Henry 1860

[aussie]

G'day fellas. A friend of mine has a Henry 1860 replica (Uberti) in .45 Colt and wants to reload. My question is, have any of you had experience with this rifle and reloading. He wants to use 250gn RNFP cast projectiles and the powder recommended is ADI AP70N which is the equivalent of Universal and Unique. How hot can he load for this rifle. It has the brass receiver. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Griff]

I load the .45 Colt for use in a Uberti 1873 rifle, (which is basically the same action), and keep my loads to those published as safe for the Colt SAA or its clones. I don't hotrod for my Colts, nor for the Uberti; in fact, I generally load on the light side as my primary use for this rifle and the Uberti Henry I just purchased is in Cowboy Action Shooting.

The 250grain RFN (round, flat nose) projectiles are excellent in this application. They feed with uncommon regularity, nary a hiccup.

[Ysabel Kid]

I have the very same rifle, and like Griff, tend to load on the lighter side for it. If I want to shoot stout .45 Colt loads, I'll grab the Puma '92 - the action is made for those. I have fired 200-grain LRNFP's and 250-grain LRNFP's through the Henry reproduction with no problems whatsoever. Recently I have loaded a bunch with Trail Boss to the specs on the Hodgdon/IMR website, and these work wonderfully. Can you get Trail Boss down under?

[KCSO]

The Henry brass frame is rated for any load safe in a Colt SAA. As long as you stay away from the hot Ruger only loads you will be ok. My favorite is 36 grains of FFg Elephant and a 250 grain bulllet for juust at 1100 fps. By contrast the original Henery load was a 216 gr. bullet at about the same velocity.

[KWK]

Your gun would have been proofed to (and presumably designed for) CIP standards, about 16,000 psi max for operating pressures.

[Hobie]

I should like to point out that it isn't the receiver material that's the limiting factor but the action contained therein, i.e. the toggle-link system.

[KCSO]

Back in '74 I shot a 66 loose so I can tell you for sure that the brass frame will give. When i had to rebuild mne the holes n the brass frame were oval. By the way the guun was a 38 Special and it shot bunch of max 2400 loads before the headspace started to creep. I'll bet not one of theose loads was less than +p , but I was young then and mostly stupid.

[KWK]

Hopefully your friend's Henry will be a bit more robust than KCSO's '66. I've been thinking about getting either a Henry or a '66 with the gun-metal frame. I'd want the .44 WCF and would load it to around 10,000 psi; the thin brass of the .44 should seal nicely even at that low pressure.

My understanding is that the results of proof loads are evaluated with visual inspections only. I can believe a gun that passed proof might not have a particularly good service life. Note that CIP pistol loads tend to be rated hotter than SAAMI.

I recall seeing pictures of modern, replica toggle link parts alongside original parts, and the originals appeared to have been carefully fitted so the links would bear directly on their mating surfaces, whereas the replica parts were bearing only in the pins.

[KCSO]

The gun was robust enough I was stupid! I loaded 38 cases to Skeeter's max load and figured the gun would take it because it was a rifle. Hey I shot a M27 Smith loose too, I was shooting PPC and shot 30,000 rounds through the Smith sometimes as much as a 100o rounds a month. The little 66 got almost as much use. With sensible loads my Henry 44-40 has lasted YEARS and mucho shooting. My shooting pard has a 66 in 38 Special that he has used as a match and fun gun now for 10 years and I KNOW it has had 10,000 rounds through it 'casue I had to reload most of them.

[KWK]

Thanks for the clarification, KCSO. I really like the appearance of those Uberti's with the gun-metal frames, especially the funky Henry.

[the telegraphist]

Gday Aussie,
I use Westcastings 250g RNFP. For a light accurate load 6.5g of 231 does the trick for around 1000fps. Stepping up to AP70
7.8g as per ADI manual is good but might be too heavy in that particular rifle, start 10% under and work up, velocity will be around 1150fps. Dont try and load it hot its a fun gun only. AP70 is faster than Unique so dont try and think you can use equiv loads. One contributer suggested Trail Boss, it is available here, but I have not used it so cannot comment. But the people I shoot with give it good wraps. Its not a hot load powder in recommended loadings. Go to ADI site for detailed info on this powder. Was designed for cowboy loads in pistol/rifle. UHRU

Rgds
The Telegraphist