GFK my beat up old 336 is still wearing the very cheap chinese scope it came with well over a decade ago. I dont think I have ever shot a group over 1.5moa with it and I have shot it on paper to 300m. The 2 longest shots on deer I have taken were both with it and have played around shooting steel to 800y.
The optics are certainly no where near as good as better quality glass, the adjustments arent as precise as a higher grade scopes but it does hold zero 100% reliably. It had been neglected for a few years so I pulled it out of the safe a few months back when I had a mob of hogs move in on the farm. 1 shot to check zero a second cutting the first hole confirmed it. I dont think the scope has been adjusted in over 5 years since it was zeroed with my current load.
Provided the scope holds zero reliably it wont hinder the accuracy of the rifle. Plenty of very good reasons to go with higher dollar scopes but like you I cant justify it on this rifle while ever the cheap one keeps performing.
The rifle cost me $200 with 3 packets ammo and the scope.
Spring has sprung. Get out and shoot your Henry
Accuracy Expectations with .357 Big Boy Steel
Re: Accuracy Expectations with .357 Big Boy Steel
Just keeping this thread updated for sometime that another person may have a similar issue and look for possible solutions and resolution. I hate when I have a problem with my vehicles and find another thread someplace where someone has the same problem, then people make suggestions for resolving it, and you never find out if anything worked.
So I ended up getting in touch with Henry and explained my problem. They authorized me to send the rifle back and after a short turnaround time, it came back via UPS. I called and asked what they found and got a call back a few hours later, explaining that they changed the barrel, the bolt, and a couple other parts. It was hearing that they changed the barrel that I was hoping to hear. The rifle looks great, action feels nice and smooth, (it did both before, so no change there) and I'm anxious to shoot it now.
I'm planning to give it a good workout this weekend. I've got enough of the factory ammo in .357 left from my earlier efforts to compare before/after, along with my 148 wadcutters in .38 special cases. I also have a box of the 158 XTP bullets and a box of the 140 FTX bullets, along with 296, Lil Gun, and a few other powders to load up, but that will depend on getting good results with the factory ammo first.
So I ended up getting in touch with Henry and explained my problem. They authorized me to send the rifle back and after a short turnaround time, it came back via UPS. I called and asked what they found and got a call back a few hours later, explaining that they changed the barrel, the bolt, and a couple other parts. It was hearing that they changed the barrel that I was hoping to hear. The rifle looks great, action feels nice and smooth, (it did both before, so no change there) and I'm anxious to shoot it now.
I'm planning to give it a good workout this weekend. I've got enough of the factory ammo in .357 left from my earlier efforts to compare before/after, along with my 148 wadcutters in .38 special cases. I also have a box of the 158 XTP bullets and a box of the 140 FTX bullets, along with 296, Lil Gun, and a few other powders to load up, but that will depend on getting good results with the factory ammo first.
1 x
Re: Accuracy Expectations with .357 Big Boy Steel
This will be a longer post, I'm apologizing for that now.
I remounted my Bushnell Prime 1-4 scope using Henry's base, and got things set up to see if the rifle would group for me now. Saturday was warm and humid, but little wind, so a good day to shoot. I set targets out at 25 and 50 yards, since that was easiest. First up I put some 158 lead round nose reloads through at 25 yards, and figured I'd use those to get the scope close. First shot was about 6 inches high and about a foot right. OK, at least I'm on paper, and I can see the hits. Second shot was still about a foot right, but now about 8 inches under the first shot. Not good. I put a total of 8 shots through the rifle and everything was to the right. Unfortunately, the shots varied in elevation by over 8 inches, and horizontally by about the same. I could hold a softball over that group and only three shots would have hit it.....and this was at 25 yards. Disgusted doesn't begin to describe how I felt. I went back into the house and got an old single shot .22 with a 4x scope and took five shots at 50 yards with it to see if I was just not "on" that day, but they were a group of about 1 inch. I use this rifle for garden pests and that is what I expect it to do at 50 yards, so it's not me.
So sitting there thinking about things, and what they did at Henry after replacing the barrel and bolt. I believe that the rifle is probably mounted into a fixture at Henry when being test fired, not shoulder fired using sights. That would be way more efficient. I sent the rifle back with the rear sight, elevator, and set screw in a little zip-loc bag, not mounted, since I was using other sighting systems. The rear sight came back mounted on the new barrel. Although I don't think they did any real accuracy testing, I'm sure they did their usual test firing, and if the rifle performed within their specifications, whatever those may be, then it gets shipped back to me.
