Thoughts on the Rhino 357?

That's the exact one I want but its not made by Hi Point. I don't know why it says that in the AD. Its manufactured by Chiappa.

http://www.chiappafirearms.com/products/75

A $900 High Point. I like it.

Seriously, I had the opportunity to shoot a friend's Rhino this past weekend and I'll say that while I was skeptical at first it turns out to be a very nice shooting gun.
The recoil is very manageable, as it pushes back and not up. It was very accurate. I enjoyed shooting it for sure.

Now for my money, I would still buy a nice Smith over it, but that's just my personal preference.

Don't buy it without testing the trigger. The early ones had horrible 12lb+ trigger pulls. Also, you should know what you're getting into regarding parts/complication: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gQiXoiMl4c

As someone here, once posted (regarding the ils), "It's ugly, and I don't buy ugly."

To that I would add, "It's FAT and ugly, and it ain't bar closing time yet."

That may be the only revolver in the world sold with beer goggles, instead of safety glasses.

But, hey, if you like it.........

I have one (6-inch) and love it. If you do a search on THR you will see a thread where I ran about 350 rounds of .357 through it with no ill effects (2nd picture). I say BUY IT! A lot of people have negative comments about the gun, but of the 40 or so people who have shot mine none have issued a complaint. Everyone who has shot mine agrees the gun is accurate and the trigger is relatively smooth. Many people also like the grips, but there's a fair number so far that have also found them "weird" or too small.

Either way, my Rhino seems to find its way to the range with me almost every week and it always turns heads!

If you do get the 6-inch version I can put you in touch with a company that will do a holster for it like you see on the bottom picture.
Maybe I just got a really good one, who knows?

A close friend of mine has been wrangling with Chiappa over a 4" Rhino for over 2 years. First it was plating failure in the cylinder chambers , gun replaced outright. Then cylinder binding against the throat , or forcing cone of the barrel , sent back to get barrel machined , then sent back again to get coarse machining cleaned up. On top of that , it takes 2 men and a boy to cock the hammer in order to shoot single action.


To their credit , the company seems to be putting forth good effort towards customer service. But , after observing my friend's ordeal , would I go Rhino ?

Methinks the company grew too fast , contracted manufacturing of some parts (cylinders) to other shops , and so on. Maybe the kinks are worked out by now ...? I hope so. Very innovative design.

Innovative design yes, but not without it's flaws. It's apparently easier for the shooters hands to be in the way of the barrel to cylinder gap blast of escaping gasses.

Jerry Miculek burned himself a bit demonstrating his fast shooting abilities with one on youtube. With hot .357 that is a nasty accident waiting to happen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbDUWACwRqk

at 8:33

As an aside, the man is a machine! I wouldn't want to be a banger that tries to jack him up at a late night gas station.

Rswartsell, I have also seen people get burned, including two range officers who were inexplicably cradling my gun in their hands while trying to figure out which way the cylinder turned after they put rounds in the gun!!!!

I have tried on my own to duplicate the problem and I can't seem to get any of my fingers anywhere near the front of the cylinder during firing using my "normal" grip that I use no matter what handgun I am shooting. Maybe I will try to get some pictures of my grip to demonstrate on here as I have never been burned yet. I'm certainly not saying it doesn't happen with the Rhino though as it has been documented.

That video in post 9 points out my biggest practical worry. Stop it at 5:10. Look at his trigger finger. The grip position is nice and high. But with the trigger below the cylinder still, the trigger finger has to bend down in front of the second finger and pull UP at what appears to be a 15 or 20 degree angle, instead of straight back. It looks cramped, not comfortable. I know all revolvers have a little of that to contend with, but the Rhino (and Mateba) seem to accentuate it worse.

"I don't know why it says that in the AD. Its manufactured by Chiappa."
Oh, that's just MKS Distributing's latest attempt to destroy Emilio Ghisoni's last great design.

