TESTED: Henry Big Boy All-Weather (357 Magnum)

wow that's a beauty so this might not be the most traditional lever gun but this one is [Music] gavin g here from ultimatereloader.com i'm back with guy miner thank you for joining us guy of course guys pretty much my lever gun partner in crime and we just said this is like real traditional it's actually not henry's most traditional this is the big boy all-weather side gate in 38 357. this thing is cool yes it is yes it is i'm looking forward to getting some rounds to it yes we've had so much fun with our x model and 30 30 we've done subsonic supersonic ballistics gel we've done a reflex sight we've done scope we've done iron sights this thing is definitely a team favorite anytime someone comes to visit ultimate reloader i take them out to shoot subsonic with it it's just so so cool but what we've got here is a great complement to that here's what i'm thinking for this video we're going to get it out of the box we're going to cover all the specs the feeds the speeds and the features we're going to put it on the trigger scan we're going to look down the bore with the bore scope we're going to do some 50-yard shooting we're going to shoot it over the chronograph i think we should compare it revolver versus this guy that could be real interesting yeah six-inch revolver versus 20 inch carbine exactly we've got hammer down ammo from federal premium federal worked with henry repeating arms to develop the most awesome 357 mag ammo it's safe in a tubular magazine it is optimized around expansion and weight retention so we might have to do a follow-on story and see how that is going to do like on the block some ballistics gel sounds good okay so we got a lot to cover in this video why don't you do the honors let's see what's in the box alrighty [Music] [Music] wow that's a beauty [Music] okay yeah i'm impressed that's awesome well what we've got here is just the basics obviously we have the rifle which is beautiful it's nice yes very impressed i love the the dark wood with the the dark gray finish and this this nickel chrome finish on there is just gorgeous the the complement that they have to each other it looks good i like the the wood the metal fit is pretty darn nice yeah yep and it came well protected you know obviously you've got the cardboard box it was in a plastic bag but under that we had this sock this is like uh you know polar tech or something similar so that the hammer didn't break through and you know puncture the packing materials and cause other problems nicely packaged without going way overboard or something but yep yeah yeah but i love the inspect for ammunition first which i saw you do very first thing yep yep good to go i mean you know i trust henry but i haven't looked in there i don't know if there's a cartridge in there or not exactly yep and then we've got you know the owner's manual on some other printed materials there so so that's what was in the box and we're just going to run through some of the specs that you're going to find on the henry repeating arms product page for this so obviously it's a lever action it'll take 357 magnum or 38 special ammunition the capacity in the tubular magazine is 10 rounds msrp is 11.98 hopefully you'll find that somewhere for under that like we typically hope yeah usually so yep 20 inch barrel it's got the hard chrome plated steel that's it it's just a really nice satiny look to it i think it is it should be pretty darn non-reflective which would be nice in a hunting situation you know get that bright glare bouncing off it true good point yep uh overall length is 37.5 inches weight is seven pounds it's a nice weight i think it is i i picked it up i said well it's not not flimsy light but it's it's a gun you could carry all day no problem absolutely we've got the fully adjustable rear sight brass bead front sight which we're going to use for this video we have a scope rail that we're going to throw on there look for that in some of the future videos but we thought why not just do straight up right yeah take it the way it got delivered and it's awfully fun to shoot a lever action with iron sights anyway yep we did that with the henry before we started to mount optics on it and this is going to seem take the same type of scope rail um which is the wb dash rsm stained hardwood black solid rubber butt pad looks like this is going to last really well and we don't need a whole lot of you know recoil abatement with 357 magnum it's not a weatherby no but i think it'll be nice too it's there's nothing wrong with having a nice cushy recoil pad on the back end device and at seven pounds and i don't think we have any we're going to start with those 357s aren't we yeah that would be nice absolutely yeah we've got the transfer bar safety which is is really nice obviously this integrated swivel stud on the front band here on the forend is nice and then we've got a rear swivel stud so we're ready for our sling henry says this is best for target hunting and even large game so that's an interesting thought well with that hammer down ammo that's a 170 grain bullet 170 yeah and that's uh that's a pretty good thump yeah i don't deal with that yeah yeah mule deer or white tail something like that and of course this has the side gate which henry listening to their