My .357 H&R Handi-Rifle, part 1

Last Tuesday I ordered an H&R Handi-Rifle in .357 from Gander Mountain. It shipped the next day, and Friday I received a phone call from my local store telling me it had arrived.  I wasn't able to get there to pick it up until today, and I was worried the place would be crowded on a Sunday, but the store was surprisingly empty.  I inspected the gun, showed my ID,  filled out the Federal for 4473, state paperwork, acknowledgment of receipt of gun lock, and it was mine. They gave me the opportunity to buy a box of ammunition from the stock they save for gun buyers, which was nice, but I have a good stock of reloads at home.

First order of business was to clean the gun. The barrel had a film of grease inside to which was adhering dust and bits of cardboard from the shipping box. The salesperson told me they offer a free cleaning with every purchase, but I assumed that would involve leaving the gun. (Why don't they just clean them when they receive them?)  I decided to do it myself. Scrubbed the barrel and ran a few patches down, and gave the gun a wipe with polarized oil.

Next step was to install the hammer extension- a must for scope use, and handy in any case. One nice touch: The setscrew came with a coating of Loctite on it.

I then installed a leather sling and snap-on swivels I had on hand, using the attachment points installed on the gun.

The last step was installing and aligning a scope or sight. I went back and forth between using a red dot sight and a 2.5x long eye relief scope that were sitting on the shelf here. I decided on the scope, but the Weaver rings I have on hand are too tall for this installation, so I ordered a set of Weaver Quad Lock 1-Inch Medium Detachable Rings (Matte Black) from Amazon; when they arrive I'll do a post on the scope installation. I temporarily installed a small red dot sight on the off chance I visit my club range before then, but I'm probably going to wait until I can do some more reloads before I go there. I plan on testing a number of different loads, including some factory loads, and several cast lead loads, starting with Elmer Keith's favorite: 158 grain semi-wadcutter "Keith" bullet over 13.5 grains of 2400. That's almost of a mild load today; Alliant's manual specifies 14.8 gains. But it's a good all around load for cast 158gr bullets. If it shoots accurately in the Handi-Rifle, I'll have a good load for both it and my Ruger Blackhawk.

So what's it for? Mostly to have an interesting rifle to develop loads for. My club has a maximum 100 yard range, so there's not a lot of reason for me to work on .300 Win Mag loads. .357 is cheap to reload, too, and I already have all the dies and powder I need. And there's the chance it might find use as a hunting rifle. I think it would make a good woods deer rifle for Michigan for shots up to 50 yards with a max load of 2400 and a 158gr or heavier JHP bullet.

Part II: Initial testing at the range