At this point I took my scope back off and decided to try the irons. I'm fairly comfortable using military style post and aperture sights, or standard patidge style handgun sights, and while not a fan of buckhorn sights, they'll do in a pinch. I switched to different ammo too, using 158 grain lead SWC bullets. Now these lead bullets loads are mid range at best and were more for paper punching, but I'm not wasting the factory ammo if these don't group. I fired a total of 7 rounds at the Army L target, and for reference, the black is just a tiny bit under 5 inches in diameter. The group is strung vertically, but horizontally wasn't too bad. Way better than the previous shots and I'll claim the vertical variation as dislike of the buckhorn sights.
With a little encouragement from those lead bullets, I decided to put the scope back on, and try again. I wanted to shoot the lead bullets again, but decided I'd just move on to the factory .357 loads. For reference purposes, here's my bench, and the Caldwell Stinger I use. I have a nice front rest with an owl ear bag, and a nice bunny ear rear bag, and they work well with bolt guns, but the lever gun sits better in the Stinger. The ammo I had was a half box of PMC Bronze 158 JSPs, and an almost full box of Fiocchi Range Dynamics 142 FMJTC cartridges.
So I started with the Fiocchi ammo since I had more of that. I picked the orange paster top right on the target at 25 yards for the first group. Those orange circles are 1½ inches in diameter for reference. The first 5 shots went into something I could actually call a group! It was high and right, but they were all about 2½ inches apart. I thought maybe they had to push a little lead out of the barrel, maybe everything was now settling into place, maybe the higher velocity was better for stability, who knows. Anyway, after that first group, I moved over to the left orange paster and fired another 5 rounds. These five were almost all touching! All of a sudden I'm liking this rifle again.
I dialed some clicks to move the group over to the left a bit and fired three more rounds, but this time at 50 yards. Those three high hits were the first at 50 yards, and they were a nice little group. I clicked down a few, with two more clicks left, and decided to see if I could shoot a decent group at 50 yards too. First shot was inside that orange paster, and the next three were all touching it. (The .22 holes were from the shots I took earlier) When I was firing the fifth and final shot for the group, the round misfired. I'll cover that in the next paragraph. Anyway, I'm really liking how my rifle shoots these Fiocchi 142 grain bullets.
So my fifth and last shot for that group on the paster, and my last shot with that Fiocchi ammo, I squoze off the shot and heard that unmistakable sound of just the primer going off. I lifted my cheek from the rifle and saw smoke coming from the back of the receiver where the hammer was resting against the back of the bolt. That spooked me and I got up and walked away for a few minutes. Once it was clear nothing else was happening, I cycled the lever and ejected the round. Clearly the primer fired and vented itself back along the edge of the primer cup, and through the firing pin hole in the bolt. Either the flash hole wasn't punched in that case, or something is blocking it. I have an email and some pictures going back to Fiocchi about that. Needless to say I stopped using the Fiocchi ammo at that point.
At this point I disassembled the rifle and bolt to inspect the firing pin. A blown primer in .223 ammo is not uncommon when guys load hot service rifle loads for the 600 line, I've seen it happen. That frequently results in the firing pin tip being burnt into a weird shape because of the blowtorch like flame shooting back out of the case onto it. It'll pierce every primer after that happens. My malfunction was just the primer, so not the same issue, but I wanted to make sure my firing pin was still fine. So using a 10x loope I confirmed that all was well. This whole thing kind of creeped me out and I was ready to quit, but I needed to make sure the rifle still functioned properly, so after reassembling the rifle, I put 10 rounds of the PMC Bronze onto another target at 50 yards. Unfortunately, the group was not as good as I shot with the Fiocchi ammo, and it was a bit left, but it is still under 3 inches, and that with hunting-quality ammo. I folded a dollar bill in half and tucked it under the edge of the paster for perspective.
So all-in-all I will say that Henry did me right. The rifle that would not shoot anything into a group before is now performing up to expectations. I have some 158 XTP and some 140 FTX bullets to load and see what they'll do in my rifle. As for the Fiocchi ammo, I'm hoping they do me right and if they don't want that round back I'll pull it down myself to see what happened. Odds are they'll want it back though, I know I would. That ammo shot amazingly well and if I can get that kind of grouping with my reloads, I'll be satisfied.
