The first (and only)  one I purchased did have issues.  After one or two shots the revolver would 'lock up' the cylinder would no longer rotate no could I pull the hammer back.  Sent it back to them and they made the necessary adjustments to get it running again.  Thing is I never trusted it after that and promptly sold it.  For me, I avoid them - but your milage may very.

If S&W could'nt satisfy you, you WILL NOT like a Taurus.  They make a nice product for the price, but they're not world class.
I would suggest Korth.

I have seen good ones and I have seen bad ones...the bad ones I saw were of 1980's manufacture...

some of the triggers feel like they were polished with 80 grit sand paper

I had one in the 80's.  It was good quality..
I believe it was a 686...
I shot thousands of rounds and the timing was off I believe..
I splattered someone with lead beside me at the shooting range..

Surpringly I did a major 2 week research project on Taurus just recently.  Had a friends revolver ND on him when it shouldn't have.  Turns out arrows point to an energy transferance issue or shitty ammunition.  He claims it was most likely his fault in the face of evidence, but the circumstances revolving around it are weird.  But this is what I turned up.

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RE from a WELL known gun youtuber..
"The quality of their revolvers seems to be suspect at times. Not sure if it's all of them or just some of them."

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RE from a online friend
"I can not speak from experience being I have never owned a Taurus and generally do not like to speared hearsay, but I have a few friends in the gun business that I consider reputable that say they are junk. In fact, I've never heard anything good about them. I know they were making their shit from castings and not from the forging process back in the day which is general a no no but have since changed around to forging.

I wouldn't buy or own a Taurus product, but thats just me.

As for the issue, not a huge revolver fanatic but if the revolver fires fine its probably not a spring issue, could have just been a hang fire."

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RE from online friend 2

"Quote from: friend on April 12, 2011
I wouldn't buy or own a Taurus product, but thats just me.
End Quote

This.

To many instructors at to many schools say no to Taurus.

Thats good enough for me."

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I talked to a Michigan gun store owner  Said he would trust his life with taurus...  sales line?

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Talked to cop friend.  Says their cheap as of 15 years ago.  Quality iffy.

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Local store gun enthusiast
No problems with taurus

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That is the list of comments I got.  Also did a search online for taurus quality and got these:

http://www.grantcunningham.com/blog_files/no_taurus_work.html
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071219223045AA693DB
http://www.christiangunowner.com/taurus_reviews.html

In my book, taurus is on my DO NOT buy list.

Bought a nice 34-1 and 15-3, and both had timing issues. I guess thats the reason they were up for sale. Dealer made it right both times. I still have my 617 that I bought new, and its been back twice for accuracy, spitting lead, POI problems, and a crooked, or canted barrel.

I used to own a model 44 with 6" ported barrel. I didn't shoot it alot but it went bang every time and I took a nice doe with it the one year I hunted with it. I've thought about buying a small .38/.357 Taurus to carry when it's hot and I'm dressed light.

This is a quick comparison of some of the Taurus Tracker 44 and S&W Classic 29.  My two bow hunting buddies purchased these Taurus revolvers last year and have used them occasionally, but carried them quite a bit so the outside of them are looking pretty rough already.  No slight to Taurus, these babies get abused.
First a look at the internals of each.

The Smith & Wesson-


The only thing of note here is the fact that it’s pretty slobbered up in some grease I like to use and there are some wear marks on the hammer where it contacts the side plate slightly.  I already polished the side plate just a touch with a fine Crystolon stone to remedy this interference.  BTW, if you think your gun could get dirty, don’t use grease around fine trigger parts.  This is a clean-area gun only, not my backpacking revolver- that one gets no grease on the internals that could collect crap.



Taurus exterior and interior






Close-ups-I found that the Taurus was actually machined cleaner with less tool chatter than the S&W.  You can plainly see the swirling tool marks in the frame of the S&W where the Taurus is actually cleaner.




Here is a pic of the Taurus double-action hammer leg after being polished with a hard Arkansas stone.  It cleaned up well, but if you look at how it fits into the hammer you can see that it is a slip fit that results in a LOT of play between the leg and the hammer- both side-to-side and up-down play as it is used, and the side-to-side play results in a lot of shake-a-shake-a at the bottom of the leg where it touches the trigger shelf.



Here are pics of the same part from S&W.  The leg is held into a channel on the hammer with a pin giving it no side play or up-down movement.  It also required a lot less polishing and looked pretty darn good to begin with.  You can also see a bit of the hammer hooks and how well they are machined compared to the Taurus.





This Taurus part is completely inexcusable.  The Taurus hammer and trigger are made of such cheap metal that I had to go find a magnet to see if it actually had enough iron to attract.  It did, but I wasn’t suddenly impressed by that.  It is cheap casting with cheap metal and coated with cheap Mexican chrome, and overall looks like third world terds.   This is the edge where the hammer lifts the trigger for a single action pull.  Look at the rotten condition of the edge, just under this edge is the hook to sit against the trigger, this particular edge does not act as a finished edge in the firing control, but it’s a good picture of the condition of the parts we are looking at.  Crap.  Just crap.



Here you can see the casting marks and mold dimples in the hammer and trigger from the Taurus.  



