H&R Classic Carbine

[Mr Peabody]

I bought one of these neat little guns. It shoots the .45 Colt cartridge. I cast up some RCBS 255 SWCutters out of a soft alloy and pc'd them. Diameters run .455. It cuts a big ragged hole at 50 yards. Interesting to me it's got a left hand twist. All my other Handi's are right handed twist. I even got a thumbs up from my wife on this one.

[hpdrifter]

That one was made for the Southern hemisphere.

I just missed one on a classifieds on another forum....dang it.

[3leggedturtle]

Thise are nuce and very versatile. I regret not picking one up awhile ago.

[Mr Peabody]

I looked at this one for a week. I knew I'd regret not trying it, so I bought it from the First owner. He gave me the box and paper work with it.

[bedbugbilly]

This are nice . . . . I ran across one a few years ago . . . was very tempted but at the time, I felt the shop was asking way too much for it . . . should have bit the bullet and got it as I haven't run across another one since. Let us know how she shoots. I had a H & R Handi in .357 - I liked it as it was nice to shoot both smokeless and black powder cartridges out of it. I thinned the herd and the Handi went but a carbine like you have seemslikeit would be a lot of fun to shoot both smokeless and bp out of to see what it would do.

[Good Cheer]

It could use more powder space for FFg but otherwise, great!

[Mr Peabody]

I wish I had of known more of these H&R rifles 40 years ago during the salad days. This one is something that seems to be a fun shooter to 75 yards with the factory sights. The way it treats rocks and cans is impressive; as is the cartridge. I haven't tried any fffg with pc'd boolits but that's a idea. The best Handi I have is set up for the .35 Whelen, I'd prefer the .35 Remington though.

[Good Cheer]

Ideal/Lyman #445599 works with the case full of black, cloth wrapper on the base band to make it stick in the case mouth.
On my list is to treat the piece as a Civil War era breech loading carbine; stick in the boolit followed by the packaged powder.
Alternatively there's no reason not to muzzle load the boolit as done by Paul Matthews (paper jacket book) to load his single shot 45-70 as a 45-120. Also been thinking about running a 7/16" drill bit into an old set of Lee blocks to make a muzzle loading paper patch boolit for it.

[Good Cheer]

Oh, by the way, with the twist these rifles have a longer boolit can work if you preserve case space to increase the velocity with a slower powder.