Polish em up bright and show them off here!!! (pic posting thread)

[Highlander999]

Well, mine is the IMPROVED Henry   or the 66.  But here it is, in 44 SPL with both Colts in 44 Colt.

[louisc]

Well howdy driftwood if i may call you that? i agree with what you are saying completely thats why i bought the usa version i thought i was buying a real USA made peice of hisrory and the onle reason no take that back the price also i paid $750 new and thats also sold me i could afford to buy i guess the real henry which was made by who? winchester or somebody else , but the prices of $1250-1500 for a new one and i haven't seen one of those people that say they had to go and send the extra money up to $175to go to a privite gun smith and repair it to shoot . ive been trying to keep close watch on the rifles all the new 66,72 76  and others that all said out of the box they dont load just jam how can any quailty company know this must be all over not just here, let the gun go i thought that ever gun by law had to be tested at least one round,how could it fire if it won't load ,failure to load is a befire fireing step so how was it tested? and other saftey issuses ,without a fire how do they know it works .i still think out of box the company shound be standing on there head to make the factory falt just go away for free.the gun onwers out his gun and hopes it comes back safe and not more worse off than before you realy cant say they will do a good job because out of the box the job is not right. ask the other rifle ownedr to write there probloms out of box and lets see what that adds up to i wish i could trust that out of box the gun would just do what its supposed to but i dont trust them companies either.so i might have bought an imposter which grinds my gears dont get me wrong but luckly it is a shooter out of box 100 yard 2.5 inch group never jams i ride her like you guys every other weekend i get to shoot about 750 rounds 300 in the fake henry i put about 2500 rounds so far under in 5 months and others.ive ripped threw all 10 rounds like in comp. and she cycles fine and smoot i got a fake which shoots i wish i could get into a 73but dont want the repairs.i love to shoot.because my time means alot to me you know the  burnin daylite sayin is me getin to the range glad my wife like to shoot she has a glock 23 and likes 1873 cattlemen cimm. well i guess thats all hope i didnt piss any one off because i do feel riiped off by lyiers i probubly would have just waited longer to save for the uberti 73 but that stupid made in America got me see ya .

[Will Ketchum]

Well howdy driftwood if i may call you that? i agree with what you are saying completely thats why i bought the usa version i thought i was buying a real USA made peice of hisrory and the onle reason no take that back the price also i paid $750 new and thats also sold me i could afford to buy i guess the real henry which was made by who? winchester or somebody else , but the prices of $1250-1500 for a new one and i haven't seen one of those people that say they had to go and send the extra money up to $175to go to a privite gun smith and repair it to shoot . ive been trying to keep close watch on the rifles all the new 66,72 76  and others that all said out of the box they dont load just jam how can any quailty company know this must be all over not just here, let the gun go i thought that ever gun by law had to be tested at least one round,how could it fire if it won't load ,failure to load is a befire fireing step so how was it tested? and other saftey issuses ,without a fire how do they know it works .i still think out of box the company shound be standing on there head to make the factory falt just go away for free.the gun onwers out his gun and hopes it comes back safe and not more worse off than before you realy cant say they will do a good job because out of the box the job is not right. ask the other rifle ownedr to write there probloms out of box and lets see what that adds up to i wish i could trust that out of box the gun would just do what its supposed to but i dont trust them companies either.so i might have bought an imposter which grinds my gears dont get me wrong but luckly it is a shooter out of box 100 yard 2.5 inch group never jams i ride her like you guys every other weekend i get to shoot about 750 rounds 300 in the fake henry i put about 2500 rounds so far under in 5 months and others.ive ripped threw all 10 rounds like in comp. and she cycles fine and smoot i got a fake which shoots i wish i could get into a 73but dont want the repairs.i love to shoot.because my time means alot to me you know the  burnin daylite sayin is me getin to the range glad my wife like to shoot she has a glock 23 and likes 1873 cattlemen cimm. well i guess thats all hope i didnt piss any one off because i do feel riiped off by lyiers i probubly would have just waited longer to save for the uberti 73 but that stupid made in America got me see ya .

Well Pard, I don't know what to say except that I have a Uberti Henry, 66 and a 73.  I didn't pay anything near what you are quoting for any of them.  The only gunsmith work I have had done was to have the 66 altered to feed the 44 Russian.  It was 44 spl. when I bought.  I did have the 73 slicked up a bit but not by a gunsmith, just a friend of mine who did it for me.  Mostly these guns work fine right out of the box.  The only guns I have ever had when bought new were one of my Vaqueros had a part in the cross bolt, which holds the cylinder pin, put in wrong.  I had an authorized gunsmith fix it under warranty.  The both guns shot to the left and I sent them back to Ruger with a target and a couple of weeks later they came back shooting point of aim.