This is the top of the hammer on the Taurus.  When the trigger is pulled in double-action, this surface hits the (wobbly) leg on the trigger and pushes back the hammer as the cylinder rotates.  You can see the very obvious casting line across the top, and worse yet you can see the ‘Mexican Chrome’ starting to flake off at the edge and the disgusting condition of the single action sear below that on the second shelf.  No wonder the trigger is like dragging a cinder block through the gravel.



By comparison, here is the single action hammer hook on the S&W.  The trigger sear looks similar, but I didn’t get a picture of it.


A few last notes.  Both of the Taurus revolvers had significant rusting on the screw that holds the grip to the frame.  How long would it take before this was a useless blob of rust that had to be cut off the gun?  These guns were purchased about 9 months ago and are used backpacking in the Utah mountains- not humid environments.


The reason I was tearing into the revolvers was to replace the springs with new sets from Wolff.  I got a package of various return springs and hammer springs for each gun (including my 629 that is not pictured) and went to town trying to get the best results possible.  Also not pictured are the results of polishing various areas on each trigger and hammer, mostly the double action sides of each.  This actually showed me quite a difference in the final abilities of each. From the get-go the S&W revolvers were quite a bit better in terms of consistent pulls, less grit and lighter pulls.  After changing the springs, polishing the trigger return shuttle (don’t know the real name) on the S&W, cleaning up some burrs and casting lines (Taurus- nothing cast on the S&W) the results were even MORE dramatic- the S&W turned into a SWEET trigger that is just like you would always want on a good revolver, the Taurus pretty much didn’t change.  It (the Taurus) still has a significant amount of stacking as the coil springs compress, both  the trigger return and hammer springs are coil on the Taurus and the hammer spring is a leaf type on the S&W.  Even going very low on spring weight, the Taurus stacks terribly and is completely incapable (in my unprofessional opinion) of the quality of pull as the S&W.  I actually had to completely finish the one Taurus and pull the trigger next to the unchanged version to tell there was a difference, and even then it was close.  
As a result of this comparison, I’m really suspect of the quality of parts that I can’t check, like barrel diameters, consistency in the steel, alignment of parts etc.    I’ve also decided that they probably put 25% of the effort into these revolvers and sell them for about 60% of the cost of a S&W, meaning I want to go into the cheap gun business.  Or not.

How many fucking versions do they have of that thing? I went to their website to look at the different revolvers available...the Judge takes up like the first two fucking pages.



K...I counted. 13. 13 fucking versions of the fucking Judge. Fuck they have a great marketing department...





 

1980 and older taurus when they were simple and not very original are good buys

for a while in the late 90s taurus was cranking out total garbage

lately they've been a lot better

I like 'em.

My brother's judge has the cylinder problem. Every fifth shot the cylinder doesn't line up right. After the first hundred rounds we put through it the cylinder release button fell off, checked over it and almost all the screws were loose on the gun... I own two Smith's, the smith's have much better triggers and are far more accurate than the judge (we only get 5" groups at 25 yards using 45 lc handloads from the judge, my s&w 686 will easily put all 6 shots inside a half dollar).

I was recently (6 months ago) looking at picking up another wheel gun.


I currently have a 4" S&W 686. I was thinking something like a 2" .357 to shoot 38+P thru. After seeing the street prices on Smiths and figuring that for almost half the price I could get a Taurus, I took serious look at the Taurus.


I wasn't really impressed. Build quality is not there and the overall feel was cheap. They may function, but something just isn't "there" for me and youdefinitely get what you pay for. I was depressed at Smith's high prices. I'm sorry but I just am not going to spend upwards of 7 bills for anything that is going to be used for recreation, much less a revolver.


So that left Ruger. For the money you can't beat an SP101 or GP100. Plus the Rugers just seem to have a bit better quality feel to them than the Smith's. Just my impression.


Forget Taurus. Go with a Ruger and don't give it another thought.

A crooked barrel shouldn't cause a bullet to tumble, just hit way off target.  Something else is wrong there.

I have had Taurus revolvers and semi autos.  Over the years I have sold most and kept an 8 shot 357 that is flawless and I will admit that I have abused it.  I've never had any problems with any of the Taurus guns I've owned.

There revolvers aren't so bad.. I would steer clear of any semi-auto matic handgun that Taraus makes. Like not touch it with a 10 foot pole.

Don't remember model number but its a small hammerless .357.  I have had the trigger fail to reset a few times.  I have friends who have other taurus products both revolver and semi auto, they have never had problems with them.

Did you see the pictures above?





Did you see the pictures above?

I own two and they are great and accurate shooters.



No problems whatsoever.

Thank you for a very informative post.

In my opinion, yes.  I've owned dozens of revolvers of all makes.  I have never had a serious problem with a Ruger, S&W or Colt revolver.  Every single Taurus revolver I've owned had problems.  More often than not parts wearing out at a ridiculous rate or breaking at a low round count.  The last one was a Taurus 9 shot Ultra Lite 22 that wore out the ratchet in under 500 rounds and would no longer spin the cylinder far enough to lock it in place.

i personally think taurus products are shit but i do like the judge

I can't say that I've seen any problems with them. But then again, I can't say that I've seen any problems with S&W either.

i've owned 2

both were flawless

on par with every smith i've ever shot and the one i own