Henry Rifle Forums

Hello - I have a Henry 45-70 color cased hardened. I am reloading this cartridge for the first time and have run into some trouble. The gun feeds factory HSM cowboy rounds fine, but my reloads are hitting the rifling. I have tried Gardners Cache 405 gr and Berrys 350 gr bullets at book value OAL. I even tried to trim my brass and jam the Berrys bullet in further, but I bottomed out my seating stem. Is Henry known for shorter throats? You finding shorter OALs are required? Is there a bullet design that is more slender? I am thinking these bullet designs are not compatible with my gun. I have some 325 gr lead flat points to try next. Thank you for any ideas.

HSM factory 405 gr = 2.548 OAL
Gardners 405 gr = 2.515 OAL (at cannelure)
Berrys 350 gr = 2.445 OAL (trimmed brass)

Welcome to the forum from CT. A few of our members are familiar with that rifle, so I expect you'll be getting some replies soon. Glad you joined us.

welcome indeed, delighted to have you join our forum .... our Henry CCH 45-70 has proven to be one heck of a rifle .... I hope you will post some pictures and please feel free to read and post often .... looking forward to your range reports and use impressions as you become better acquainted with yours .... in loading for ours, I made no measurements whatsoever .... instead, I used a HSM Cowboy Action round to set the bullet seating die .... since then, I've loaded and fired a wide range of cast and jacketed bullets with no problems at all .... be sure to follow the link below and add your Henry to our community's total


http://henryrifleforums.com/viewtopic.p ... 50#p133950

Welcome aboard KS. As the old guard said you will find a lot of folks that are willing to help out.

I also load for my 45-70 and use Missouri Hi Tek or Hunters Supply bullets without any issue. What bullet diameter are you using, I am using 0.459 diameter in both manufacturers.

Any .45-70 lever rifle should chamber the standard 405 gr. RNFP round at 2.550.

Hello KState and welcome to the forum. I have that exact same rifle and I load those Berrys bullets all the time. I have no issues with those or any other 405 grain bullet I have tried. Mine likes the Hornady 350 grain bullet for hunting loads. There must be some other issue there. If it feeds the factory loads it should feed the reloads if they are done right.

JEBar wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 30, 2020 8:17 am

welcome indeed, delighted to have you join our forum .... our Henry CCH 45-70 has proven to be one heck of a rifle .... I hope you will post some pictures and please feel free to read and post often .... looking forward to your range reports and use impressions as you become better acquainted with yours .... in loading for ours, I made no measurements whatsoever .... instead, I used a HSM Cowboy Action round to set the bullet seating die .... since then, I've loaded and fired a wide range of cast and jacketed bullets with no problems at all .... be sure to follow the link below and add your Henry to our community's total


http://henryrifleforums.com/viewtopic.p ... 50#p133950

That would be a good thing for kstate to try. I've done that on occasion, setting the die over a factory round. Worked fine for me.
I'm not familiar with the bullets, etc. he's loading, so can't speak to that.
Welcome to the forum, and good luck to you. You'll get it figured out.

Thank you for the replies. I'm happy to be here.

I will play with it some more this weekend. I may pull the bullet from HSM factory round and reload it to confirm my set up is working. Probably silly, but it will eliminate some variables. The bullets I'm having trouble with have a noticeably larger meplat and more bulk towards the front.

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Nothing silly about eliminating variables. Seems likely the "more bulk towards the front". AKA the ogive of the bullet too plump for the rifle throat/lead.

kstate1100 wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 30, 2020 7:24 pm

Thank you for the replies. I'm happy to be here.

I will play with it some more this weekend. I may pull the bullet from HSM factory round and reload it to confirm my set up is working. Probably silly, but it will eliminate some variables. The bullets I'm having trouble with have a noticeably larger meplat and more bulk towards the front.

kstate1100 wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 30, 2020 7:24 pm

Thank you for the replies. I'm happy to be here.

I will play with it some more this weekend. I may pull the bullet from HSM factory round and reload it to confirm my set up is working. Probably silly, but it will eliminate some variables. The bullets I'm having trouble with have a noticeably larger meplat and more bulk towards the front.

Sorry man! that is frustrating. I have the exact same rifle and load Hornady 300 grain, Hornady 350 grain and Buffalo Bore Buffalo #1 405 grain all at 2.55" col
Hope you get it figured out!

Ok, an update on this. I pulled the HSM bullet and ran it through my setup with no issues. Works fine at 2.548 OAL.

Gardners 405 gr flat point really weighs in at 420 gr and is shorter than the pulled HSM 405 gr bullet. If it is shorter but weighs more, I can see where the ogive has to be farther forward.

I was able to get it to plunk into the chamber and fall freely at 2.505 OAL. I backed off the powder level and will give it a try.

kstate1100 wrote: ↑

Sun May 03, 2020 4:19 pm

Gardners 405 gr flat point really weighs in at 420 gr and is shorter than the pulled HSM 405 gr bullet. If it is shorter but weighs more

interesting .... looking forward to the results

I have a 45-70 in a Henry single shot and have the same issues with loading length. With 400 grain Speer bullets I load to an oal of 2.510, with the Hawk 400 grain 2.485. This is not a problem as long as you remember that when seating bullets deeper into the case you are reducing case capacity and increasing pressure. You will hit max pressure using less powder.

You state that the bullets are hitting the rifling....are you actually seeing the rifling engraving on the bullet?

I have used a half-dozen different bullets all seated to crimp in the cannelures/crimping grooves, resulting in normal OAL and never a feed issue in my H010-CC.

Its just me but I would change bullets before I would seat deeper and change powder charges.