How tight is hand tight? AKA henry big boy torques?

S

Shadow9mm

New member
So I recently purchased a Henry Rifle. Steel Side gate, round barrel, big boy in 44mag/44spl, 20in barrel.

On my 2nd trip to the range the gun started failing to feed. After I got home I found that the trigger guard plate screw had come loose. All the screws in the gun were weeping oil when I got it so I was a bit concerned everything might start coming loose.

I contacted Henry hoping to get torque specs so i could double check everything. This was their response....

Thank you for owning a Henry firearm.

The screws need only be “hand-tight”, or just snug and very little more. We do not have any published torque figures for this. Watching the Henry instructional videos for the Big Boy H006 model, which is the closest to your model, may help.

The severe cold will affect cycling, particularly if the oil has too high a viscosity for the weather. You can try a thinner oil for extreme cold shooting.

If necessary, you can use a bit of a medium thread locker on the threads to keep them in place.


Regards,
Click to expand...


Anyone have any kind of guess for the official and or proper torque spec for "hand-tight, or just snug and very little more"?

Based on my limited research, most of which came from the auto industry, hand tight is approximately 2ftlb or 24inlb. one site stated 15-20inlb. some sites stated no more than 4ftlb or, 48inlb....

Here's the rifle.

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The problem is the feel of hand-tight will vary with the size of the screw or bolt and the diameter of the screwdriver handle. If I make a 3/8-16 screw firmly hand-tight, then apply that same torque to a 2-56 screw, the latter will likely strip, as you want to use about 7½ times less torque on it. Only experience tells you what exceeding the thread strength feels like for different screw sizes and types of screw material. It's a manual skill.

If you are going to go to a torque wrench of some kind, you want to use a screw tightening torque chart because the wrench handle won't feel anything like a screwdriver. This one has a fair amount of hardware on it and the notes give you a sense of what different torque coefficient values are used with.
 
I'd snug them up with a little Loc-Tite and call it good. IIRC the blue one is the easiest to remove if necessary
 
Purple loctite is the one for small fasteners... that said, lever actions are all known for shooting loose.

I snug mine all after each shooting session.

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Still baffles me that they don't have specs... Got blue locktite. Probably going to do a full tear down in the next few days, clean and lube. Try and get thread sizes and specs, and see if I can get rough torque figures.

One thing that had not occured to me. I could do a reverse torque. I could loosen then hand tighten each to "snug" then loosen with my torque wrench to see what they break loose at and use that as a base line.
 
Having stripped out threads in receivers before, it's something I never wish to repeat. It's a lesson I learned the hard way. And having had screws work loose more than a few times, I look for torque specs. Things just work better that way.
 
Why I said you snug them until it gets tight with an application of whichever Loctite allows easy removal; except for the Loctite part, I do the same thing with choke tubes in shotgun - the principal is the same - you go TOO tight, you strip - or worse - break off the head of the screw
 
Well, had her out today. Hoping to to a full tear down this week. My suspicions were correct. The trigger screw was coming loose. Went ahead and snugged everything down. After I do the full tear down I will blue lock-tite everything.
 
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