Henry’s Big Boy revolver announcement got my interest, but now they really have my attention. These first-ever revolvers from Henry are absolutely gorgeous and they’re smooth as butter.

Fit, finish, and everything about the action are fantastic. Can’t wait to get these .357 Magnum/.38 Special wheel guns out to the range! Video overview below . . .

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27 COMMENTS

  2. aw c’mon, there’s nothing special about their looks. maybe in person there is some extra panache but not from the photos.

    I will admit that they are not butt ugly like the Kimber revolver.

  3. I’m not much on cowboy guns, but a notable change from the 10dozen double stack 9mm and 101 different ARs on display at the show.

    HUGE crowds on Friday at the trade show. Every gun and accessory you could want to see. A great time despite having to fight the humanity to move down the aisles (or just adjust to moving in 1st gear). Friendly respectable humanity (not at all like a demtard/BLM mob would be). If you have never been to the annual meeting. GO.

  4. Yes indeed, out to the range, and when your there run 500 rounds of heavy loaded 180gr .357 in it.
    A $900 gunm should eat those all day long.
    Henry says, “Yes we know its listed as .357 however we do not reccomend shuting those.” (I just made that up, but I bet that’s what Henry would like to say)

  5. Look at the design of this revolver it is a straight rip off of the Charter Arms revolver. It has no side plate and a separate grip frame and the internals go in from the bottom. It only has the one lock up for the cylinder a small pin in the back of the cylinder. They replaced the aluminum grip frame with a brass one so big deal. A Charter Professional can be had for half this amount and it ic more functional and looks better. The only reason to but this boat anchor would be to leave it in the box and put it in the safe as it will soon be discontinued and a collectors item. If you’re going to charge this much at least copy a better design.

    • What about the locking lug coming up from the frame that goes into the divots on the cylinder? If it was good enough for Colt…

      • The difference is the Cold cylinder release encloses the ratchet and it can’t come open. This is like a Smith without the front lock up.

    • Looks like there is a side plate.

      I mentioned earlier that I thought it looked like a cross between a charter and an early 70s Colt lawman (both ugly).

      I would imagine this much better quality than a charter (since they are crap). I just wish they had brought something more unique to the market – like a redo of the CZ551 revolver.

      Not a huge fan of Henry rifles as they are less attractive to me than winchesters and marlins.
      But they do seem to be good quality and not made in Slygovia.

      Maybe they will give the design team a challenge and make these more attractive. I get the impression these were designed from “least cost to produce” standpoint.

      • “It’s a brass alloy”

        Brass is already an alloy, ‘Marsupial One’.

        Copper and zinc are the primary metals…

    • Look closely at the right pictures. See those screws? It has a side plate. Side plate on the right cylinder latch on the left side of the frame that slides forward = I’m 99% sure that when someone takes one apart it will look an awful lot like a S&W product, maybe with a coil spring as the mainspring like J-frames have due to the advantages in durability and long-term reliability, as well as reduced manufacturing costs, compared to the leaf springs in some designs. I see no indication so far that the design isn’t mechanically sound.

      There’s nothing wrong with a grip frame that’s a separate part if it’s well made. I would like to see Ruger make a version of the GP100 or SP101, or a resurrected Speed Six, with a mainspring housing made of lightweight aluminum and pinned to the bottom of the frame, to save weight. The problems I’ve seen with Charter revolvers have tended to be poor heat treatment and poor quality control and not related to the separate gripframe, which is a very clever idea.

      I do have to wonder about the lines of the frame, though, especially those great big round ears on either side of the frame above the hammer. If it had a Ruger Service Six style recoil shield that went all the way back and followed the lines of the frame there, it wouldn’t look so weird. It has a fixed rear sight but it has a front sight that’s mounted on a ramp, as we normally see on adjustable sight revolvers. Everything about it is fugly, even before we look at the version that has the Colt 1877 “Thunderer” style grip frame. It may be made of good steel but the lines remind me of 1970s cap guns, the “tear gas blank” starter pistols they used to sell in ads in the back pages of Soldier of Fortune, and 1960s cast potmetal el cheapo garbage guns from Clerke and RG. It’s hideous. Looking at it makes my brain itch. The more I look, the more wrong everything about it looks.

      And visual appeal and pride of ownership are real, especially when we’re talking about something this expensive, that doesn’t offer any practical advantages over a used police department Glock 17 or M&P 9 that holds three times the ammo.

      It also looks like the rear sight is just a groove in the top of the frame, without even the little recess milled into the rear to reduce glare like Colts and Smith & Wessons had a hundred and twenty years ago. If they’re up in the Colt King Cobra price bracket, I would have expected more attention to detail, and an adjustable rear sight. And stainless steel.

      When and if one shows up in stores local to me I will feel a compulsion to examine one, to see what size speedloader it uses, to see whether they put a relief cut on the bottom of the forcing cone to clear the cylinder yoke like S&W did on the K-frames. I am curious enough that I’m looking for reviews, where someone is thorough enough to check barrel/cylinder gap and endshake on all six chambers, and slug the bore and all six chamber throats. Nothing about it calls out to me and says “buy me,” though. And it’s sixty or seventy years late to introduce a new full-sized service type revolver to the American marketplace. Wheel guns are a niche tool for hobbyists and enthusiasts, and have been for a very, very long time now.

      Given all the foregoing, I predict that it won’t sell, that in a year or two we will see them getting blown out for $249 at CDNN Investments, and then in ten or twenty years collectors will pay four figures for them.

      Given the rest of Henry’s product line, and their marketing emphasis on Old West Tradtion, if they were going to introduce a handgun, I would have expected them to import Italian SAA clones and put the Henry rollmark on them. You could do worse. Or if they were going to put the investment into tooling up for a domestically manufactured design, well, the patents on the Vaquero and Blackhawk expired quite some time back. Make mine a stainless 5 1/2″ Vaquero clone in .357, with a brushed finish and the Bisley grip frame, please. And the bigger-than-N-frame “Old” frame size. Or a 3″ stainless Speed Six clone in .357, with the separate aluminum alloy mainspring housing to take SP101 size grips.

  6. I would have thought they would have done something like a 1873 or at least had checkered grips.

    • Yeah that’s what I thought too, I suppose with the competition from eyetalian gunm manufacturers they wouldn’t be able to sale many at the price they are asking

  7. What Henry says… “From full-house .357 Magnum loads for hunting to light .38 Special target loads for easy plinking, the Big Boy Revolver will eat all you can feed it.”

    All Henry specs say about the barrel is 4″ Round Blued Steel; must be a reason they did not hype the barrel like the grips.

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  10. As lovely as a blind date with someone’s second cousin. Truly an ugly duckling. They ruined the walnut with that hideous red stain. I’ll stick with my 1873s over this any day.

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