Henry Rifle Forums

Get ready to Ramble....

So, I've been loading 6.5x55 swede... Subsonic, 140grn bthp's.

It's been an interesting time. The two loads I worked up use bullseye or titegroup powders.

With both powders, the Remmington 140grn bt accutip are about 100 to 120fps slower. They require almost a full grain of powder more for the same speed as the sierra 140grn bthp.


The remington accutip with the titegroup load I settled on settles in at 1020.8fps in this warm weather.
The Sierra 140grn settles in at 1063fps.
In both cases, the send shot goes super. There is just enough heat to send both of them over 1100fps. But I plan to use these to dispatch vermin and deer. The cold bore shot matters to me. Both rounds group exceptionally well when I wait between shots, meaning the first cold bore round impact is repeatable. Which is nice, considering I'm using an M1938 Swedish Mauser with a can on it.

So that brings me to todays project,
308 subs. Again, I chose Titegroup. I had less issues with it, along with more consistent velocities

Left to right, 168grn nosler bthp
175grn Sierra bthp,
190grn hornaday subx
200grn Speer fbsp
220grn sierra BTHP

Now, I plan to shoot these out of my ruger american; it's a 1:10 twist. I did have the cold bore shot here in the168 group. I suspect I can get the SD down a bit. I forgot to chamber that case, and the bullet went in hard. Some of the jacket was scraped. I think that is why the first shot had a much higher sd than the rest of the groups.
nosler 168grn


Sierra 175, these two shots were touching



Hornaday 190 sub x, the first round to fall subsonic. Also, it stacked both bullets in the same hole>..



Speer 200grn fbsp



Sierra 220grn bthp. I did all of this testing at 50 yards without a can because... yep, these show a bit of wobble at 50 yards. I'll save these bullets for my 300blk with a 1:7.5 twist.


Now, the reason why you didn't get photos of the groups is because my Henry bbx 45colt got back from warranty work. It looks fantastic.




I'm waiting on a scope, so, real accuracy tests will have to wait. I did put the pic rail, muzzle device and a holoson 510c on it to test it. The Chosun was last on a 300blk and was considerably off. It took me a number of rounds to get it sighted in at 50 yds.
This is a 5-round group sans the can @ 50 yards with American Eagle 250grn sp.


So, right out of the box, I have significant improvement. It's grouping, and I'll bet any variance is my fault, not the guns. I had a dickens of the time with the gun when I put the can on. I checked it with my clearance rod, but it was shaving bullets. I could not think of why. I took the can off and looked again. Sure enough, the clearance rod was silly close to one of the prongs on the flash hider. I un-torqued it, cleaned the threads, and removed the shims. I put it back on, test fit it with the clearance rod, and poof, it's all centered.

Lesson learned, shims suck, and you might get your muzzle device to look perfectly square, but as I found out when I put them back on, they tweak with the very fine tolerances. I tried three ways from sunday to get the shims to work. It wouldn't. I didn't run shims last time, so I left them off. I checked it with the rod once again, it cleared, checked it with rod and can, it was perfectly centered. I torqued the muzzle device down, and did a final check. We were good to go.

The result?
Matts, 285 grain Kieth SWC. The bottom two were sighting it in. The top 6 are one group.


250grn american eagle


So yeah, I need to clean, deprime, and prep all my 45 Colt brass. Barring that, I think this rifle is right on.

My muzzle device for my Smith and Wesson 1854 arrived today. This is a brake version, instead of the flash hider I use on the Henry. (different thread pitch, and this is what was instock.) Using what I learned about shims screwing with things, I skipped that step. Everything cleared the clearance rod tests. Here are its groups.
5 rounds of matts 285 swc with can.


I thought there was no way. So I tried for a second group, and pulled one.


This is 6 rounds of Matt's 285grn truncated cone gas-checked bullets. Again I pulled a pair.


I had a bit of factory ammo left, and being as how this is a Henry forum, I thought I'd give the Henry a go at 50 yds using the Holosun 510 and griffin bushwacker 46.

So, here, 3 rounds of American Eagle 250, 3 rounds of Speer Gold Dot 250, 3 rounds of Winchester Ranger Sxt. The gold dot was hitting 890fps, the Winchester ranger about 1020, and the American eagle about 1100.

So, 3 ammo types, pretty darn good. Especially since it would not group 250 grain bullets before.

Those are very nice results. I'm glad it came back and did so well.

Nice shooting with the 45X model! Had mine out last week with Banish 45 on it and it is FUN to just plink with. Even out at 50 yds. the factory green dot front sight just peaks over the can and you just can't miss with it. 255 gr. Xtreme plated bullet over 6 gr. Red Dot sweet shooting right on point and quiet!

I love precision marksmanship. Unfortunately, the pursuit of precision requires investment of time & money. How precise can one afford to be, is the question.

