
Danny sparked it. There was that sound first — that sharp, solid snap when the lid swung open, a sound so specific and so clean it belonged to nothing else on earth. Then the wheel, and the flame came to life. The butane fumes drifted across the bench — that smell, faintly sweet, faintly chemical, the kind that lands somewhere between a memory and a warning. Earl caught it without looking up and something in his jaw relaxed, the way it did every time.
“How old is this thing?”
“Fifty-six years older than you.”
Danny set it back down with a little more respect than he’d picked it up with.
On Saturdays, the gun shop turned into more of a clubhouse.
Men came in who weren’t there for gun work, or not only for gun work. They drank Earl’s terrible coffee, argued about loads and legislatures, and solved the world’s problems before noon without anyone taking notes.
That particular Saturday, the talk turned to a bill moving through Columbus.
“They want to make us register everything,” said Hoke, a retired deputy who owned more guns than some departments. “Registration’s just a list they make before they come take ’em.”
Earl listened.
He had opinions — strong ones — but in a room where everyone already agreed, the useful thing was to listen for what wasn’t being said.
What wasn’t being said was this: most of these men weren’t angry.
Not really.
Underneath the politics and the noise, they were protective. Of their families. Of what they’d been handed, and what they intended to pass on.
The guns were real.
But they stood for something else — a simple idea:
I am responsible for my own.
Earl picked up the Zippo. That snap cut through the chatter like a period at the end of a sentence.
He lit the propane torch he used for solder work, and for just a moment, the smell of butane hung in the air over the coffee and the gun oil, familiar, grounding, like the shop itself was exhaling.
When Danny closed up that evening, he found an envelope on the bench with his name on it.
Inside was a Zippo — brand new, still in the box.
On the front, laser-engraved, the Second Amendment.
Below it, scratched in uneven letters:
Now you carry it.
Danny stood in the empty shop for a long moment, reading the engraving in the last light through the front window. Then he opened it — that snap, loud in the quiet — and sparked the wheel.
The flame rose clean and steady. The smell curled up soft and sharp at the same time, the way it always did, the way it always would.
He stood there a moment longer than he needed to.
Then he closed it, slipped it in his pocket, and walked out into the evening.
Most of us have shot a classic .22 plinker but moved on to “bigger” and “better.” However — sometimes — simple pleasures are the best!
Early into my shooting career, some of my absolute favorite moments resulted from cool, calm days where I had all of the time in the world to sling .22 rounds at dime-sized targets — and with little concern about ammo cost or being battered by the forces of recoil!
As I investigated what else the rimfire world had in store for me, I would repeatedly come across articles referencing some of the kings of the category: the Winchester 52 and the Remington 37, for example. Many of these designs were once considered the gold standard of accuracy within 100 yards and my interest was firmly piqued.
Unfortunately, my dreams of owning these legends dissipated once I picked them up. Today, I’m a lot more excited by those rifles that, to me, represent a golden mean between raw accuracy and ease of use. Indulge me and I’ll tell you what I think makes for a perfect “offhand plinker.”
The Walther KKJ is an exceptionally well-made “sporter” rimfire rifle. If you can see it with the naked eye, you’ll hit it with this.
“Seeable” reactive targets don’t much care for minor point-of-impact shifts. A rifle with a pencil barrel can zap them, hot or cold.
Two Ends Of The Spectrum
On one hand, we’ve always been awash with lightweight, affordable rifles and many of them have been of extraordinarily high quality. I learned recently that Ruger has produced more than 5 million of its famous 10/22 rifles. I would reason that within a half-hour drive of your current location, you can find a gun store with a 10/22, new or used, currently sitting on the shelf.
It’s no mystery why the rifles are beloved. The 10/22 is easily shouldered and aimed. It is robust and reliable, and tolerant of a wide variety of ammunition. When I was in my late teens, I had fired a gun before. However, the groups I coaxed out of a 10/22 got me to think about shooting differently. “Maybe I have some talent for this,” I told myself.
Additionally, America’s used gun market is awash with a number of .22LR rifles intended as either entry-level tools for pest control or “boy’s” or “youth” rifles that would serve as a child’s first introduction to marksmanship without mom or dad having to break the bank. The Winchester 67, Remington 514, and Stevens 15 are all prototypical examples of the type. In general, they are light, easily operated and despite their humble origins and no-frills materials, they tend to shoot surprisingly well!
Still, spend some time with them and their limitations come into focus. Most have very simple folded metal or “buckhorn” sights, thin barrels prone to heating up quickly and stiff triggers. Budget price points often necessitated budget materials so expect beechwood or plastic stocks, along with stamped steel construction of various small parts.
The Winchester 69 has Clayton’s vote for offering
buyers the most usable accuracy for the least spend.
The Bergara BMR — Its light weight makes for a rifle that can still be comfortably shot offhand even with a mounted scope.
Winchester 63 with a period-correct Weaver low-magnification scope. Light and simple is often best!
Winchester’s vaunted Model 52 is of the perennial kings of rimfire accuracy and craftsmanship, it’s also a boat anchor!
