Do yourself a big favor and avoid Taurus/Rossi from here on out. Consider yourself lucky that you appear to have won the Taurus lottery with the one you have. No Taurus or Rossi has anything approaching high resale. They drop in value like a lead balloon the minute you walk out of the store. When people see one for sale they wonder what's wrong with it and automatically want to knock an extra $70 off the price to cover a trip back to the repair center. Taurus, unlike the other big manufacturers, makes the customer pay to ship it back and since it has to be overnighted with UPS or Fed-ex paying for return shipping is a big deal.
Really consider the SP101 with spurless hammer. You don't want a spur on a CCW revolver, no matter how anyone tries to justify this it is a really really really bad idea. There is a good reason why they started making them without spurs and even hammerless. Lots of people who carried them every day were getting them snagged on the draw. Some died as a result so departments wanted a gun that could be carried concealed and drawn without snagging.
Out of the box the trigger on the SP101 can be a little stiff. The SP101 can be easily tuned with some 4400 grit sandpaper and a $15 set of Wolf springs. If you register over at
www.rugerforum.net after a certain number of posts, 10 I think, you will get access to Iowegan's IBOK on the GP100 tuning which also covers the SP101. If he offered it for sale for $25 it would be a bargain. You aren't doing anything magic. He just walks you through step by step where to polish. I'm not the world's handiest person and I had no trouble.
I should also mention that the modular design of the SP101 makes it a snap to keep clean. You can break the gun down into the main components: frame, trigger subassembly, and cylinder in about 20 seconds once you do it a few times. This makes cleaning and lubing really easy.
Recoil is not bad at all with the SP101 with full power .357 loads. You'd have to be really recoil sensitive to have it be an issue with this gun. There is just enough gun to suck up the recoil and the rubber on the grip over the backstrap really helps as well. Shooting a box of 50 .357 rounds in an outing won't leave your hand any worse for wear. I tried the Hogue and its more comfortable but it's just a bit to big for CCW. Plus the tacky rubber catches on every cover garment I've tried. I went back to the factory grips and have stayed with them. They are just big enough for me to get my pinky on the grip and I have hands on the small end of large sized.
I like carrying my SP101 in a Galco Fletch belt holster although now that it's summer I end up pocket carrying it a lot. You don't notice the weight after a couple of minutes.
As much as I love my SP101 if I could start over it would be the second snubby I purchased, not the first. The first would be the S&W 642 and I would carry it in a Mika pocket holster and load it with the old FBI load of 158gr LSWCHP 38+p. There really is no better combination CCW revolver/holster/ammo combo in my opinion. The 642 is very much an everywhere all the time without much hassle gun. The SP101 is the most of the time most places with a little hassle gun. There are lots of summer days where the Kel-tec P-3AT goes along and the SP101 stays home where the S&W 642 would be going along. They are only $403 delivered to your FFL from
www.budsgunshop.com. Add in $25 for a transfer and you've got a gun that you'll keep forever and that will retain 80%-90% of it's value. In fact within 5 years it will probably be worth more used than you paid for it new.
I have never felt an out of the box Smith DA as good as my M85 Taurus. Trigger quality and accuracy are excellent, nay, superior on your average Taurus vs J frame in my experience. And, the lock is better, at least can't turn itself on and isn't so friggin' obvious.