I'm still perplexed why the lead ammo didn't perform better. People alluded to that in earlier posts on this thread, but I didn't give it the credit it deserved back then. Maybe the much lower velocity allows more barrel movement before the bullet leaves the barrel. Olympic airguns have a rifled portion of only about 10 inches for that reason, the barrel is much longer for sight radius, but the actual rifled portion is very short because the pellet only goes about 500 fps, the rest is a hollow tube. Maybe my lead loads, and those 158 grain bullets for Newton's third law to work with, move the rifle around more while the bullet is still traversing the barrel.
Anyway, if you made it this far, thanks for following along with my diatribe. I hope that if anyone finds this at some point in the future, they can collect something useful from it.
I remounted my Bushnell Prime 1-4 scope using Henry's base, and got things set up to see if the rifle would group for me now. Saturday was warm and humid, but little wind, so a good day to shoot. I set targets out at 25 and 50 yards, since that was easiest. First up I put some 158 lead round nose reloads through at 25 yards, and figured I'd use those to get the scope close. First shot was about 6 inches high and about a foot right. OK, at least I'm on paper, and I can see the hits. Second shot was still about a foot right, but now about 8 inches under the first shot. Not good. I put a total of 8 shots through the rifle and everything was to the right. Unfortunately, the shots varied in elevation by over 8 inches, and horizontally by about the same. I could hold a softball over that group and only three shots would have hit it.....and this was at 25 yards. Disgusted doesn't begin to describe how I felt. I went back into the house and got an old single shot .22 with a 4x scope and took five shots at 50 yards with it to see if I was just not "on" that day, but they were a group of about 1 inch. I use this rifle for garden pests and that is what I expect it to do at 50 yards, so it's not me.
So sitting there thinking about things, and what they did at Henry after replacing the barrel and bolt. I believe that the rifle is probably mounted into a fixture at Henry when being test fired, not shoulder fired using sights. That would be way more efficient. I sent the rifle back with the rear sight, elevator, and set screw in a little zip-loc bag, not mounted, since I was using other sighting systems. The rear sight came back mounted on the new barrel. Although I don't think they did any real accuracy testing, I'm sure they did their usual test firing, and if the rifle performed within their specifications, whatever those may be, then it gets shipped back to me.
At this point I took my scope back off and decided to try the irons. I'm fairly comfortable using military style post and aperture sights, or standard patidge style handgun sights, and while not a fan of buckhorn sights, they'll do in a pinch. I switched to different ammo too, using 158 grain lead SWC bullets. Now these lead bullets loads are mid range at best and were more for paper punching, but I'm not wasting the factory ammo if these don't group. I fired a total of 7 rounds at the Army L target, and for reference, the black is just a tiny bit under 5 inches in diameter. The group is strung vertically, but horizontally wasn't too bad. Way better than the previous shots and I'll claim the vertical variation as dislike of the buckhorn sights.
With a little encouragement from those lead bullets, I decided to put the scope back on, and try again. I wanted to shoot the lead bullets again, but decided I'd just move on to the factory .357 loads. For reference purposes, here's my bench, and the Caldwell Stinger I use. I have a nice front rest with an owl ear bag, and a nice bunny ear rear bag, and they work well with bolt guns, but the lever gun sits better in the Stinger. The ammo I had was a half box of PMC Bronze 158 JSPs, and an almost full box of Fiocchi Range Dynamics 142 FMJTC cartridges.
So I started with the Fiocchi ammo since I had more of that. I picked the orange paster top right on the target at 25 yards for the first group. Those orange circles are 1½ inches in diameter for reference. The first 5 shots went into something I could actually call a group! It was high and right, but they were all about 2½ inches apart. I thought maybe they had to push a little lead out of the barrel, maybe everything was now settling into place, maybe the higher velocity was better for stability, who knows. Anyway, after that first group, I moved over to the left orange paster and fired another 5 rounds. These five were almost all touching! All of a sudden I'm liking this rifle again.
I dialed some clicks to move the group over to the left a bit and fired three more rounds, but this time at 50 yards. Those three high hits were the first at 50 yards, and they were a nice little group. I clicked down a few, with two more clicks left, and decided to see if I could shoot a decent group at 50 yards too. First shot was inside that orange paster, and the next three were all touching it. (The .22 holes were from the shots I took earlier) When I was firing the fifth and final shot for the group, the round misfired. I'll cover that in the next paragraph. Anyway, I'm really liking how my rifle shoots these Fiocchi 142 grain bullets.
