Howdy!
louisc - good to hear your opinion and reasons. I'm not gonna belabor the point of "authenticity" or not, other than I favor it. I also highly respect a modern company that chooses to actually produce and market a gun here in the good ol' US of A. I'm of the same opinion as many here - it's not the HRAC GUN, it's the BS that the company tries to foist on the public. As a matter of fact, I would LOVE to have one of the HRAC 22 lever rifles, because they apparently are outstanding! I've heard as much bad as good about the Big Boy, and, the one I had in my hand at a gunstore
LOOKED OK (looking at it as a shooter, not a replica) but was very rough and stiff in its action. Stiffness will smooth out by firing as will some roughness, but this one was BAD.
Be that as it may, I'm
not gonna badmouth YOUR gun and you seem happy with it. It's good to hear that and many of us are happy for you.
My reason for posting is this: I simply want you to realize that the VAST majority of these guns
don't have to be "fixed" before they'll operate well. Like you, I strongly feel that the damn thing should work out of the box! Period. Driftwood did say something about that, 'tho that you may have missed. I'll bet 99% (more like 99.5%

) of the Italian and Brazilian guns sold here WILL work fine for the average buyer. However, we CAS shooters are WAY above average! You're a good example of that - 1500 rounds in just a few months! I'll bet most guns sitting in folk's closets don't get shot that much in years - and that's WAY above what the average shooter did "back in the day." It has been said by knowledgeable history buffs, that we'll shoot more in a typical Cowboy match than MOST did in their life!!! While a good percentage of guns are sold to CAS shooters, more go to folks who simply like old style guns. I can't back that up with facts, it's just my opinion - but I base it on gun sales as reported by companies like Ruger and my own experience as a sales person at a large Indianapolis gun store. Furthermore, the Henrys, '66s, '73s and the newer '76 Winchester copies are relatively fragile - ESPECIALLY when compared to Ruger and modern Marlins and even the occasional Winchester 94. The Brazilian copies of the '92 Wins. may be somewhat rough, but they're tough. Why? Because John Browning made them that way with new techniques and metallurgy geared toward smokey-less powder rounds! (And because he was John Moses Browning. 'Nuff said.

) I have a '66 (Uberti) Winchester that is nearly 10 years old and has at LEAST 15,000 rounds 'thru it - and EVERY ONE of those rounds has been full power Black Powder loads OR, back about 5 years ago, I only shot smokeless rounds. There's NO gunsmithing other than ME taking it apart and smoothing internal parts and I did replace the springs that bear on the lever. I didn't
HAVE to change them, but I opted to do it before trouble happened.
What too many folks do is buy their guns and immediately take 'em to get worked on. Yes, a good job by a gunsmith WILL improve the life of the gun, because of the lack of hand fitting they have to do to keep prices down to a realistic level! (

) Too many shooters forget that 90% of successful, accurate shooting is the Shooter (because of PRACTICE) NOT the tricked-out gee-whiz $500 action work and parts replacements that were done (and they brag about to impress the rest

) ... as a substitute for puttin' lead downrange and good shooting techniques!!!!!
Most important - Have fun! If ya ain't havin' fun, then whytheHellya wastin' time an' money? Pick up a book an' read it - few of us do enough of THAT these days!

Steel Horse Bailey