All European guns are fired for proof, but I don't think they are extensively function fired.

I hope this helps you some.

Will Ketchum

[louisc]

yes it does help now i just have to sell it, to buy a 73 with 20" barrel they have that size barrel for a 73 or whatever is close in 45lc ,And appologies to any offended I just felt i had to justify to every one why i let my self get taken ,more issues with me dealing with that thought the company wasn't even building to 1950's now i know i didn't ask the right question when looking before i bought.you guys have been very helpful to me learning enough for me to get in trouble now i know a little need to probubly need to find a used one to fit my wallet and sell the other one THANKS TO ALL FOR YOUR KIND WORDS

[Steel Horse Bailey]

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

[Driftwood Johnson]

Howdy louisc

No point going over the truthfulness of HRAC's advertising again, this is a board dedicated to the 1860 Model Henry and there is often not a lot of love lost here on HRAC.

I will stand by my earlier statement that most of the Italian guns do function out of the box. Whether they function at a level we demand in CAS is an entirely different matter. It gets back to the race car analogy.

All guns manufactured in Italy are required to be proof tested in government run proofhouses. Proof testing does not mean torture testing for function. It simply means can the gun fire a high pressure proof round without blowing up. Rigorously running the gun through its paces with a box full of ammo is a completely different situation. Believe me, if the manufacturers had to do that, the guns would cost more, simply because of the time involved. Here in the US the government does not require guns to be proof tested. Some manufacturers do, some don't. I don't know if HRAC does or not. Ruger does, it used to be common to buy a Vaquero with dirty chambers because after proof testing they did not bother to clean the chambers out.

A number of years ago I took a tour of the Remington plant in Ilion NY. I had a chance to watch some rifles being proof tested. Each rifle was secured in a special test stand that included a heavy steel hood wrapped around the gun to protect the operator in case something went wrong. The muzzle of the rifle projected into a separate room where the bullets were trapped. The operator mounted the gun on the test stand, loaded it with one round, closed the safety hood and then pulled the trigger. Then she opened up the hood, took out the rifle, filled out some paperwork, and started again with the next rifle. That was it, one proof round, no extensive working of the action or anything to be sure it fed properly. All manufacturers will take at least some time to be sure their guns function in the shop, that amount of time may vary from manufacturer to manufacturer. But such testing seldom includes extensive firing.

I have owned several Italian made guns over the years. The first one was an Uberti made Cap & Ball revolver that I bought in 1968 when I was just a kid. Quality was very high in those days, and I could never complain about the quality of that gun. Years later I bought a used Cimarron Cattleman revolver, also made by Uberti. This one was a dog, one of the most poorly made guns I have ever owned. It had problems from the start, probably why the original owner got rid of it. I eventually got rid of it too. I have an Uberti made '73 that I also bought used. It was fine, except for a terrible trigger job that the original owner had done to it. I eventually had to replace the trigger and the hammer, but that was no fault of Uberti's, it was caused by the incompetent way the original owner performed a trigger job. My next Uberti gun was another Cattleman. This one was considerably better than the first one and I still have it. I bought a used Remington New Model 1858 Army a few years ago, and it is fine too. My Italian made Pedersoli Sharps is fine and so is my Uberti made Henry. I hasten to add that with some of these guns I have done, or had done, extra smithing to make them 'race ready', for CAS. But they functioned fine out of the box for 'normal' use.

As far as prices are concerned, I think you are looking at Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Prices, as specified on some of the importer's websites. You can usually do better than that. Of course you cannot buy these rifles yourself direct, you have to have a dealer order them for you. The dealer will probably get a dealer's price, but then he will mark it up to whatever he thinks is appropriate. It helps to deal with a large dealer who regularly stocks cowboy type guns.

I always suggest that folks watch the Dixie Gunworks website.

http://www.dixiegun.com/

Check out their prices on long guns here. There is a second page too.

http://www.dixiegunworks.com/default.php?cPath=22_92_184&sort=2a&&page=1

If you have a dealer order from Dixie for you he will have to pay the same price you see here. They have already discounted their prices and do not offer a further dealer discount.

Dixie also runs periodic sales on selected models. You can see a couple of them on these pages. I got a great deal on both my Henry and my Sharps when I bought them through Dixie a few years ago. Both the Sharps and the Henry were normally selling for around $1000 each. I got them for around $800 each. You will probably not see such deep discounts these days though, because of the declining value of the dollar against the euro.