So my fifth and last shot for that group on the paster, and my last shot with that Fiocchi ammo, I squoze off the shot and heard that unmistakable sound of just the primer going off. I lifted my cheek from the rifle and saw smoke coming from the back of the receiver where the hammer was resting against the back of the bolt. That spooked me and I got up and walked away for a few minutes. Once it was clear nothing else was happening, I cycled the lever and ejected the round. Clearly the primer fired and vented itself back along the edge of the primer cup, and through the firing pin hole in the bolt. Either the flash hole wasn't punched in that case, or something is blocking it. I have an email and some pictures going back to Fiocchi about that. Needless to say I stopped using the Fiocchi ammo at that point.
At this point I disassembled the rifle and bolt to inspect the firing pin. A blown primer in .223 ammo is not uncommon when guys load hot service rifle loads for the 600 line, I've seen it happen. That frequently results in the firing pin tip being burnt into a weird shape because of the blowtorch like flame shooting back out of the case onto it. It'll pierce every primer after that happens. My malfunction was just the primer, so not the same issue, but I wanted to make sure my firing pin was still fine. So using a 10x loope I confirmed that all was well. This whole thing kind of creeped me out and I was ready to quit, but I needed to make sure the rifle still functioned properly, so after reassembling the rifle, I put 10 rounds of the PMC Bronze onto another target at 50 yards. Unfortunately, the group was not as good as I shot with the Fiocchi ammo, and it was a bit left, but it is still under 3 inches, and that with hunting-quality ammo. I folded a dollar bill in half and tucked it under the edge of the paster for perspective.
So all-in-all I will say that Henry did me right. The rifle that would not shoot anything into a group before is now performing up to expectations. I have some 158 XTP and some 140 FTX bullets to load and see what they'll do in my rifle. As for the Fiocchi ammo, I'm hoping they do me right and if they don't want that round back I'll pull it down myself to see what happened. Odds are they'll want it back though, I know I would. That ammo shot amazingly well and if I can get that kind of grouping with my reloads, I'll be satisfied.
I'm still perplexed why the lead ammo didn't perform better. People alluded to that in earlier posts on this thread, but I didn't give it the credit it deserved back then. Maybe the much lower velocity allows more barrel movement before the bullet leaves the barrel. Olympic airguns have a rifled portion of only about 10 inches for that reason, the barrel is much longer for sight radius, but the actual rifled portion is very short because the pellet only goes about 500 fps, the rest is a hollow tube. Maybe my lead loads, and those 158 grain bullets for Newton's third law to work with, move the rifle around more while the bullet is still traversing the barrel.
Anyway, if you made it this far, thanks for following along with my diatribe. I hope that if anyone finds this at some point in the future, they can collect something useful from it.
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3 x
Re: Accuracy Expectations with .357 Big Boy Steel
Thank you for the write-up.
As for the lead bullets, i suspect, well, I am pretty sure, but do not know how to prove it, that lead bullets tend to have a lot of gas blow by in the henry's.
For one I am getting varied FPS out of them when chronoing them. The moment i use the same bullet that is powder coated or gaschecked, the FPS settles down.
For two, the groups open up for lead bullets of the same weight and OD compared to powder coated or gaschecked.
Three, after shooting even a few lead rounds, it will throw my Jacketed bullets off the point of aim. Not many, and not far; usually 2-3 rounds will settle it back down.
BE-86 has been a great powder to use with lead bullets. I've had decreased blow-by, less leading, and a wider range of (powder weight) grains to use to keep them under 1100 fps.
Give BE-86 or something close to that a try. this is a link to my 3 page thread covering BE86. I realize now that i needed to separate the plated, jacketed, powder coated and lead bullet testing.
https://henryrifleforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=14864
BE86's load data sheet doesn't have many recipes, but if you look under 38 spl, 38 +P and 357 magnum you can figure out most loads. Alliant lists the Max load only. I started with 15% less than max.
https://www.alliantpowder.com/products/ ... be-86.aspx
Clean shot worked for 45 colt, but was a bit too fast-burning for the lighter 38 caliber bullets. (I have ultimate pistol but have not tried it yet)
Here is shooters world website for their powder (Ultimate pistol is a little slower burning than clean shot, closer to universal and unique)
https://shootersworldpowder.com/reload-data/
Lastly, Unique. I picked some up a while back and haven't had much chance to load with it yet. I'll load some soon and get back to you.
In short, I like the BE-86 load using Matt's bullets 148grn RNHP (no gas check) over 4.4 grns of BE86. The same bullet also works well with 4.4 grains of clean shot. I was able to clear my "know your limits target" at 50 yds with both loads.