I did have one ammo that did not perform with EITHER rifle. That is the black box ammo inc 45 colt 250grn tmc.

I bought this long before I had either of my lever guns. Like Aguilla, it isn't consistent. Some of the rims are thicker than others, and my Freedom Arms 83 had some trouble rotating the cylinder. One would be a cat's whisker too thick, and the cylinder wouldn't rotate. I tossed it in the back of the safe. I brought it out yesterday and tried about 25 rounds with both rifles, with the can and without the can.

With either rifle, the best group at 50 yards was around 6 inches. The average was closer to 8 to 10. So, if you see a deal on this stuff, exercise caution.

An update on the BBX.

I was testing out some blue bullet, berry's plated, and midway second JSP' loads at 120yds. I'd done these tests with the smith a few days before and had some pretty good groups.

The groups with the Henry were anywhere from 8 to 15". Now, these loads were all subsonic. I thought the rifle might have loosened up. So I brought it in to tighten things down. On a whim, I stuck my bore scope down the barrel. It was dirty as all get out. So maybe it was leading. I've about 300 rounds through it since the last cleaning. 50 ish, were the 260grain hollow base Webley; some were lead swc, but the vast majority were plated, coated, or Jacketed. Maybe the fact I'm using a faster burning powder. Maybe the obturation is leading to leading. One of the things I did change is pick up some Hornaday cowboy dies for 45colt and 357 mag. So far that's keeping me from shaving powder coat and lead from bullets. For whatever reason, my previous seater dies seemed to do a lot of lead, plating, or powder coat shaving. I suspect that this, with my faster burning powder was the major cause of the leading.
Dry patch.


Second Jag after scrubbing.


Five patches and a lot more scrubbing later.


A half dozen patches later.


I've got vids of the barrel, it's not the smoothest. So that might have been part of the cause of the leading. I let the barrel soak for a while and ran a jag down it.


It seemed clean-er, but not clean. The barrel looked rough, and there were still patches of noticeable lead. I pulled out some bore brite. These are 25 swipes each. The far right was the last patch after soaking for 10 min in lead solvent.


A dry patch after soaking in more lead solvent.


More wet solvent. At this point, I'm 60 patches in, and each patch has 25 strokes with a bore brush.


A dry patch.


So, after another 1/2 hour of cleaning. The barrel was clean, and the bore was less rough.




So, it's an improvement. I'm hoping I've mitigated the leading. Both by smoothing out the bore and using the Hornaday Cowboy seating dies. I'll also stick to Gas checked lead bullets.

I cleaned and scoped the Smith today. The barrel had a lead in it also, but not nearly to the level of the Henry. It was a bit smoother, shinier as a factory barrel goes. It shot the same loads, nearly one-for-one with the Henry. It, in general, cleaned up a lot faster than the Henry. About 45 minutes compared to 3.5 hours for the Henry.

I loaded a bit of ammo to test the Henry with. I'll do that in a day or so. I hope it goes well with both rifles.

Wow hope you get the leading problem sorted out. Looks like it was shooting well before that. I use the Xtreme 255 gr. plated conical bullet over 6 gr. Red Dot for my suppressor plinking and also at times the Missouri Bullets 250 RNFP with 8 gr. Unique and no leading issues. The Red Dot Xtreme load is the best for being accurate. In fact all my Henry lever rifles shoot extremely clean with the coated MB bullets and I might run the bore snake cleaner thru them once in a while cause I feel guilty not cleaning it.

fortyshooter wrote: ↑

Wed Nov 20, 2024 7:21 pm

Wow hope you get the leading problem sorted out. Looks like it was shooting well before that. I use the Xtreme 255 gr. plated conical bullet over 6 gr. Red Dot for my suppressor plinking and also at times the Missouri Bullets 250 RNFP with 8 gr. Unique and no leading issues. The Red Dot Xtreme load is the best for being accurate. In fact all my Henry lever rifles shoot extremely clean with the coated MB bullets and I might run the bore snake cleaner thru them once in a while cause I feel guilty not cleaning it.

Yeah, I'm leaning towards a number of causes: obturation, a slightly rough bore, having shot a number of bullets that had some coating or plating scraped, and running so many of the HB Webley conicals. I hope that goes well.

I don't have any red dot, but I am using CFEP, which is a little slower burning than Unique and quite a bit slower than Red Dot. It's even a bit slower than BE 86, which is a pretty fun powder. One of the reasons I like it is that it's pretty good shooting and easy to get close to 1050fps without going over.

This is the smith bore after cleaning.





I've got an actual borescope coming. That should allow me to get some better vids and shots of the lands and groves.

Barrel with new bore scope. There are some little issues. Nothing too out of the ordinary.

Here is the borescope stills of the smith and wesson. There's a lot more tooling chatter in the barrel.