audience added that a little bit later in their in their lineage really really nice package if you want a 38 357 and there's other chamberings as well this seems like a really solid option i think what we should do is we should pack this up take it up to the ridge line and use our 50 yard range to check our site in and see what it'll do sounds good to me let's do it which spot are you going for a left-hand target okay low and to the right but it looks like those last two shots might have stacked nice well that was fun you know we took the big boy up to the ridgeline range why because i have a 50 yard target backstop up there and a nice concrete bench you know with those sandbags gave us a nice stable platform to shoot from but we had a little trouble seeing the targets because you know i'm think i'm in my head my my precision rifle you know 100 yard head i say hey should we put five target spots on a page i said no no one we're just gonna try to hit the paper first so at one point i'm circling the target dot with a giant sharpie circle just trying to see you know what we're doing which is you know it's kind of funny normally your target's going to be a lot larger than that and a lot more obvious than that of course we'll see that when we get down to shoot steel but uh really good first impressions nice slick trigger yes yeah it handled beautifully uh very very little recoil and those are 170 grain full bore 357 magnum loads yeah actually you have to remember that's like the weight of a 308 projectile obviously going a lot slower sure but still it's a pretty big bullet yep yep and we have this adjustable rear sight we kind of got that we split the difference between two different notches on there to to get where we needed with the shots landing a little high at 50 which should be pretty decent for 100 if we wanted to go out to that i think so yeah yeah we'll use some bigger bull's-eyes that we can see easier yeah and like i said in the follow-up story we're going to put an optic on this i think i'm going to use something like a one to six scope at 50 yards and that'll give us a much better idea of what kind of accuracy this thing is capable of i think it's pretty good because you had a couple of shots that stacked right in there on top of each other i had a couple of shots that stacked right in there on top of each other it's like okay and we're just getting used to the sights and the rifle and the ammo and iron sights is a whole different game that's funny it's a fun game and as you can see here we have it on the trigger scan ts11 from dvorak instruments this is the world's best trigger profiling instrument this is going to give us a force distance plot which you can see right here and you know it was funny we had the x model up on the trigger scan to do some testing and comparison almost the same exact profile in terms of the peak force in terms of like the shape of the graph and what we got we just did three successive passes in a row you can see here those lines stacked nicely on the chart and that netted out a peak force of 4.11 pounds average and the travel to actuate and over travel i don't know what the deal is here this was super consistent like within one thousandth of an inch for all of these measurements within one thousandth on the travel to actuate and the over travel respectively obviously those are different measurements so we had thirty thousands travel to actuate and thirty seven thousands over travel next we're going to get out the bore cam and take a look down the board this is the teslong ntg 100p rigid borescope this is usb it's going to work with a phone tablet or here we're using a windows 10 laptop with the inbuilt windows camera app and so this is a hard chrome barrel so far looks looks about like what some of my other chromeline barrels you know i've got some like on the ars and stuff like that they get a little bit of copper on them do they yeah and a little bit of texture from from that uh that plating true okay so there's the throat transition looks nice and consistent very nice that's the bore let's go do some shooting sounds like fun of me alrighty well now now is when things get fun huh it is this should be a blast literally nice right in the center up [Music] [Laughter] that's got some power man it does i shot nine out of ten oh okay yeah well i think it's time for me to try i think you should do that that's pretty awesome oh now i only have small targets up there guy sorry that was deliberate nice you know that's not bad whiffed that one i gotta take my time a little bit more there we go well that's a lot of fun isn't it i love that little rifle this thing is awesome let's do some chronograph huh yeah we should do that 357 magnum revolver whoa 1200 feet per second with a 170. nice stdev of 18.7 i can live with that yeah that's awesome we've got 16 plus wow 1690 or 1674. 