Inside My 1860 Henry Rifle

I removed the right side plate from my Cimarron Firearms Henry tonight. This was the first time I’ve done so after buying it back in March.

Side plate removal required loosening the screw which acts as the pivot for the lever, then tapping the plate out with a mallet, toward the top of the receiver. It was snug, but I was able to remove it pretty easily, unlike when I tried to get into my 1873 Sporting Rifle for the first time. (That required the use of my mill and a broken screw extractor.) Likewise, putting it back on also required the mallet to tap it back down into the dovetail. The machining is very precise.

The side plates and matching receiver recesses on Uberti Henry rifles are known to be razor sharp. Despite being careful, I still sliced my left thumb on the receiver recess. Managed to NOT bleed all over the rifle, though.

I have put a few hundred black powder handloads through the gun, both full power .44-40 WCF and reduced, .44 Henry rimfire-equivalent loads. There was zero BP fouling inside. .44-40 cases seal the chamber really well, especially with full charges.

It was dry inside so before reassembly I lubed it with FP-10 and put Kroil on the ends of the lifter spring screws, which don’t want to turn. They can be adjusted to reduce the amount of effort required to work the action but it’s already easy so I’m not going to worry about them.

Seeing how clean it was inside I don’t plan to remove the side plate more than once every several years.

Levergun Weekend

Saturday afternoon I loaded up 150 rounds of .38-40 with a 180 bullet on top of about 8.5 grains of Unique. After dinner, I loaded 100 rounds of .44-40 with a 200 grain bullet on top of the same powder charge. Bullets for both calibers were soft cast from Desperado Cowboy bullets. I mostly shoot black powder in .44-40 but still had a bunch of the DCB 200 grainers, which don't carry enough lube for BP in a rifle, so smokeless it was.

Sunday morning was my club's lever action rifle match. Even though it was Easter Sunday, we had 9 shooters. We had a couple Rossi 92s, a Cimarron 1873, a Henry Big Boy, a Marlin 1894 CB, and even a Winchester 1894 in .44 Magnum loaded with .44 Specials. I shot my Cimarron 1860 Henry with .44 Henry-equivalent black powder loads, and got some ribbing from the other guys about second hand smoke.

We started out at 10 - 12 yards, then moved back to 50. The targets were ~8" square steel plates.

I shot well, coming in 4th. I missed only one target but of course I was slower than the guys shooting mouse-fart level .38s. Also, the Henry has more drop in the stock than my 1873, which slowed me down compared to last month.

I put 55 rounds through the 1860 Henry. The .44 rimfire-level loads foul noticeably less than full-power .44 WCFs. It took only about a half dozen patches wet with moose milk to clean the bore.

The rifle's developing a nice patina on the brass receiver now.

We were done pretty early so in the afternoon I decided to replenish my supply of bullets suitable for shooting on top of black powder. So, I topped off my Lyman lead pot with some 1:20 alloy that I got from Roto Metals, and ran off a few hundred bullets in my Accurate Molds 43-215C. Hopefully, I'll be able to lube and size them this week after work.

Cimarron Firearms 1860 Henry Civil War Model

A couple of weeks ago I ordered a Cimarron Firearms 1860 Henry Civil War model rifle from Buffalo Arms, the same place I got my Cimarron 1873 Sporting Rifle from two years ago. The Henry arrived at my FFL last week and I did the transfer on Thursday. Like the 1873, the Henry is chambered for .44-40 / .44 WCF. I shot it for the first time yesterday.

As shown in the above picture, a sling swivel is mounted on the stock. I got a sling from Dell's Leather Works, which came from NY to PA in about 3 days.

This shows the German silver front sight blade and the sling attachment loop on the barrel.

The rear sight is a folding ladder. When folded, it's set for 100 yards. It's then graduated out to a very optimistic 800 yards. It also has a notch on the very top which may be for 900 yards.

Most Henry replicas come with a trapdoor in the buttplate which covers a cavity in the stock that accepts a four piece cleaning rod. My rifle doesn't have that, however. I plan to pull the buttplate off and see if the stock is drilled for a cleaning rod. If so, I may swap out the buttplate.

Overall, the rifle is extremely well finished. Wood-to-metal fit is excellent and the action works smoothly (and it's getting smoother as it gets worked).

Aside from the high quality, the other initial impression is that the rifle is heavy. It weighs in around 9 pounds, partially due to the weight of the brass receiver and partially due to how the magazine tube is machine from the same piece of steel as the barrel.

In my next post I'll talk about shooting it, but I wanted to leave off with this, a facsimile of an 1860s Henry Rifle advertisement.