Levergun reliability, or not...

[Crazy Dane]

Leverguns, particularly pistol caliber leverguns, excel at being “walking around guns.” They are light, short, flat and easily carried slung or in hand when you are engaged in some other activity but there is a chance you might need or want to shoot something.

Most folks don't live that kind of life anymore.

My goal is to live the kind of life where optimizing my walking around guns makes sense.

If I look out my window and North Korean paratroopers are jumping into the river valley, the Marlin 1894c is not what I will grab.

Straight out my front door is well over 10,000 acres of public land and while it isn't as open as the public lands in the west, I can walk any where I please. In my youth I would take off before daylight and return home after dark maybe the next day. I always had my S&W M18 and a .22 rifle of sorts to go with it. I fed both from the same Prince Albert can. Back then the biggest threat a young lad was happen upon would have been a surly Copperhead or maybe even a Timber Rattler. Fast forward todays times and now we have bear and wild hogs to contend with. I have walked up on both and it was quite disturbing when I found myself between a big mama bear and her cubs and only being armed with foul language and a half empty water bottle.

Anytime I hit those woods now I have one of my GP100s in .44 Special and my Marlin 1894 in .44. Leaving the house the Marlin is stoked with 270gn Deep Curls from Speer loaded in magnum cases and the revolver has 255gn Keith bullets. I find nether load to be ballistically equal and was actually loaded to meet a different set of criteria. If I run both weapons dry and I have to reload from the belt, I'm not worried about the terminal ballistics at that point. The belt is set up with shot shells to full on .44 Special Keith loads and if a drop a speed strip in my pocket I will only have about 45 rounds on me. I know my rifle is reliable for a few hundred rounds before I have to clean and lube. As for the Marlin jam, parts wear, parts break, Murphy is alive and well and karma is a raging bitch. This is why we clean and maintain our weapons. If problems cant be fixed they get sent on down the road. To be fair, I only have 5 lever guns, only one is a pistol caliber

I can and have walked through my community with a revolver on my hip and a lever gun slung across my back, even had a conversation or 2 with neighbors. If I was to come walking out of the woods with an AR and a Glock I don't think I would get the same response, this bears directly to the social side. When I hear "social rifle" I think of a weapon that is not only capable of defense but also acceptable in looks, this is subjective and will vary to place to place. If my valley heard that the Antifa crowd was coming to "protest" I know that there would be many lever guns at the barricades on either end.

I'm with Lester, if the commies are coming then we have a whole different ball game and the equipment comes out of a different locker room.

[gtmtnbiker98]

I recently purchased a Henry and can say, it has been a learning curve. The ill prepared or uninformed can certainly choke a lever action, I already have. My Henry has several nuances that I've quickly learned and only through experience, can one overcome. I've learned that if you leave the action open when tube loading the rifle, you will bind the action rather quickly and will require the dumping of the mag tube and reloading to force the jammed round through the action to remove. I've also learned that Hornady Leverevolution ammo uses oversized case rims that require some finesse in order to tube load while loading from the side gate requires nothing more than insertion. You certainly can't pick a lever action up and expect to be an SME by mere touching and having previous experience on other platforms.

[farscott]

The 38-55 is an interesting cartridge. In the upgraded loads its a decent heavier load than 30-30, some of the guys on the leverguns forum that have used them on moose in Canada seem pretty impressed with the performance, I believe they were getting complete pass-throughs on moose, i dont recall if they used jacketed bullets or cast.

The older Lyman manuals showed loads with jacketed and cast bullets running 1800-1850 fps and in the same pressure range as 30-30. The case head is identical to 30-30 and is the parent case for that round I believe. You can make 38-55 brass from blown out 30-30 brass.

One small issue with the cartridge is the wide divergence in bore dimensions. The actual groove dimensions vary from .376" to .3815", and most loads have bullets somewhat smaller than the last mentioned.For whatever reason, it seems like many or most of the modern Marlins in 38-55 had .381 groove diameters. One other small matter, if a correctly sized bullet for the larger groove diameters is loaded, often it cant be chambered. Some use different brass to get thinner necks, some use 30-30 brass blown out to help deal with it, some use soft bullets and let them "bump up" like the older factory black powder loads basically did.