[Six Shot]

This is the first time I shot mine so the receiver was still pretty shiney but its starting to develop a patina from shooting BP through it. 

[Steel Horse Bailey]

Nice, Six Shot!

Keep up the good work.


The (real-life) ex-Cavalry Sergeant in me LIKES clean, shiny brass - I polished mine for several years after I got it.  Then I saw how many old guns had that nice patina, and I changed my tactics.  Besides, the glint can really attract unwanted attention from Baddies or Hostiles. 


The sight of a well cared-for and highly polished Henry or '66 STILL looks pretty durn good to me ... but not authentic. 

[Six Shot]

Thanks Bailey. I kinda' like polished brass myself as long as there are no "hostiles" (friend or foe)! 

[Branding Iron Bill]

Here are my babies.  Enjoy the view.  All 44wcf of course!

[Trinity]

Here are my babies.  Enjoy the view.  All 44wcf of course!

That's entirely too many.   SHB and I will -not gladly, but out of duty to our fellow man- each take one off of your hands so that you can sleep well at night.

[Steel Horse Bailey]

Yes, indeed.

You CAN sleep well at night knowing that my brother Trinity and I would be  looking out for those beauties.

I'm 'specially fond of the bare steel, brass receiver one - they're ALL purty, but that one ... well ... sigh.

[Ransom Gaer]

Isn't it nice to have Pards like Trinity and Steel Horse Bailey.  Always willing to help out a Pard.

Actually, I was thinking that if you were going to be going after the bad guys, those rifles are just too shiny.   The bad guys will see them miles away.  Of course they may be blinded by them too.  The shine really needs to be reduced and they really do like nice with a dull patina too.

All joking aside, they do look really nice.  I gotta get me one of those steel frame Henries.

Ransom Gaer

[Dakota Widowmaker]

Guys and Gals,

These all look AMAZING!!! I need to dig mine out and get it looking all fine and dandy for the winter.

[Steel Horse Bailey]

Guys and Gals,

These all look AMAZING!!! I need to dig mine out and get it looking all fine and dandy for the winter.

Howdy again, y'all!

There's a couple schools of thought here.

For the first few years after I got my Improved Henry ('66) I kept that baby shined up and lookin' spiffy and new.  It was gorgeous.  Then I got into a period (that I'm STILL in) that likes the look of a well cared-for, but used rifle.  It's an authenticity thing. 

Instead of me looking all squeaky-clean and new, I've gone to the "used" look.  Since my persona is that of a retired Cavalry 1st Sergeant, circa 1885 or so, my rifle would look more like a well maintained rifle that I bought new, "back then."


BUT ... the (real-life) ex Platoon Sergeant hiding in my skin still hates to see brass that isn't polished to Inspection-level brightness!

Ah well.  Yer mileage may vary.

I s'pose if this is the worst that happens to me today, I'll be in pretty good shape!

 

[Texas Lawdog]

Jeff, This too, will soon pass!

[Steel Horse Bailey]

Jeff, This too, will soon pass!

Never!

[Jrw8214]

Sweet looking guns Seth!

[Branding Iron Bill]

I'd love to get my hands on a blued frame model like yours in 44WCF.  Nice collection!
[/quote
Thanks Seth.  Found the blue one on the SASS classified a few years back.  Navy Arms has the blue ones listed at $1247.00. (ouch!)  Dixie lists only the case colored ones for $950.00.  That's  a huge price difference!  If I had a case colored one, I'd be mighty tempted to antique it.  But that's all I need is another Henry. (grin).   BTW.  I like the engraving done to your Henry. That's something to be proud of.  Did you take the picture?  If so, care to share some info on camera used and settings.  Also tips on lighting.  The picture really looks professional, and of magazine quality.

Patrick D.

[Steel Horse Bailey]

Branding Iron Bill -

Yes.  I took the picture.  Here's the technical info:

Width                 1280 Pixels
Height                 960 Pixels
Horiz Res                      72 dpi
Vert Res                      72 dpi
Bit Depth                      24
Frame Count              1
Equipment Make              FUJIFILM
Camera Model              FinePix S7000
Color Representation           sRGB
Shutter Speed              1/64 sec.
Lens Aperture              F/3.6
Focal Length              9 mm
F-Number                      F/3.6
Exposure Time              1/60 sec.
ISO Speed                      ISO-200
Metering Mode              Pattern
Exposure Program           Aperture Priority
Exposure Compensation   0 step

What I want to know, Seth;  did'ja get a good klang   when ya took a "shot" with all them specs-i-fi-cashuns?