Henry Rifle

[Tascosa Joe]

I finally got my Henry out last weekend.  I discovered in my old age the front sight seems to be invisible.  The accuracy is not real good when you have a "stealth" front sight.     I worked up a load using a 200 gr bullet .45 S&W cases and 28 gr of 2F Diamondback powder.  I am attempting to duplicate the old Henry round.  It was pretty dirty and had to have a couple patches run thru the bore about every 10th round.  I am using a modern style bullet with one big grease groove but even with that it does not carry enough grease.  I think my next batch bullets will have an over powder card and a grease cookier and see what happens.  I also may change to Kik powder which is supposed to be much cleaner.  With the S&W case it will hold 14 which is a couple short of the original magazine capacity. 

[James Hunt]

Interesting, I had not heard of someone using S&W cases to more closely duplicate an original st. wall case load and increase round capacity. You shall have to report the final outcome.

You have to wonder how many times those two civilians with Fetterman ran a wet patch thru their Henry rifles during that fight. They reportedly had plenty of rds. with them and were found with a bunch of cases laying around their bodies. Then again maybe they were under a bit of pressure and merely thought about swabbing the bore. When I have used a Henry in CAS I have never wiped the bore over the course of the day - I used .45 Colt cases with a little under 40 gr of 2f Goex.

[Tascosa Joe]

I shoot the S&W round in my Colt SA's some.  I decided to try to S&W case for the Henry because the case capacity was close to the original and I was hoping the magazine would hold 15 but the barrel is about 3/4" too short.

I have a '73 copy in .45 Colt.  Using the old Lyman 454190 2 grease groove bullet and a case full of 2F Goex, I can shoot 70 or 80 rounds without wiping the bore.  I realize the 73 was not supposed to be .45 Colt but at the time it was affordable and available.  I have tried single groove bullets more than once with realatively poor results.  They shoot OK but will not maintain accuracy over a lenthy string of rounds.  Last Saturday the first 20 rounds worked great.  21-30 I had 2 hits out of the 10 shots.   

I think with a properly designed bullet the old timers probably could shoot a 100 rounds or more without wiping as they had real good quality powder.   

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[Kent Shootwell]

Joe, what kind of lube does your bullets carry?

[Tascosa Joe]

SPG The Diamondback powder is pretty dirty.

[buckskin billy]

hey joe where ya going with that gun in your hand( sorry couldn't help myself )

some years ago when i was very active with cas shooting a shooting friend gave me a couple hundred rounds of scholfield brass.
 if memory serves me right i used 25 grains of 3f goex a 200 grain double groove bullet cast from a lee mould with spg lube. it shot accurate enough for cowboy shooting and i didnt have no troubles with fouling, i was able to shoot a whole match with nary a problem.
 i was thinking i could get 15 in the mag with one in the chamber. but my memory aint as sharp as it use to be. i do remember tho that i had to make sure of the overall case length was the same on all or i would have feeeding problems. i quit using them cuz at the time schofield brass was hard to come by and at a cowboy shoot the guys picking up brass never retrieved all of my brass, that and the fact we was only allowed to load 10 rounds per stage i didnt get to benefit anything.


 

[Tascosa Joe]

I may try to find a Lee 2 groove bullet mold.  I shoot NCOWS at Greenville and we shoot a lot of stages that either have rifle reloads or fill em up to capacity and shoot till they run out then reload.  We will normally have at least 1 16 shot rifle stage per match.  I also shoot a lot of 38-40 and I HATE to loose that brass at .25 each.