WrongHanded
Member
- Joined
- Jul 6, 2017
- Messages
- 4,771
So my wife came home one day with a Guinea Pig. I knew showing her how to get to the humane society was a mistake. But on the bright side, new pet; new gun.
Hello Henry lever action!
This is the Big Boy Steel, with a 20" barrel and 10 shot tubular magazine, chambered in .357 Magnum. As my intent for the rifle was a combined woods-bumming/camping/roadtrip/plinking and throw-in-the-vehicle rifle, I was looking for a few things. Fairly sleek, simple to operate, in-offensive to the sheeple, reasonably flat trajectory, cheap to feed, easy to find commerical ammo for, and it needed to look and feel good to me. So whilst I'd love to get one in .41 Mag later down the road, .357 Mag made more sense. And as far as .44 Mag goes, well I've got a .45-70 that doesn't get enough love as it is.
The first thing I did was run some ammo through it at the indoor range. And I came to the same conclusion with this one as I did with my .45-70: I do not like semi-buckhorn rear sights. And this one was even less appealing because it was crooked. Turns out the dovetail was either not cut right, or it was mangled by the person who installed the factory sight. Before someone says I can always send it back, I know I can. But I won't. It's okay. Really. So I decided to replace the rear sight with a Skinner peep, but this time I chose a barrel mounted version, which is surprisingly effective even with the short sight radius of 15". It is also slightly crooked due to the dovetail issue, but I don't notice that at all when I'm shooting it. And the standard aperture that came with it (they are removable and interchangeable) seems to work nicely. That brass bead stands out well in the aperture, and still has clearance around it for some visibility. I'd say is a compromise between the precision of a receiver mounted peep, and the speed of the semi-buckhorn (although it seems just as fast to me).
Then I worked up a load using a Speer 158gr Deep Curl hollow point and 18.5gr of Alliant 300-MP. Chrono results gave me a sedate 1190fps from a GP100 with a 4.2" barrel. But in the 20" barrel of this rifle, were up around 1750fps. I'm pretty good with that. The gun cycles well with these cartridges and also with the JSPs that I ran through it first. LSWCs are not it's favorite food however, and Double Tap's ammo with the same Speer 158gr Deep Curl bullet did not feed well at all (likely because of the crimp, which appears to be above the cannelure). In fact, I had some of those bullets set back into the case mouth far enough that they wouldn't chamber in anything. (As a side note: I also chrono'd the Double Tap ammo, and found it wanting. Unimpressive, to say the least.)
Accuracy: Once upon a time in a prone position, I put 20 shots from an M14SA into a 9" wide by 12" tall group at 300m using iron sights. That would be a 20 shot group at about 4 moa. And that's probably the best I've ever done with iron sights. So let's not blame Henry for the next bit.
The smallest 5 shot group my load produced was 13/16" at 25 yards. No one is going to be impressed by that out of a rifle, but I quite honestly believe I can't do any better. That is partly on me, but the front sight being a brass bead rather than a post (easy to pick up, but hard to find top dead center of), definitely factors in. However, given the purpose of the rifle, I doubt I'll be doing much shooting with it beyond 100 yards. Now I did shoot it at 50 and 100 yards on the indoor range, and I found out a few things. The first was that without additional rear sight adjustment, driving the dot with the front bead got me pretty much centered on target at 100. The second was that this method gives me around a 5" group off the bench (front bag, no rear bag). Third thing is that a shiny black target with a red bullseye, at 100yds, is just a not a good idea. Others may want more precision, but that will do for me. Set and forget the sights, drive the dot, and it works well enough.
I know some have a problem with the loading tube setup on Henrys. Honestly I've never tried a loading gate, so I can't compare the two. But the tube stays secure during shooting, comes out easily when loading, and 10 cartridges can be dropped in quickly. Instead of a manual safety, there is a sliding transfer bar in the hammer, similar to Ruger revolvers. Very intuitive.
