[Sport45]

I remembered something about Ruger having problems with barrels breaking due to the thread lubricant used in initial assembly. Found this on Wikipedia. Send it to Ruger and they should make it good.

Originally Posted by On Wikipedia

Problems with the Redhawk
When Ruger started to scale up the GP-100 to build a .44 Magnum version, they began to have reports of failures in the Redhawk revolvers. Some Redhawks were reported to be separating at the junction between barrel and frame. It was not known at the time why this was happening; the Redhawk had been on the market for years with no reported problems, but Ruger decided to address the issue anyway, by extending the frame 2.5 inches past the cylinder face, all the way to the end of the ejector rod, to provide a massive surface into which to thread the barrel. The extended frame also provided enough length to allow scope bases to be mounted on the frame, rather than on the barrel as was done on the scoped versions of the Redhawk. It was eventually determined that the barrel separations on the Redhawks were due to a change in the lubricant used when attaching the barrels to the frames, but by that time the new Super Redhawk design was already well underway and the extended frame was kept.