Lightning or Henry

[Major 2]

Very good choice....

......... Nothing looks nicer than a dolled-up Henry.

Exactly...and paired with 1860 Army's or variants, in my humble opinion the finest in revolver art....ever!

[Blackpowder Burn]

Wild Will,

FWIW, I have both a USFA Lightning and a 73.  My observations on the Lightning are:  USFA undoubtedly makes the finest one on the market.  The key with any Lightning is that they were designed to work with bottleneck cartridges (38 WCF and 44 WCF).  They frequently will not work well with straight walled cases.  Thus, 45 LC and 357 Mag, etc. give problems.  It has to do with the steep angle of entry from the carrier to the chamber.  All this was confirmed in a conversation with Gary Granger (USFA Sales Manager).

My Lightning is chambered for the 44-40 and works flawlessly.  I had the main spring lightened and installed a Marbles tang sight and it is a really slick shooting little rifle.  The other factor you may want to consider here is that USFA has stopped building the Lightning, and they say they have no plans at present to reintroduce it.  They say they get more production (thus more sales and profit) from their CNC machines building SAA's.  Again, Mr. Granger states that they only produced a little over 400 Lightning Rifles in total.  Thus, if you can purchase a new one, it could become quite valuable in the future.

As far as speed, the Lightning will not be as fast as the Henry.  But for cool, it's hard to beat!

[Willie Dixon]

I personally would go with the Henry, good ol' lever action with that happy click-click sound.  I dunno, I have a pump tactical remington shotgun, and when I see the Lightning I see an older version of that in rifle size.  The lever action is just good ol' cowboy, fast, pretty, and accurate with the right load and steady arm.

[Russ McCrae]

The Henry is going to be my "Graduation Ring" in December to myself since I hate wearing rings (And it's a good excuse to buy a rifle ) I've had alot of folks tell me I ought get the statue of the two Javelinas out in front of college hall etched onto the receiver, and I was hesitant until I saw that pic above. If I could find out who did that I'm very tempted to get that done