Overall, I'm please with an all around decent firearm. Some minor issues, but nothing worth getting worked up about. So here are some "artsy" out in the woods pics I took after chrono testing and ringing some steel on a sunny 95deg day in the foothills.
Hello Henry lever action!
This is the Big Boy Steel, with a 20" barrel and 10 shot tubular magazine, chambered in .357 Magnum. As my intent for the rifle was a combined woods-bumming/camping/roadtrip/plinking and throw-in-the-vehicle rifle, I was looking for a few things. Fairly sleek, simple to operate, in-offensive to the sheeple, reasonably flat trajectory, cheap to feed, easy to find commerical ammo for, and it needed to look and feel good to me. So whilst I'd love to get one in .41 Mag later down the road, .357 Mag made more sense. And as far as .44 Mag goes, well I've got a .45-70 that doesn't get enough love as it is.
The first thing I did was run some ammo through it at the indoor range. And I came to the same conclusion with this one as I did with my .45-70: I do not like semi-buckhorn rear sights. And this one was even less appealing because it was crooked. Turns out the dovetail was either not cut right, or it was mangled by the person who installed the factory sight. Before someone says I can always send it back, I know I can. But I won't. It's okay. Really. So I decided to replace the rear sight with a Skinner peep, but this time I chose a barrel mounted version, which is surprisingly effective even with the short sight radius of 15". It is also slightly crooked due to the dovetail issue, but I don't notice that at all when I'm shooting it. And the standard aperture that came with it (they are removable and interchangeable) seems to work nicely. That brass bead stands out well in the aperture, and still has clearance around it for some visibility. I'd say is a compromise between the precision of a receiver mounted peep, and the speed of the semi-buckhorn (although it seems just as fast to me).
Then I worked up a load using a Speer 158gr Deep Curl hollow point and 18.5gr of Alliant 300-MP. Chrono results gave me a sedate 1190fps from a GP100 with a 4.2" barrel. But in the 20" barrel of this rifle, were up around 1750fps. I'm pretty good with that. The gun cycles well with these cartridges and also with the JSPs that I ran through it first. LSWCs are not it's favorite food however, and Double Tap's ammo with the same Speer 158gr Deep Curl bullet did not feed well at all (likely because of the crimp, which appears to be above the cannelure). In fact, I had some of those bullets set back into the case mouth far enough that they wouldn't chamber in anything. (As a side note: I also chrono'd the Double Tap ammo, and found it wanting. Unimpressive, to say the least.)
Accuracy: Once upon a time in a prone position, I put 20 shots from an M14SA into a 9" wide by 12" tall group at 300m using iron sights. That would be a 20 shot group at about 4 moa. And that's probably the best I've ever done with iron sights. So let's not blame Henry for the next bit.
The smallest 5 shot group my load produced was 13/16" at 25 yards. No one is going to be impressed by that out of a rifle, but I quite honestly believe I can't do any better. That is partly on me, but the front sight being a brass bead rather than a post (easy to pick up, but hard to find top dead center of), definitely factors in. However, given the purpose of the rifle, I doubt I'll be doing much shooting with it beyond 100 yards. Now I did shoot it at 50 and 100 yards on the indoor range, and I found out a few things. The first was that without additional rear sight adjustment, driving the dot with the front bead got me pretty much centered on target at 100. The second was that this method gives me around a 5" group off the bench (front bag, no rear bag). Third thing is that a shiny black target with a red bullseye, at 100yds, is just a not a good idea. Others may want more precision, but that will do for me. Set and forget the sights, drive the dot, and it works well enough.
I know some have a problem with the loading tube setup on Henrys. Honestly I've never tried a loading gate, so I can't compare the two. But the tube stays secure during shooting, comes out easily when loading, and 10 cartridges can be dropped in quickly. Instead of a manual safety, there is a sliding transfer bar in the hammer, similar to Ruger revolvers. Very intuitive.
Overall, I'm please with an all around decent firearm. Some minor issues, but nothing worth getting worked up about. So here are some "artsy" out in the woods pics I took after chrono testing and ringing some steel on a sunny 95deg day in the foothills.
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