Titanium Cylinder face errosion

[rockhunter]

I recently bought a used Taurus Tracker 627 Total Titanium 357 and am wondering what people with the Taurus titanium cylinder revolvers experiance for errosion on the cylinder face. This titanium cylinder has more shallow errosion sites than I usually have seen with other materials is this normal?

 

[Old Fuff]

I have seen this condition before in titanium cylindered revolvers that have tight cylinder/barrel gaps and were used with .357 Magnum ammunition on the high end of the power scale.

Apparently when fired, the titanium cylinder is elastic enough to streach and hit the barrel face, which literally stamps a pattern into the front of the cylinder. I know that some guns with this condition were returned to Taurus for repair, but I don't know what the outcome was. For several reasons I have avoided revolvers using titanium parts, and this is one of them.

 

[rockhunter]

Fuff:

I agree the pattern does look like it is very similar with respect to each chamber at the locked/firing possition and this revolver does have a small cylinder gap (0.002 - 0.003). It could just be that the barrel end has burrs or very small grooves left from fabrication not that they have been stamped into the cylinder face by stretching, but either way opening up the cylinder gap by another 0.001-0.002 doesn't seem like it would hurt.

David

 

[Old Fuff]

With a steel cylinder the tight cylinder gap is a moot point, unless you shoot soft lead bulleted ammunition. Then a lead build-up on the barrel and cylinder face can cause the cylinder to bind. For this reason wide gaps up to .010" were acceptable during past years. Now customers want tighter gaps and the manufacturers have responded.

By it's nature, titanium is softer then steel, and also more elastic. The revolvers I examined clearly had marks on the cylinder face that had been stamped into place, and the barrel was the only thing located close enough to do the stamping. Both were chambered in .357 Magnum, and one of them had been fired with ammunition made by a small manufcturer who specializes in pushing to the highest allowable pressures.

You can open up the cylinder gap a bit without causing problems, but I have no idea how much extra space would be required to eliminate the problem, if indeed more cylinder gap is the answer. The two Taurus revolvers I mentioned were supposedly repaired, but they didn't specify what they did. In both cases the owners then quickly dumped them on the used gun market and I lost any further track of them.