Still if one wades through these details, you could consider it somewhat of a junior version of the 45-70 in performance. Good deep penetration with proper bullets, moderate pressure, very similar trajectory, and works in the model 94 Winchester, a much lighter gun than most 45-70s. A guy called Snooky(Clyde) Williams wrote a book about loading for old Winchesters, The Winchester Lever Legacy, in it he mentioned that with full power cast loads he was shooting through 2 or more deer regularly with the 38-55. He was farming in Mississippi I think, and suffering substantial losses to deer and hogs, he had some sort of depredation hunt permits and shot scads of deer with various old Winchester loads. He was pretty favorably impressed with the 38-55 and modernized loads.

To continue the thread drift, some fun at 400 and 600 yards.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8U7Te8-c-0w

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gh3Ju89s65o

Is the .38-55 Henry capable of handling the 0.065" shorter but higher pressure .375 Winchester? Many .375 Winchester rifles have lengthened chambers to handle the .38-55, but the converse can be an issue.

[jlw]

I recently purchased a Henry and can say, it has been a learning curve. The ill prepared or uninformed can certainly choke a lever action, I already have. My Henry has several nuances that I've quickly learned and only through experience, can one overcome. I've learned that if you leave the action open when tube loading the rifle, you will bind the action rather quickly and will require the dumping of the mag tube and reloading to force the jammed round through the action to remove. I've also learned that Hornady Leverevolution ammo uses oversized case rims that require some finesse in order to tube load while loading from the side gate requires nothing more than insertion. You certainly can't pick a lever action up and expect to be an SME by mere touching and having previous experience on other platforms.

I require that a levergun have a side loading gate for my Social Levergun classes; thus, until recently, I never had Henry's in my classes. I actually love the idea of having both the loading gate and the tube feature, particularly for unloading.

At a class in VA this year, we had a new Henry X model in .44. The action was smooth, and the carbine performed well, but the trigger must have been at least 20 pounds.

An interesting note on the Henry's, at least this model, is that the hammer block is in the hammer itself. It actually slides up through a groove in the base of the hammer.

[gtmtnbiker98]

I require that a levergun have a side loading gate for my Social Levergun classes; thus, until recently, I never had Henry's in my classes. I actually love the idea of having both the loading gate and the tube feature, particularly for unloading.

At a class in VA this year, we had a new Henry X model in .44. The action was smooth, and the carbine performed well, but the trigger must have been at least 20 pounds.

An interesting note on the Henry's, at least this model, is that the hammer block is in the hammer itself. It actually slides up through a groove in the base of the hammer.

My Henry is the X model in .45/70. The dual load option is what won me over to the Henry. Well, that and the current state of Marlin and the Ruger acquisition - it appears that Marlin's corporate presence is non-existent. I tried calling to determine warranty service post acquisition if I were to buy a new Remlin. Everything is closed and the Web site is linked to a dead link for Warranty inquiry. But this is another topic, sorry for the thread drift.

[Malamute]

I recently purchased a Henry and can say, it has been a learning curve. The ill prepared or uninformed can certainly choke a lever action, I already have. My Henry has several nuances that I've quickly learned and only through experience, can one overcome. I've learned that if you leave the action open when tube loading the rifle, you will bind the action rather quickly and will require the dumping of the mag tube and reloading to force the jammed round through the action to remove. I've also learned that Hornady Leverevolution ammo uses oversized case rims that require some finesse in order to tube load while loading from the side gate requires nothing more than insertion. You certainly can't pick a lever action up and expect to be an SME by mere touching and having previous experience on other platforms.

None of the traditional type lever actions can be loaded with the action open except the 1860 Henry type. I have no knowledge of the idiosyncrasies of the modern Henry co guns.

Is the .38-55 Henry capable of handling the 0.065" shorter but higher pressure .375 Winchester? Many .375 Winchester rifles have lengthened chambers to handle the .38-55, but the converse can be an issue.

If its up to the pressures and the barrel groove diameter works, it may run OK, but the 375 Win is set up with .375 groove diameter so far as I know. A check of SAAMI cartridge and chamber specs would tell more about barrel compatibility, but if its using .375' bullets and you shoot them down a wider groove diameter barrel it may not be very accurate, though it should reduce pressure.

I require that a levergun have a side loading gate for my Social Levergun classes; thus, until recently, I never had Henry's in my classes. I actually love the idea of having both the loading gate and the tube feature, particularly for unloading.

At a class in VA this year, we had a new Henry X model in .44. The action was smooth, and the carbine performed well, but the trigger must have been at least 20 pounds.

