JonB
Halcyon member
Blued Steel Frame and 20" (Rifle) Barrel (1:18.75 twist).
Like and dislikes:
I like the stock fit and "cut" checkering.
I'm not crazy about the bead blasted finish of the receiver and I'm not crazy about the unpolished barrel with machining lines and matching mag tube.
I do like the mag tube loading, as opposed to marlin's feed gate in receiver.
Last night, I attempted to cycle some ammo I had previously loaded for the Marlin and my pistols. The Ammo loaded for the marlin had a OAL a bit too long for the Henry, The Henry appears to have a tighter chamber or a shorter chamber (that appears to be almost 0.100" shorter?), but that longer ammo would cycle, but it took more force than I like, to close the bolt. None of my pistol ammo would successfully cycle 100% of the time...about 25% or so would jam (FTF)...(three different cast bullet ammo and 3 different jacketed bullet ammo).
So, today, I set out to load some ammo to test it, I hope to go to the range tomorrow (it's suppose to be a beautiful sunny day, should be 46º and little or no breeze). I had some Saeco 411 SWC 232gr. that were cast/sized/lubed from 2013 (sized .411 -Tamarack lube). They were cast from an Alloy I guessed to be COWW from a couple homemade boat anchors that I melted. The BHN measured 11 in 2013, but today I it measured at 16.6, I did several samples, to be sure. My notes from 2013 indicated that I added one ingot of a zinc contaminated alloy to the 3/4 full Lee pot, a common practice of mine, to use up the contaminated alloy. My best guess is that Zinc content couldn't be more than 2%. The bullets do have a bit of a galvanized finish, LOL.
Anyway, I set out to make some dummy rounds to find a OAL that'd work, I made 4 of each.
what I found:
1.715 was too long, and would jam on the way up from the Mag tube. I started here because this was a good length to be seated to allow crimping into crimp groove.
1.700 worked
1.680 worked (almost 100% of the time)
1.665 failed part of the time
1.630 failed much of the time (this OAL had the case mouth about lined up with the front of the driving band)
First, I should add that initially I had problems cycling all of the SWC dummy rounds, til I cycled the action a few hundred times. I'm not sure if the action just needed to be broke-in, or I needed to develop a nice smooth movement to open and close the action...because that seemed to help...Obviously I was always holding the gun, in shooting position, sites up.
I was cycling these dummy rounds for hours...The conclusion: the cartridges with a shorter OAL seemed to "flop around" in the receiver, causing more chances for misalignment. Usually what would happen, is the ejection pin would push the rear of the cartridge sideways (outward of the ejection port), which would move the cartridge so the position of the primer are centered on the extractor, which then would push the nose of the bullet the opposite way, into the side of the chamber entry. JAM !
I hope this gun doesn't end up as finicky as it seems right now.
So, Once I seemingly figured out the OAL (1.695), I loaded up a box of 50 with standard Win primers and 11.7gr of vintage (Hercules) Blue Dot. Lyman says it should be moving about 1025 fps and around 20Kcup.
I'll take some photos when I get out to the range, tomorrow is the plan.
Like and dislikes:
I like the stock fit and "cut" checkering.
I'm not crazy about the bead blasted finish of the receiver and I'm not crazy about the unpolished barrel with machining lines and matching mag tube.
I do like the mag tube loading, as opposed to marlin's feed gate in receiver.
Last night, I attempted to cycle some ammo I had previously loaded for the Marlin and my pistols. The Ammo loaded for the marlin had a OAL a bit too long for the Henry, The Henry appears to have a tighter chamber or a shorter chamber (that appears to be almost 0.100" shorter?), but that longer ammo would cycle, but it took more force than I like, to close the bolt. None of my pistol ammo would successfully cycle 100% of the time...about 25% or so would jam (FTF)...(three different cast bullet ammo and 3 different jacketed bullet ammo).
So, today, I set out to load some ammo to test it, I hope to go to the range tomorrow (it's suppose to be a beautiful sunny day, should be 46º and little or no breeze). I had some Saeco 411 SWC 232gr. that were cast/sized/lubed from 2013 (sized .411 -Tamarack lube). They were cast from an Alloy I guessed to be COWW from a couple homemade boat anchors that I melted. The BHN measured 11 in 2013, but today I it measured at 16.6, I did several samples, to be sure. My notes from 2013 indicated that I added one ingot of a zinc contaminated alloy to the 3/4 full Lee pot, a common practice of mine, to use up the contaminated alloy. My best guess is that Zinc content couldn't be more than 2%. The bullets do have a bit of a galvanized finish, LOL.
Anyway, I set out to make some dummy rounds to find a OAL that'd work, I made 4 of each.
what I found:
1.715 was too long, and would jam on the way up from the Mag tube. I started here because this was a good length to be seated to allow crimping into crimp groove.
1.700 worked
1.680 worked (almost 100% of the time)
1.665 failed part of the time
1.630 failed much of the time (this OAL had the case mouth about lined up with the front of the driving band)
First, I should add that initially I had problems cycling all of the SWC dummy rounds, til I cycled the action a few hundred times. I'm not sure if the action just needed to be broke-in, or I needed to develop a nice smooth movement to open and close the action...because that seemed to help...Obviously I was always holding the gun, in shooting position, sites up.
I was cycling these dummy rounds for hours...The conclusion: the cartridges with a shorter OAL seemed to "flop around" in the receiver, causing more chances for misalignment. Usually what would happen, is the ejection pin would push the rear of the cartridge sideways (outward of the ejection port), which would move the cartridge so the position of the primer are centered on the extractor, which then would push the nose of the bullet the opposite way, into the side of the chamber entry. JAM !
I hope this gun doesn't end up as finicky as it seems right now.
So, Once I seemingly figured out the OAL (1.695), I loaded up a box of 50 with standard Win primers and 11.7gr of vintage (Hercules) Blue Dot. Lyman says it should be moving about 1025 fps and around 20Kcup.
I'll take some photos when I get out to the range, tomorrow is the plan.
