“You are wise in the ways of the lever gun...
“...I figured any 94 pre 64 would be quality. ... you couldn’t keep it on a paper plate at 100 yds...The band was so cocked that it torqued the barrel. i tweeked the band open a tad and bolted it back on. Got the same accuracy that I had without the band...
“...A friend who worked in a gun store bought an Italian Henry rifle...As he was loading it with lead bullets dropping them down the tube, one went off. Luckily no one got hurt. The tube blew off the gun...” [Vaquero, post 51]
Many thanks for the courteous reply. Apologies for my tardy response.
My experiences in gun repair indicated that pre-1964 Winchesters 94s were superior to later production, but any mass-market manufacturer could slip up on quality control and let a lemon escape, then get sold to the dissatisfaction of an unlucky customer. Happened across the board and still does - to the detriment of flagship models and budget items. No company and no product was immune.
Another truism, of an engineering/production nature: any rifle design that hangs things on the barrel will exhibit poorer accuracy than a design that doesn’t do it. Less torques/stresses on the barrel in the latter usually degrade accuracy less.
The practical import? Tube-fed lever actions, and autoloading rifles generally, rarely display group sizes smaller than bolt action rifles. All can be tweaked, and many benefit from it as you learned. Applies to military rifles too: removing the handguard, barrel bands, bayonet studs, and big chunks of forend from Mauser 98s, Springfield ‘03s, and ‘17 Enfields can tighten groups.
As a repair tech, I frequently encountered lever-action tube-fed rifles with mis-shapen barrel bands like you experienced; sometimes, screw holes were drilled off axis, in forend wood, in clearance cuts for band screws on the underside of the barrel, in brackets, in magazine tubes. Often, it became a struggle to reassemble everything after the repair, because so many items were out of alignment. Happened with Marlins and Winchesters. It became a standing joke that we were nearly guaranteed a stripped band retainer screw on latter-day Winchester 94 carbine lower bands - the screw shaft was of such small diameter, the threads were very fine pitch and quite shallow, and the holes and cuts rarely aligned after taking all of them apart.
Authorities on firearms of the 1860s have written that a cartridge igniting inside the magazine tube was a problem from the start, in the Henry rifle and the Spencer rifle too. Chainfires occurred. Both rifles began life as rimfires; priming compound installation of pioneering times left residue nearer the center of the case head, apparently.
About 25 years ago, an acquaintance suffered an ignition in the magazine tube of his replica Henry, chambered for 44-40. He was loading it with cowboy action rounds (flat nose, lead bullet) out of doors, butt plate on the ground, muzzle straight up, magazine follower all the way forward, magazine spring stuffed into the forward sleeve, sleeve rotated to one side, right hand around the gap in the magazine tube.
He’d already dropped five fresh rounds down the tube. When he dropped in the sixth round, the forward sleeve rotated back into position and the tightly compressed magazine spring drove the follower - now released - down onto the sixth round. The impact set off that round’s primer; the case blew, right where his right hand encircled the magazine and barrel. The explosion nearly severed his thumb from his hand.
He & two hunting buddies were in rural Minnesota, 55 miles from the nearest medical help. Fortunately, they got him to a hospital in time to save the thumb.
A design flaw? In hindsight, possibly. Mechanical safeties on guns were almost unknown before 1900. A Henry replica wouldn’t be much of a replica if it did have a loading gate; it would be a Winchester 1866 with the forend removed - like at least one of the rifles actor Danny Glover wielded in the film Silverado.
I talked to the witness who saw the tube blow after writing the post. There were two people there. One died of natural causes around 10 years after the accident, he worked in a big gun store. The witness was a cowboy action enthusiast young lady. She said that the single round went off and luckily no one got hit when the tube burst. The rounds used might have had a shard of lead sticking up from home cast bullets And just dropping the next round down hit it just right. The guy, had the gun sent back to whatever distributor for Uberti, (I assume Uberti) dealt the firearm and they replaced the tube. That being the only part damaged. This firearm was used in matches I shot in. Functioned perfectly.
BTW I remember Danny Glover’s Henry/66. It was a head scratcher. The Guns he used in Lonesome Dove appeared more normal.
My thought was that Henry arms should put loading gates on all BUT the Henry clone.