-They screwed up QC management when they imported the first batch from Italy (Chiappa was then a small shop dealing in Western repros, blank guns, and cheap 22LR's that had to get big quick for this effort)
-pissed off their customers with their 'tin foil rfid scandal'
-complicated everything with the move to the US (not without more QC mixups at first)
-which probably has everything to do with the steadily-climbing price of these (weren't they like 550$ 3 years ago?)
-and they followed it up most recently with a gawd-awful "Gold Rhino" yellow anodizing option that's just heinous (this from a guy who really likes the look of the black/white rhinos)


Hey, if the three-color trifecta worked so well for IMI's Desert Eagle, why not the rhino? Too bad anodized aluminum looks like gold spray-paint

"the trigger finger has to bend down in front of the second finger and pull UP at what appears to be a 15 or 20 degree angle, instead of straight back"
I haven't had a chance to mess with one in a while, but I recall the trigger pivots up at an angle to match (see the pivot pin location on the photo), so it's not a noticeable difference. The very flat 'pirate pistol' grip angle is far more noticeable and different for someone used to normal revolvers. Also the fact that the trigger is very wide, like 2X what most triggers are, sorta like those slip on trigger pads the 1911 target guys used to use. Other than being short, in the case of the snubby, I find the grip very much like a semi-automatic.

If a freakin' Boberg --a vastly nicer gun-- wasn't only 100$ more I'd be a lot more interested in the Rhino, but it appears all that American labor must be killing their production costs. To Chiappa's credit, I'm not hearing near as many (any) reports of stuff breaking or being really terrible like very early on, just the well-known-at-this-point design foible of the SA cocking lever being really hard to pull compared to a S&W or Colt action design. On all the gun's (3) I was able to dry fire, the DA trigger was more than passable, so I could forgive the stiff cocking lever.

TCB

Trigger I pulled was a mile of gravel before it broke but that was a new one in the shop.

I believe the younger shooters like it for it's radical design, and the old shooters dislike it for the same reason

Ron, I've been saying a gun like the Rhino with less aggressive looks would make a lot better traction for a long time. It certainly has a way of turning off traditional revolver people.

I like the looks of the Rhino, it has a great Bladerunner (the movie, not the runner in SA) thing going. If it's still around in 10 years I may buy one.

I love mine and the trigger is great. But I'm seriously thinking about having that fugly, useless rail ground off.

Nope.......buy yourself a nice S&W.....OMO.

They should have made it look like this. It might be more popular

Guys, the gun looks about as "blade runner" as Flash Gordon's pistol . Go read the imfdb page on the movie and see for yourselves. The gun had a frickin' Mannlicher-Shoenauer bolt handle hanging off the side


"They should have made it look like this. It might be more popular"
They did. It was called the Mateba Unica 6 and it wasn't. The Mateba even came in 45cal (Casul) like Vash's gun and probably weighed as much. Didn't have a top strap, though. A top break auto revolver would be a real feat of engineering (I've looked into designing one; it can be done but would be very expensive and very unmarketable, since young kids hate wheelguns and fogeys hate new stuff --ergo, no new wheel gun designs are successful)

TCB

Guys, the gun looks about as "blade runner" as Flash Gordon's pistol . Go read the imfdb page on the movie and see for yourselves. The gun had a frickin' Mannlicher-Shoenauer bolt handle hanging off the side

Click to expand...

Underneath the Mannlicher receiver was a shrouded Charter Arms Pitbull.

And Vash's gun was in .45 Colt, and was not an auto revolver.

I checked one of these out the other day while buying an R51; much, much nicer DA trigger than before, and the SA cocking was still heavy, but much smoother. Extractor star was more firmly attached and tooling marks were far less present. If it still cost 650$, I'd consider it, but the black snubby was 970$

TCB

That's definitely a bit high, especially for the snub-nose.

My friend's Rhino came back from Chiappa. (4" , brushed nickel) (post from April 4) I must say , it shoots like a dream. Boy , does it ever stay on target.

Lots of bucks , strange appearance , great shooter.

I like unusual and innovative guns, but my bad experience with my Chiappa 1911-22 and their customer service inability to fix it (adding insult to injury I had to pay to ship it back effectively throwing good money after bad) has them on my never buy list.