Brass Or Steel Henry .327?
- Thread starter turkeestalker
- Start date
Cosmodragoon
New member
Despite being a tad lighter and offering less worry about getting dinged up in the wild, I prefer the looks of the Big Boy Steel.
turkeestalker
New member
Finally made my decision and placed an order.
Deviated from what I had originally intended and went with the carbine length 16.5 inch octagon barrel with the brass receiver.
Guess I'll know soon enough if I have any regrets.
The different opinions shared certainly helped me to think in some different directions and I do genuinely appreciate everyone's input.
Deviated from what I had originally intended and went with the carbine length 16.5 inch octagon barrel with the brass receiver.
Guess I'll know soon enough if I have any regrets.
The different opinions shared certainly helped me to think in some different directions and I do genuinely appreciate everyone's input.
Hawg has it.
The steel frames are 4140 forged, the centerfire brass frames are a solid alloy that's formulated for strength with just enough brass to create that "gold" look out of the box.
A non-typical brass formula, not the same as what Uberti uses.
The Brasslite is just a name for the gold-colored coating on the rimfires, over the Zamak 5 construction of receiver & receiver cover.
Denis
The steel frames are 4140 forged, the centerfire brass frames are a solid alloy that's formulated for strength with just enough brass to create that "gold" look out of the box.
A non-typical brass formula, not the same as what Uberti uses.
The Brasslite is just a name for the gold-colored coating on the rimfires, over the Zamak 5 construction of receiver & receiver cover.
Denis
Jim Watson
New member
Those are all English words, but I cannot get much information out of them.
Brass is copper-zinc alloy, right?
So how do you have "just enough brass" in a "solid alloy"? Are there other constituents or is it a layered or plated item?
I'll word this carefully, so as not to give anybody the wrong idea.
Just as an example of how strong Henry's brass is, as a part of in-house tests they took a Big Boy sample and modified the chamber to accept a certain hi-powered handgun round that used the same bullet diameter, but exceeded pressures established for the normal caliber by several thousand.
Not merely a hotter load in the caliber, and well beyond a proof load.
Tied the gun down, stood back, touched off one round.
The brass held.
The steel BARREL expanded beyond its normal elasticity recovery & stayed expanded.
Now- necessary commentary.
THIS DOES NOT MEAN IT'S OK TO DO THIS AT HOME!
THIS DOES NOT MEAN IT'S OK TO REAM OUT A BIG BOY'S CHAMBER TO SHOOT CALIBERS IT WAS NEVER INTENDED TO SHOOT!
THIS DOES NOT MEAN BIG BOY BARRELS ARE WEAK!
THIS DOES NOT MEAN HENRY BARRELS ARE INFERIOR IN ANY WAY!
The factory builds a fudge factor into their guns, with a safety margin engineered into them that makes them stronger than they actually need to be.
The guns are designed to handle the pressures involved in the calibers they're chambered for.
And they do.
Steel formulations in rifles, and not just Henry, can have the same types of elasticity under certain pressures that you see in brass cartridge cases.
On firing, the brass swells slightly, and typically returns to somewhere near its original size.
In the case of the one test round that expanded the barrel diameter slightly, where that barrel was designed to safely handle proof-load pressures in its normal chambering, slightly lower pressures could have possibly expanded it slightly & allowed it to return to size, while slightly higher pressures could have blown it.
The takeaway here is not that you can fiddle a brass Big Boy out of its normal chambering and take it up to power levels that'll kill bulldozers, but that the brass receiver is more than strong enough to handle what it was designed to handle, in its factory chambering.
Denis
Just as an example of how strong Henry's brass is, as a part of in-house tests they took a Big Boy sample and modified the chamber to accept a certain hi-powered handgun round that used the same bullet diameter, but exceeded pressures established for the normal caliber by several thousand.
Not merely a hotter load in the caliber, and well beyond a proof load.
Tied the gun down, stood back, touched off one round.
The brass held.
The steel BARREL expanded beyond its normal elasticity recovery & stayed expanded.
Now- necessary commentary.
THIS DOES NOT MEAN IT'S OK TO DO THIS AT HOME!
THIS DOES NOT MEAN IT'S OK TO REAM OUT A BIG BOY'S CHAMBER TO SHOOT CALIBERS IT WAS NEVER INTENDED TO SHOOT!
THIS DOES NOT MEAN BIG BOY BARRELS ARE WEAK!
THIS DOES NOT MEAN HENRY BARRELS ARE INFERIOR IN ANY WAY!
The factory builds a fudge factor into their guns, with a safety margin engineered into them that makes them stronger than they actually need to be.
The guns are designed to handle the pressures involved in the calibers they're chambered for.
And they do.