As for the lead bullets, i suspect, well, I am pretty sure, but do not know how to prove it, that lead bullets tend to have a lot of gas blow by in the henry's.
For one I am getting varied FPS out of them when chronoing them. The moment i use the same bullet that is powder coated or gaschecked, the FPS settles down.
For two, the groups open up for lead bullets of the same weight and OD compared to powder coated or gaschecked.
Three, after shooting even a few lead rounds, it will throw my Jacketed bullets off the point of aim. Not many, and not far; usually 2-3 rounds will settle it back down.
BE-86 has been a great powder to use with lead bullets. I've had decreased blow-by, less leading, and a wider range of (powder weight) grains to use to keep them under 1100 fps.
Give BE-86 or something close to that a try. this is a link to my 3 page thread covering BE86. I realize now that i needed to separate the plated, jacketed, powder coated and lead bullet testing.
https://henryrifleforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=14864
BE86's load data sheet doesn't have many recipes, but if you look under 38 spl, 38 +P and 357 magnum you can figure out most loads. Alliant lists the Max load only. I started with 15% less than max.
https://www.alliantpowder.com/products/ ... be-86.aspx
Clean shot worked for 45 colt, but was a bit too fast-burning for the lighter 38 caliber bullets. (I have ultimate pistol but have not tried it yet)
Here is shooters world website for their powder (Ultimate pistol is a little slower burning than clean shot, closer to universal and unique)
https://shootersworldpowder.com/reload-data/
Lastly, Unique. I picked some up a while back and haven't had much chance to load with it yet. I'll load some soon and get back to you.
In short, I like the BE-86 load using Matt's bullets 148grn RNHP (no gas check) over 4.4 grns of BE86. The same bullet also works well with 4.4 grains of clean shot. I was able to clear my "know your limits target" at 50 yds with both loads.
1 x
Re: Accuracy Expectations with .357 Big Boy Steel
When I was sighting in my .357, I set up at 25 yards from a rest. I
took 5 shots and looked through my spotting scope at the target, I only saw 1 hole. figured that maybe the other 4 shots were off the paper so swung over to the right target and pulled the trigger. t went right where was aiming, so walked down to the 1st target and discovered that there was in fact only 1 hole in the target but it was about 3/8 in diameter! All five apparently were in that hole. I do handload and I shoot either 158 gr plated or coated bullets. Either works great.I've discovered sport pistol powder and it is excellent.
took 5 shots and looked through my spotting scope at the target, I only saw 1 hole. figured that maybe the other 4 shots were off the paper so swung over to the right target and pulled the trigger. t went right where was aiming, so walked down to the 1st target and discovered that there was in fact only 1 hole in the target but it was about 3/8 in diameter! All five apparently were in that hole. I do handload and I shoot either 158 gr plated or coated bullets. Either works great.I've discovered sport pistol powder and it is excellent.
1 x
-
Vaquero
- Ranch Boss
- Posts: 10340
- Joined: Mon Mar 21, 2016 12:56 am
- Location: Somewhere between Memphis & Nashville
Re: Accuracy Expectations with .357 Big Boy Steel
GFK, are you loading for that rifle or using factory ammo.GFK wrote: ↑Tue Aug 30, 2022 10:52 amI was told a similar thing, about the scope that came with my Marlin 336W. But, I have not wanted to invest the money into another one. I may not shoot the most accurate shots with it. Yet, I am still working out if it is me, the rifle, ammo or the scope. So far, I have been happy with the results, for what I hoping to do with use it. However, I am always looking for room for improvement. And, there is probably room for improvement in that area. The trigger does seem stiff. Since I am not much of a gunsmith, I am hoping that it will wear in. But, time will tell.
Marlin336W.JPG
336W-4X.JPG
I have 3 Marlin 30-30's, but mainly just shoot the two that are scoped.
They both shoot the Federal 170 gr. ammo very well, but
I have a load of my own that will really shoot inside the factory stuff.
RP
1 x
Monte Walsh "You have No idea how little I care". 
Ain't No Apologies for My Temperament
Si vis pacem, para bellum
H001, H006, H012
Ain't No Apologies for My Temperament
Si vis pacem, para bellum
H001, H006, H012
Re: Accuracy Expectations with .357 Big Boy Steel
Yes Vaquero, I am shooting factory loads. I have not tried 170 gr. May give it a try. Thanks!
0 x
Actions speak louder than words (Matthew 7:16-20).