The Other End
As one moves from “budget” to “premium” in the rimfire rifle category, the upgrades are obvious. At the upper tier of the quality spectrum, buyers can expect to find longer, thicker barrels that aid accuracy. A 26″ tent-pole of a barrel not only offers more runway for the powder of a rimfire cartridge to fully and completely burn, but it gives open sight users more distance to ensure perfect alignment between the front and rear units.
The barrel thickness also ensures it heats and cools in a more uniform manner, which reduces any temperature-based point of impact shifts.
Along with those long, gorgeous barrels and hand-fit actions, you’ll also usually find very generous and beautiful walnut furniture, often with metal fixtures for the buttstock, sling attachments and other accoutrements. One look at these guns and you’ll immediately be transported back to an era where no cost was spared to provide the rimfire shooter with the best accuracy the day’s engineering and experience could allow.
The trade-offs, however, are size and weight. Most of the .22s you’ll find in rimfire competitions tend to be big. Extra mass provides more stability and precision, but makes it a rifle much harder to heft and shoot offhand. It’s not to say one can’t do so but those interested in the attempt normally have specialized shooting jackets dedicated to such a purpose.
The same goes for adding one of the most common and historic tools for improving one’s group: the scope. As my military buddies like to say, “Ounces make pounds.” Where rimfire rifles are concerned, I’ve found a 24-oz. scope moves offhand shooting on a big, wood-stocked rifle from the realm of “challenging” to “impromptu strength training.” Show me a guy who can heft a scoped Winchester 52D and shoot a great group offhand, and I’ll show you a guy who looks like Hulk Hogan.
Above, the Ruger 10/22 is well-represented in America’s gun stores, and for good reason.
The Middle Path
For the rest of us, many of the design specs and equipment choices maximizing mechanical precision come at the expense of practical accuracy. In simpler terms: Bring the scope to eye level, and your arms will almost instantly begin to feel like wet noodles and the reticle will wobble all over the place. To quote the old infomercials: There has to be a better way!
Indeed, there is no shortage of rimfire rifles which got an extra degree of TLC from the maker over the budget model yet weren’t fully optimized for bench work. The Winchester 69 remains perhaps my favorite rifle of all time. Yes, the trigger guard is stamped steel and the trigger pull isn’t astoundingly light, but the gun is like a laser in my hands. Within 75 yards, if I can see it, I can hit it. Of course, beyond that I probably can’t see it!
I also have a tremendous affinity for a number of quality pump-action rifles. Often, models like the Remington 12, Winchester 62 and Browning Trombone exhibit very high quality workmanship, are fast into action, and shucking rounds in and out of these platforms is a joy.
Still, I’m not picky. Just about any mag or tube-fed rifle with a thinner barrel, decent wood and a good set of aperture sights has my eye. To this latter point, I find “peep” sights allow for tremendous practical accuracy without the weight of a scope and mounts, yet they also eschew the alignment imprecision that often goes hand-in-hand with buckhorns or folded steel sights.
One key to finding a great offhand plinker is to look for the phrase “sporter.” Through the generations, the term has defined guns designed to be used afield — i.e., picked up and shot. Winchester made its storied 52 in a “sporter” configuration (a gun perpetually on my “one day” list), and Browning still makes its excellent T-bolt rifle as a sporter.
The wood-stocked version of Springfield’s new 2020 Waypoint rimfire rifle also comes with an accuracy guarantee and a stated weight of 6 lbs., 3 oz. Truly, a “best of both worlds” deal.
Elsewhere, composite materials help to keep the weight down. I purchased my Bergara BMR not only because of the Spanish gunmaker’s well-established reputation but because it was light enough for me to heft even with a scope included.
With a user-adjustable trigger — currently set at 2.5 lbs. exactly — and capable of eye-popping groups from the bench, I don’t feel like I’m giving up much to the walnut-stocked, bull-barreled monsters of yore.
Many sporter-weight rimfire rifles feature simple sights often challenging to aging eyes, but (right) the aperture sight is a godsend on a small-caliber rifle, enabling high precision with hardly any additional weight.
Freedom of Choice
Our own Massad Ayoob recently wrote he didn’t like the finger grooves on the third-generation GLOCKs because he didn’t like a gun telling him how he needed to shoot it. The same goes for me with the weight of many .22 rifles — a gun telling me it needs to live on the bench isn’t usually one that’s fun for me to work with.
Sure, the long guns I’ve gravitated to might very well give up some accuracy at the 50-yard line and beyond. I don’t know how many dudes are winning rimfire matches with clapped out “department store” rifle. Regardless, there have been countless golf balls, shotgun shells, playing cards and wood chips obliterated by my ugly, dinged-up .22 and the slight impact shift between a hot and cold barrel doesn’t normally matter on targets I don’t need magnification to see.
Ironically, the older I get, the more time I seem to spend with designs historically positioned as youth rifles. That is, they’re lithe, simple and inexpensive. To me, the feats of marksmanship putting a smile on my face are those coming as a result of me using my own two eyes and hands to zap something just at the threshold of my vision. Almost always, I’m going to reach for a .22 rifle to scratch the itch.
If it’s been some time since you’ve gotten away from the bench rest, or if you’re the kind of shooter who has regarded any sort of .22 as a novelty, here’s your invitation — buy a svelte, light rimfire rifle. It probably won’t cost you very much and I bet you’ll immediately rediscover just how fun offhand shooting can be.