Rossi Rifleman

Morning, just bought a Rossi 92 Puma in 44mag. S/n is M008532. Looking for year of manufacture or close to it. It has no safety other than the half cocked. Great looking gun that I don't think was shot very much. Any insight on the gun would be appericiated.

Only "insight" I can offer is ENJOY that s.o.b.! And learn to reload for it! Even though current "situations" kinda preclude that....

There seems to be no data as to ROM on the pre-Braztech Rossi's. Some of the parts are marked with a Julian date but beyond that there is little or nothing and current Rossi wont help.

From what I read the Pumas were well built and pretty decent shooters. Enjoy and welcome to the party.

Make smoke,

Not all pre-safety originals are Pumas. Mine's not. We have found no correlation to DOB in the serial numbers. My 20" blued SRC92 in .357 has 1987 dates on the parts.

Im one of the least experienced guys here but on my own experience trying to figure a Rossis provenance is not always easy. I started a thread for my old one and the first thing is accessing the Rossi seriel number site which I think is only the most recent guns. Mine was older so then it was trying to figure things out off internal stamps and general configuration for a date range. From memory, mine being a stainless 357 octagonal with no safety and stamped um...( I cant even remember what is was stamped sorry) it was somewhat of a rarity so I got lucky with that. After a threads worth of discussion a couple of the heavyweights here and I think Gas Guzzler above was one, pinned it to a date around 2000. Thats an example of what you might be in for figuring it out.

I'll try find my old thread in case any of it is useful to you.

This is my thread on rossi dates. But just realised I had a thread going on another forum about it at the time and was combining info on it. I think Steve from Steve gunz helped as well.

https://www.rossi-rifleman.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=6559

Thanks for the info. I will be reloading for it. It does have the Puma medallion on the receiver. Can't wait to shoot it!

One more question, Can I shoot .44 specials or should I just load light Magnums?

pogo57 wrote:One more question, Can I shoot .44 specials or should I just load light Magnums?

Up to you, I personally load light in magnum cases but I don't like ring around the chamber. You'll need to determine if the Specials will cycle. Some of these guns are sensitive to OAL.

Make smoke,

I’ve put a lot of 44 Spl through mine (including SWCs) without any problems. Doesn’t mean you won’t have any, but it’s worth a try. There seems to be a lot more complaints on this forum about the 38/357, but that could just reflect the population.