Lipsey's had a run of these made. http://www.lipseys.com/itemdetail.aspx?itemno=RUGP4451 I manfully resisted temptation for almost a full day before I ordered one. My LGS charged me $650, before state tax. Here's what I can tell you about mine:
Cylinder throats will all take a 0.431 pin gauge, none will take a 0.432 gauge.
With my set of cheap feeler gauges, Barrel-cylinder gap is more than 0.002", less than 0.0035", call it 0.003".
I can't feel any thread choke with a tight patch on a cleaning rod.
The smooth wood stocks are nice looking, but they sure are slippery.
You can see a little daylight between the front sight and the barrel, but it's not an obnoxious amount.
I had a couple of hours of daylight left when I was done measuring, so I headed to the local shooting spot and set up some paper plates at 25 yards. I had two batches of "Skeeter" loads, with the RCBS 44-250-Keith (262 grains in my alloy) sized .430 over some stout charges of Universal Clays and Unique. Yeah, I know they should be sized .432 for this Ruger, but that was what I had loaded and sitting on the shelf.
First shots hit a foot and a half high. Uh-oh. Cranked the rear sight all the way down, and the Skeeter loads still hit 4" above point of aim for me. Did I mention the stocks were slippery? Turned out they don't fit my hand too well, either.
After 50 rounds or so I had a touch of leading close to the forcing cone, about what I expect from bullets cast a little hard and a touch undersized.
Here's the part where I get to tell a tall tale about the accuracy of the Ruger, either good or bad. Sorry, between the slippery stocks and my lack of practice I can only tell you it seems to be more than adequate, but promising groups were always marred by me yanking the trigger when the gun was pointed someplace other than it should have been.
I sent an email off to Ruger, asking about getting a taller front sight. They sent me a service tag number for a new rear sight blade. We'll see how that works out.
I ordered a set of Pachmayr "Diamond Pro" rubber grips online. They arrived and I put them on tonight. They're a version of the Pachmayr "Grippers" I have on all my other revolvers. Maybe they'll be enough to pull the point of impact down where I want it.
Right now, I'm real happy to have another .44 Special in the stable. I'm hoping with a little more work I'll be extra happy about this one.