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I bought a Henry Big Boy in .357 Magnum (2nd hand) a few months ago and once I finally got around to shooting it found that it would jam with anything more than 1 round in the magazine tube. Eventually I took the gun apart and tracked the problem down to the shell lifter.

It seems the previous owner had modified the gun to work with a certain pet load or cartridge length. However, the factory .357 I intend to use (Magtech Cowboy load) is a bit shorter, allowing the rim of the next cartridge to enter the receiver and block the shell lifter.

I e-mailed Henry to ask for a quote for a replacement lifter plus shipping to the UK. Kathy e-mailed back and said just to tell her the parts I needed and they would ship them to me free of charge. To save going back and forth in case it was something else, I listed 8 parts, including the lever, that showed wear. Kathy, true to her word, mailed them to me for free.

I fitted the new parts tonight and it cycles .357 beautifully.



Henry clearly understands the importance of word of mouth and having functioning guns turning up to ranges so I just thought I'd pass it on :goodjob: I'm very pleased with the rifle and look forward to taking it down the range for a blast this weekend

Wow, result. Compares with reports elsewhere of Winchester refusing to send spares to the UK IIRC.

Cracking job from Henry Repeating Arms and a good looking rifle as well, I am looking forward to hearing how it shoots.

Wow. That is impressive. Esp. as they mailed directly to the UK.

My new 44mag BigBoy came with a dent in the brass butt stock plate, looked like it had been stood on something sharp or hit with something. RFD offered me £10 off!, Viking were no help and it was the only one in the country and no delivery date for the next shipment.

I contacted Henry and Catherine Scarpa replied that I would have to get one from my distributor (who had just told me they had no idea when they could get one), I emailed her back and said that it was very disappointing (given that I'd read how good there after sales support was) and how every time I looked at my flawed new rifle I'd not be a happy bunny. She emailed back about 20mins later, explained that they couldn't supply a new brass plate as they were hand fitted to the butt stock, however, they would supply a complete butt stock, and, just in case the grain didn't match the fore end they'd supply that as well, and a brass barrel band in case I damaged mine taking it off!.

A few months later the firing pin broke, I managed to get one from Viking but they would only ship it to an RFD, a few months later the same thing happened again. This time it had to go back to Viking, took them 7 weeks to get and fit a new firing pin. At the same time it went back to Viking I spoke to Thomas Kotz at Henry, he thought they may have been a batch that hadn't been heat treated correctly and sent me 3 spare ones (and some other free goodies) in the post and they got here in under 2 weeks!.

That was 9 months ago and it's worked perfectly ever since.

Compare that sort of service to a certain UK manufacturer I've been "having problems with" and the difference is unbelievable.

That's pretty good of them to ship new wood to you and it's reassuring that a manufacturer will support their product to that extent. I felt confident buying a second hand Big Boy sight unseen from Ireland on the basis of all the good stuff I'd read about their customer service and luckily it paid off. Would I have been as lucky with any other manufacturer?

They are beautiful rifles when they come out of the box. Being second hand, mine has the odd mark on the wood or the barrel but I think if it was mint I'd be worried about using it for fear of damaging it! When I could get it to shoot last time it shot factory .357 very comfortably (it's quite a heavy rifle) but I only shot at 25 yards. Of course the accuracy was fine at this distance but I need to put the scope mount on it to see what it will do at 100.

Very nice

No, I can't have one, no cabinet room, nowhere to shoot it, no slot.

Hmmm :roll:

Swifty Boy wrote:I need to put the scope mount on it to see what it will do at 100.

I intended to use mine with the iron sights as I also had a scoped Marlin, unfortunately being old(ish) and diabetic my eyes are just not up to the job

Mine has the cantilever type mount which screws into two holes under the rear sight tang, the new ones have the top of the receiver block drilled for a standard rail, whichever you have make sure you put a drop of blue Loctite on the screws

Christel, none of those are a good enough reason not to buy one!, once you've had one in your hands there's just no going back to Marlins or Winchesters etc. etc.

I don't know why the Henry's aren't more popular especially with Marlins having gone all to hell with Remingtons "improvements" and the price of second hand ones having gone through the roof.

They are fine rifles with the smoothest action of all the underlevers save the Savage 1899, which has to be the finest underlever ever made.

Perfect Zombie guns as well, now if only I could find such a thing chambered in 30-30