Henry rifle
Overview
Lever-action
Lever-action is a type of firearm action which uses a lever located around the trigger guard area, to load fresh cartridges into the chamber of the barrel when the lever is worked. Most lever-action firearms are rifles, but lever-action shotguns and a few pistols have also been made...
, breech-loading, tubular magazine rifle
Rifle
A rifle is a firearm designed to be fired from the shoulder, with a barrel that has a helical groove or pattern of grooves cut into the barrel walls. The raised areas of the rifling are called "lands," which make contact with the projectile , imparting spin around an axis corresponding to the...
.
The original Henry rifle was a .44 caliber rimfire
.44 Henry
The .44 Henry, also known as the .44 Rimfire, the .44 Long Rimfire, or the 11x23R cartridge was a rim-fire round that uses a .875 inch casing. The round has a total length of 1.345 inches. It uses a 200 or 216 grain bullet with a .446 diameter. The cartridge was loaded with 26 to 28...
, lever-action, breech-loading rifle
Rifle
A rifle is a firearm designed to be fired from the shoulder, with a barrel that has a helical groove or pattern of grooves cut into the barrel walls. The raised areas of the rifling are called "lands," which make contact with the projectile , imparting spin around an axis corresponding to the...
designed by Benjamin Tyler Henry
Benjamin Tyler Henry
Benjamin Tyler Henry was an American gunsmith and manufacturer. He was the inventor of the Henry rifle, the first reliable lever-action repeating rifle....
in the late 1850s. The Henry rifle was an improved version of the earlier Volcanic Repeating rifle. The Henry rifle used copper (later brass) rimfire cartridge
Cartridge (firearms)
A cartridge, also called a round, packages the bullet, gunpowder and primer into a single metallic case precisely made to fit the firing chamber of a firearm. The primer is a small charge of impact-sensitive chemical that may be located at the center of the case head or at its rim . Electrically...
s with a 216 grain (14 g) bullet over 25 grain
Grain (measure)
A grain is a unit of measurement of mass that is nominally based upon the mass of a single seed of a cereal. From the Bronze Age into the Renaissance the average masses of wheat and barley grains were part of the legal definition of units of mass. However, there is no evidence of any country ever...
s (1.6 g) of gunpowder
Gunpowder
Gunpowder, also known since in the late 19th century as black powder, was the first chemical explosive and the only one known until the mid 1800s. It is a mixture of sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate - with the sulfur and charcoal acting as fuels, while the saltpeter works as an oxidizer...
. Nine hundred were manufactured between summer and October 1862; by 1864, production had peaked at 290 per month.
