Henry Rifle Forums

This little rifle is light, compact and very fast handling, not to mention very, very accurate.
Sure, it got a facelift and a few minor surgeries but it has turned into a beauty. Ive actually given this one a name, ElCheapo Guzman.
I took the whole firearm apart and stripped the stocks down to bare wood to do a little clean up and smooth out some sharp edges and most of all to get rid of that horrendous red stain they put on them, used some medium Walnut dye, not stain but dye on both pieces and put Tru-Oil back on, 7 coats. Added a new SS follower and new mag spring. New front sight from DawsonPrecision, the best FO sight on the market period. Put in a reduced power ejector spring, cleaned up the sears along with a new hammerspring. Now this little thing is lightning fast and very smooth with a light and very crisp trigger break. The funny thing is is that the 16" model is only supposed to hold 8 rounds of 357, well, mine loads 10, go figure. Im not complaining. For the money Im quite happy with it. Ill confidently say I have over 2500 rounds through it at this point and I have not had a single malfunction of any kind. This is the kind of buy makes me happy.

Looks good, 357 is such a fun round in a lever gun.
I own a pair of Rossi rifles, I also stripped the stock on, and
am about to do the 45 colt.
My 357 has the 24" octagon and the 45 has the 20".

RP

Beautiful gun. Great workmanship on your part. Its a customised special for sure.

Looks great and sounds like it functions as well as it looks.

Nice work Bill. Im not a Rossi fan as they burned me once. But looks like you have the talent to make it like it should be from the factory to begin with.

Wow that is beautiful!

Thanks for the kind words. It does have what I consider a fatal flaw though and it made me consider sending it back, the cham er. The original 92 chamberings were bottlenecked cartridges from my understanding so the internal feeding gemoetry would permit smooth feeding, not so much with straightwall ases so of course manufacturers had to do something and most ended up reaming the chamber opening, Rossi, on many of these over-did it and thats certainly the case with this one. It really bulges the brass bad with really hot 357 loads. So, I won't be hunting with this one or anything like that.
It did pretty'd-up nicely though and it does run like a scalded dog. What surprised me the most about it was that it seems to shoot everything really well. And, for $640 it was well fit, wood-metal impressed me. To top it off this thing shoots cast bullets as well as it does jacketed and it has shot way more cast than jacketed too. Minimal leading. Ive shot probably 300 cast at a time with no loss of accuracy, I guess lapping the bore helped with that.
As far as what I personally did to it I doubt that it was nothing that everybody else is capable of. In other words, if I can do it so can you.

Though Id love to have another Henry I found another Rossi at the range/store where I shoot for an attractive price that caught my eye. This one is a 20" 44mag thats pretty sharp. The wood and finish is quite different from this one, in a good way but the fit and finish, especially the metal is just outstanding.
Anyway, thanks again for the compliments.

Man you did a great job on that Rossi! I have one in 45 Colt but it is a wee bit shorter at 9 inches. It is my customized Ranch Hand and when you take them down and do the internal clean up of burrs and roughness they really run nice. I reduced the spring pressure on the loading gate and it is sweet to load!

I just purchased the same gun but in stainless.
I have already bought the ejector spring and intend to replace the follower.
I'm hoping I don't have the case bulge issue but have heard it's common.

Bill, great job on your improvements. It's too bad about the case bulging issue.

Well Ive found that LilGun powder gives me a pretty thumpin load with much lower pressures than other powders. IMR4227 is another good o e in it. A full charger of the IMR with a 165gr GC SWC is quite potent and accurate enough to put 10 into one ragged hole at 50yds. The LilGun will do the same. Not sure of velocities because I shot my chrono.
Yeah I had to do something with that ej spring, that thing was worse than a semi, it would throw the brass into orbit. It was just ridiculous.