Questions about an older Taurus medium frame .38

[gb_in_ga]

An acquaintance has an older Taurus revolver that appears to be in decent working condition and has evidently hardly ever been fired (although the finish is very rough with some surface rust -- looks rough but seems mechanically sound), and I've done a quick web search and haven't found anything about it. Supposedly it has been neglected for 15-20 years, looking at it I can believe it. The owner wants to use it for SD/HD only hence the rough finish isn't an issue.

Description:

Medium frame 3" barrel .38 Spl with fixed sights. Pinned barrel. Wood grips. Square butt. Roughly resembles a thin barrel S&W Model 10. S/N 7706xx. Has 657 stamped inside of the crane.

Any idea how old this thing is? Any idea if it is safe to use +P for SD purposes? Given the apparent age I wouldn't think it would be good to feed it a steady diet of +P, but is it sufficiently stout to handle +P for "social purposes"?

 

[Arkhog]

Model 80 maybe?

If the gun looks like this, it may be a Taurus model 80. They were made in Brazil on Smith and Wesson machines. They were model 10 clones and made of all carbon steel. I see no reason why +p ammo can't be used.

I don't know the age. I found this pic on gunbroker.com:

 

[gb_in_ga]

Yep -- that's the model. Different finish, but basically the same gun in 3".

No, I'll take that back. The trigger is different (one continuous arc), and it has 3 screws. Probably a different year model.

We -- SWMBO, the acquaintance (a complete newbie) and I -- went to the range yesterday with the above mentioned Taurus along with SWMBO's S&W 15 and my 686. 400 rounds of mild .38s later (between SWMBO and the acquaintance -- I was "coaching" for the most part) and our acquaintance was wanting to trade her Taurus for SWMBO's model 15 (no dice, of course). Even the complete newbie was able to tell the difference. Night and day. She asked how much a new 686 was running nowadays since I pointed out to her that the model 15s are out of production.

Talk about a crappy trigger! :barf: Even I couldn't get that thing to group. Numerous light strikes! And it just about locked up a time or 2, even after I gave it a thorough cleaning.

 

[B.N.Real]

Light strikes.

Somebody probably did a spring job on it.

Change the spring back to stock and clean the lockwork and grease it-not oil it,liberally.