An interesting note on the Henry's, at least this model, is that the hammer block is in the hammer itself. It actually slides up through a groove in the base of the hammer.

The unloading matter is valid, its also one of the reasons that Marlin and Winchester went to crossbolt safeties and tang safeties. Many traditionalists dont like them much, but I think its a very useful thing for unloading safely.

Trigger action can likely be addressed to a degree with some work, but I have no idea how complicated the work is on that brand. Im surprised over time to see people mention selling various guns because of a heavy or gritty trigger pull when its often fairly simple to correct, at least by a general purpose gunsmith. Sometimes burnishing it can help noticeably. Burnishing being putting pressure on the back of the hammer, then pulling the trigger to pressure polish the sear surfaces. Sort of like accelerated dry fire smoothing up work. It may be possible to overdo it, but so far ive not heard of anyone damaging one by doing it. I control the hammer when I do it so it doesnt slam forward.

[TDA]

It was not my intent to steer this thread into a PCC heavy discussion. I intended it to be an focused on the levergun reliability issue. I mentioned the PCC thing early as that is one of the frequent questions I get concerning leverguns.

In my own mind, levergun = .30-30. However, I don't live in a western state where a .45-70 would be desirable.

I should also clarify that my thoughts are strongly weighted in defensive/social contexts primarily over hunting.

For loading drills, rifle rounds are much easier to manipulate than pistol rounds, but those would only be of consequence in the unusual circumstance in which you ran the gun dry.

I think I get where you're going. As a child of the 1980's, what immediately springs to mind is Bruce Clayton's Life After Doomsday where, speaking about defensive firearms, he draws the distinction between guns that are weapons and guns that are sporting equipment. I find it really fascinating the way that those two categories came into existence and the way the boundaries shift back and forth. Lots of lever gun designs date from the time when there was no such distinction, but lots of the actual guns are much more recent, and are clearly products of the era when the objective was to manufacture a gun just good enough to get you to buy it. There is also the changing relationship over time of the ammunition development and rifle manufacturing departments of Winchester/USRA. It's odd to think that I've had both AR15's that were designed, built, and marketed to be totally unsuitable as weapons and lever action rifles that were potentially better.

[RevolverRob]

One would have to ask Henry if the .38-55 guns can handle .375Win. Given the frame is the same between the .38-55 and the .30-30/.35Rem guns, I would be kind of hesitant, .375 is quite a bit higher pressure than .38-55, .30-30, or .35 Rem.

One can get hot .38-55s from Buffalo Bore (255-grain @ 1900 fps), which are lower pressure than .375, but give similar performance to .375.

[LHS]

I think I get where you're going. As a child of the 1980's, what immediately springs to mind is Bruce Clayton's Life After Doomsday where, speaking about defensive firearms, he draws the distinction between guns that are weapons and guns that are sporting equipment. I find it really fascinating the way that those two categories came into existence and the way the boundaries shift back and forth. Lots of lever gun designs date from the time when there was no such distinction, but lots of the actual guns are much more recent, and are clearly products of the era when the objective was to manufacture a gun just good enough to get you to buy it. There is also the changing relationship over time of the ammunition development and rifle manufacturing departments of Winchester/USRA. It's odd to think that I've had both AR15's that were designed, built, and marketed to be totally unsuitable as weapons and lever action rifles that were potentially better.

That in particular always bugged me from a historical perspective. So many anti-gunners will rant about how ARs are 'weapons of war', etc, without understanding that almost every single technological advancement in firearms design was martial in nature. Daddy's Winchester M70 was derived from the Mauser 98, which was the gold standard for military rifles of its time, and the reason bolt guns are so popular as hunting rifles is that so many Americans learned how to run them in the armed forces. The thuddy-thuddy riding in a rack on the back glass of a pickup truck evolved as a martial weapon that saw a lot of use over the years, and became popular as a hunting rifle because people were used to carrying them on the frontier as both a hunting rifle and a defensive weapon. Hell, the Ruger No.1 is a throwback to early breech-loaders, a massive upgrade in firepower compared to the muzzle loaders they replaced. There's virtually no major technological advancement in firearms that WASN'T prompted by a desire to make guns more effective at killing people.

[OlongJohnson]

^^^This.

Why is the SAA called the SAA?

Why is the 1911 called the 1911?

Marines carry pump shotguns.

They are all weapons of war.