Taurus 605 - .357 Magnum

by Michael Griffin
(Fort Mill, SC, USA)

On March 25th of 2010 I purchased a Taurus 605 357 magnum stainless steel 5 shot, with a two inch barrel from my town's local dealer. It arrived within a week but it was not until May that I was presented with an opportunity to visit a range and shoot it.

When I went to eject the brass, by pressing on the extractor rod, and found that it would not extract without considerable force. I noticed that the brass was scratched and marred and I assumed that it was bad ammo. So I then I selected 5 more smooth .38 special rounds and shot them. The result was the same with the second set of .38 special rounds and the 357 mag rounds that I tried were worse. The chambers seemed to be rough machined and not polished at all. I had to practically beat the rod down to unload the firearm.

The dealer I purchased it from sent the revolver back to Taurus and it arrived for repair on July 8th. Twenty days have passed and the Taurus website still says that it is awaiting repair. I'm still waiting for it.

It was shoddy machining to begin with. The quality assurance folks, who supposedly test every firearm before shipping, obviously aren't doing their job too well if the firearm made it through their tests in this condition.