1674 right there yeah yeah nice well that was a lot of fun oh man this thing's great yeah it just feels good and with that gold bead front sight with that sun behind us man that was stuck out real obvious picking it up on those steel targets just just like that loved it yeah i i can't get over how much i like this little rifle a lot of people will note if they've shot multiple brands how slick the action is and i felt like this one was really fast felt a little faster than the 30 30. i don't know if that's my imagination or not in terms of the total stroke there may be a difference in the travel of the lever yeah i don't know that'd be something for us to look at sure yeah and uh let's talk about the ammo a little bit so this hammer down ammunition is specifically for lever guns it was that collaboration between federal premium and henry repeating arms which is pretty cool to say hey 357 magnus great in in this thing but what if we up the performance a little bit and and put a hunting bullet in there that's going to really work really well weight retention and expansion you know yeah they talk about it being not only is 170 grains which is pretty heavy for a 357 magnum but the bonded bullet that they're talking about that should retain a lot of weight it should expand well penetrate decently and boy did we see some velocity we did one minor note any of the flat uh nose ammo or hollow points i've had with a lever gun i've noticed it's a little trickier to load because when that when that flat nose or the edge of the hollow point catches on you know the tube or whatever you just push the base in a little bit to you know angle a little bit more it just pops right in once i learned that trick i thought you know yeah the round nose lever lever gun bullets tend to load a little smoother for me yep exactly so yes you said what about that velocity so we decided to be fun to compare my six inch 357 magnum that's a smith wesson 586 really beautiful blued revolver really cool rig six inch barrel versus 20 inch barrel now what do they advertise on the box they are advertising a little over 1600 feet per second 1610 1610 okay so with the revolver we got an average velocity of 1211 standard deviation of 18.7 i think the first three shots went the sd was like three point three so not watching that roll by spread was 45 and then came the henry big boy and we had some big boy velocity here 1652.4 right we exceeded the velocity on the box yes that's impressive it is that's you know 1600 feet per second with the 170 the 170 i've done with that because normally 158 is your heavier bullet for 357. they've been 160s 170s around for a while but uh it's nice to use it yeah standard deviation of 28.4 and a spread of 66. plenty good velocity consistency you know for for this type of application so initially i love it you know we put it through its initial paces what should we do next do you think a lot of possibilities here well i'd like to try some real mellow 38 special ammo through it i think that'd be even more fun maybe this was awful fun and then we try some different siding options well definitely yeah we've got the scope base for the rail and i'm thinking again the one to six would be maybe a really nice option like the hardline pro crimson trace that we have on the on the x model maybe we'll just pop it over here and see how it does on this guy i think that would be a great setup for the accuracy testing at 50. i think so we were having a little trouble with our our eyeballs being able to see those one-inch uh orange dots it helps to use the right targets it does yeah and then i'd like to see if we could just try an aperture sight for the rear see how we could do with that that sounds that sounds like a lot of fun different loads you know all sorts of different things and again this would be i think a great deer hunting rig i think so you know keeping in mind your your range you know this is i'm not gonna take a shot at 300 yards a mule deer with this right but if i'm stalking around in these hills out here with the forested and all that uh yeah absolutely 50 yard shots i can't get 75 yards and i think this is light and easy to carry accurate um i think we're good yeah definitely well i think we have a lot more to do we might be fighting over this thing for a while right what a shame that we have to do more with this nice little rifle yeah now if you all have ideas for us what we should attach this you know we have the hammer extension that'll go on nice with with the scope any other accessories upgrades shooting scenarios ammunition that you want us to test drop a comment and we'll start the discussion that concludes this video and that means it's time to wrap it up i hope you liked this video if you did please give it a big thumbs up also make your voice heard if you have something to say please drop a comment make sure you're subscribed with notifications because you're not going to want to miss the awesome content that is coming up and finally flex your reloading pride you could look great in one of these t-shirts we've got multiple designs at the ultimate reloader store i'll see you later because i'm off to go shooting [Music]

Channel: Ultimate Reloader

Views: 88,561

Keywords: 30-30 Winchester, 357, 357 mag, 357 Magnum, 38 Special, Caldwell, carbine, cowboy, Coyote Hunting, Deer Hunting, Federal, Gun Review, HammerDown, Henry, Henry Big Boy All Weather, Henry X Model, lever action, Lever Action Rifle, lever gun, Revolver, Side Gate, Marlin Trapper, Marlin 1895 SBL, henry repeating arms, lever action rifle, henry big boy 45-70 review, henry big boy side gate, lever action speed shooting

Id: CDVqvH9dd7A

Length: 19min 25sec (1165 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 14 2022