This morning I took my new rifle, a Henry Big Boy .357, out to the range. Today is a crisp, bright sunny fall day and it felt good to be outside. This is a fun gun to shoot and I was even hitting the target from 50 ft out without a scope! As I concentrated on hitting the target and experiencing the thrill of shooting this beautiful machine, the stress of work and the every day cares melted away.
Oops! What happened? Suddenly one of the .38 specials that I was shooting got jammed. In all my years of shooting, I've never had a gun jam before. When I saw I could not easily dislodge it, I packed it up, placed it in my trunk, and drove to Gander Mountain where I bought it less than two weeks ago. Where it is jammed, there is no chance of it discharging. Still, I felt awkward walking into a store and having to say, "Uh, I have a jammed live bullet in this thing."
I explained to the man in the gun department what happened. There is no gunsmith on duty on Sunday so I had to leave it. He walked out to my car with me and brought it inside.
Hopefully I will get it back tomorrow. Gander Mountain put it in their "snail room", a special enclosed room that even if a gun discharges, the bullet will not penetrate the walls.
Welcome to San Juan, Puerto Rico
5 hours ago
Did you give it a good disassembly, clean and lube before taking it out for the first time? I've found that field stripping and cleaning everything I can touch prior to firing does help as the factory lubes and shipping and storing chemicals are removed. I'll then use a high pressure lube on bearing surfaces, a graphite grease on cam and shaft surfaces, and so on and put her back together. But jamming? Not had that happened, re-lubed or not. Their customer service is first rate though so hopefully they'll have the problem sorted out in no time. Henry makes a good product so I'm disappointed for you and hope it's back to you functioning properly soon.
ReplyDeleteInteresting that you mentioned that. The other store, where I have bought most of my firearms, always lubes them before they turn them over to the customer. So it never crossed my mind to do that with this one. I thought of that as I was driving from the range to Gander Mountain. I hope to be able to talk to the gunsmith and ask his thoughts on why this happened. My regular gun shop is not a Henry dealer, that's why I ended up at Gander Mountain.
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