Steel formulations in rifles, and not just Henry, can have the same types of elasticity under certain pressures that you see in brass cartridge cases.
On firing, the brass swells slightly, and typically returns to somewhere near its original size.
In the case of the one test round that expanded the barrel diameter slightly, where that barrel was designed to safely handle proof-load pressures in its normal chambering, slightly lower pressures could have possibly expanded it slightly & allowed it to return to size, while slightly higher pressures could have blown it.
The takeaway here is not that you can fiddle a brass Big Boy out of its normal chambering and take it up to power levels that'll kill bulldozers, but that the brass receiver is more than strong enough to handle what it was designed to handle, in its factory chambering.
Denis
Jim,
The term "solid" was used to differentiate the true "brass" in the centerfires from the "pseudo-brass" or Brasslite coating on the rimfires.
Sorry about the confusion.
The brass color you see on a Henry centerfire extends all the way through the receiver.
The brass color you see on a Henry rimfire does not.
The centerfires are "solid brass".
The rimfires are not, and not even brass at all.
As far as the brass alloy goes, yes- brass in itself is an alloy.
The formulation that Henry uses (proprietary) contains more of other elements added to increase strength.
I won't say what they are, but I was surprised that there's still enough "brass" (as such) to retain the gold color & age like brass does.
It is a solid construct, no layering, no plating.
Best I can say, hope it helps.
It's just a much more sophisticated mix than merely copper & zinc.
Denis
The term "solid" was used to differentiate the true "brass" in the centerfires from the "pseudo-brass" or Brasslite coating on the rimfires.
Sorry about the confusion.
The brass color you see on a Henry centerfire extends all the way through the receiver.
The brass color you see on a Henry rimfire does not.
The centerfires are "solid brass".
The rimfires are not, and not even brass at all.
As far as the brass alloy goes, yes- brass in itself is an alloy.
The formulation that Henry uses (proprietary) contains more of other elements added to increase strength.
I won't say what they are, but I was surprised that there's still enough "brass" (as such) to retain the gold color & age like brass does.
It is a solid construct, no layering, no plating.
Best I can say, hope it helps.
It's just a much more sophisticated mix than merely copper & zinc.
Denis
Jim Watson
New member
Yes, there are a multitude of copper alloys, some quite strong.
If you throw in other stuff besides zinc, it is more usually called a bronze, but hey, if you can keep the yaller color, everybody knows what brass looks like.
If you throw in other stuff besides zinc, it is more usually called a bronze, but hey, if you can keep the yaller color, everybody knows what brass looks like.
FrankenMauser
New member
There are many other things that can be alloyed with copper and zinc, but still qualify as "brass".
And there are many different alloy percentages that still qualify as "brass".
Gilding Metal, for example, is a brass alloy. ...But contains just 5% zinc. It's 95% copper, but still "brass".
Muntz Metal, on the other hand, contains up to 45% zinc, plus some iron; but is still considered "brass".
Other "brass" alloys often include manganese, arsenic, tin, lead, nickel, aluminum, silicon, and phosphorus.
There are some "brass" casting alloys out there with such high zinc content (sometimes over 50%), backed by high percentages of tin, aluminum, lead, and/or nickel, that it is amazing that the alloys retain a brass color at all.
The Big Boy is more of a copy of a Marlin 336 with a straight stock, oct bbl, brass like receiver, and it's wood forearm (sans the loading gate) rather than the Winchester Model 1866 which did have a wood forearm, rd bbl, and a side loading gate (which is an update of the 1860 Henry without a side loading gate or wood forestock but with an oct bbl).
Henry Repeating Arm's Big Boy.
Marlin 336.
My suspicion is that Henry Repeating Arms' Big Boy model leverguns don't have a side loading gate because of a patent infringement issue with the Marlin 336 design first produced in 1942 and still protected somewhat.
Contrast the above with Henry Repeating Arm's copy of a Henry 1860 carbine. Note it doesn't have either a forestock or a loading gate.
My Uberti copy of a Winchester 1866 Yellowboy carbine. The major advantage of the '66 was the addition of the side loading gate which allowed the inclusion of a wood forestock. That, and the introduction of the 44-40 centerfire cartridge in lieu of the 44 Rimfire cartridge the 1860 Henry was chambered in. (BTW, the 1866 was the very first rifle produced under the newly taken over by clothing manufacturer, Oliver Winchester, and renamed the Winchester Repeating Arms Company.)
TruthTellers
New member
All I can say is in December somebody said something about a possible "all weather" model in .327 and that's got me thinking about holding off on a steel .327 with 20 inch barrel.
TruthTellers
New member
Denis, how much more would it cost Henry to manufacture their Big Boy rifles with a gate?