ar-7 in canada, is it restricted???
- Thread starter jp landry
- Start date
i had a newer henry, but not the newest and it would ONLY shoot minimags. everything else was an FTE or FTF. i was obsessed with them before i got it... thought it was the coolest most practical gun under the sun. had visions of me carrying it in my backpack into the woods etc... when i got it the fun quickly dissipated. it's cheap looking, the barrel is a thin sleeve covered in teflon which scratches up easily and looks bad, very unreliable, by the time you start getting it to function you've blown through $20 worth of minimags, the feed ramp is on the magazine and bends really easily causing FTF's, it's too light to keep an accurate hold on target, super heavy trigger pull... i'd buy one marlin papoose before i bought two of these toy guns.
Henry is about to release a newer version of the Ar7. The receiver now has a rail for a scope although the latter can't be stowed in the stock. Many who acquired the Ar7 were disappointed with the quality and performance. But there are also those who are satisfied with theirs. It might be just a matter of keeping one's expectation within the bounds of what it was designed for - a compact, floating, survival rifle.
Exactly... to me that would mean don't buy it unless you plan to stash it away for an emergency situation in a boat or something. for fun plinking it's just an annoyance. i have heard of several people who happen to have a reliable one that made it out of the factory and are satisfyed with the cheapness of it... but they are few and far between. the majority are tupperware jam-o-matics to the extreme.
Brutus
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
My impression too. I owned one in 1980. It was a POS......jammed with every different rimfire ammo, clean or not. Poor front sight, that is too fragile and unprotected. Mediocre accuracy. The only use for this thing, is perhaps to prevent starvation, and that's it!
Mind you, it was a Charter Arms product. I have nothing to say about the later made ones.
I picked up the "Henry" version about a month ago on the E+E vvvery reasonable with the intent of selling it and making a buck on it. After testing it at the range and shooting a few gophers I think it is a keeper. I keep it in the box under the back seat of my 4x4 and it is always handy. I have been using the Federal HP .22's in the 525 bulk boxes with good success. I do get the odd jam but it seems to be when trying to rapid fire the gun and a shot of WD-40 and a wipe down after 50-100 rds doesn't hurt. It takes a while to get used to the weight (2.5lbs) and the thick chunky grip but it does shoot well. I went on the net and found guys with similar guns that were jamming and their solution was to slightly bevel the chamber throat to get shells to feed better. This was done with a .22 round and abit of valve grinding compound. The guy said it took very little to get it working better and to go slow and don't over do it. Easy enough considering the barrel comes off to work on it. I like mine enough that I may look for one of the pistols. Apparently "Henry" doesn't make them yet but there should be one out there somewhere. Just my $.02
I bought a Charter Arms AR7 Explorer new. It was the first firearm I ever bought, and one of the few that I ever sold. I lost a bunch of money on it, and was happy to see it go.
IMO, if they had forgot about the floating idea, and put a steel barrel on it, it would have been a much better gun. The mag release was very easy to hit, and didn't have much of a spring on it, but the mag would not drop free at the time, rather would fall out a few minutes later, when one was no longer paying all that much attention to it. Much time spent retracing the path to find the dropped mag.
The failures to feed, and the stovepipes I could live with, up to a point. The crappy accuracy, lousy sights, the barrel that would not stay pointed in the same direction for the third through seventh shot as it heated up, not so much. And on mine, the leading was horrid. Slow or fast, the barrel eventually picked up a scab or several, of lead in the bore. Not great for accuracy either.
For a "last resort, emergency use only" firearm, to be tucked into a kit and left there for the most part, it would serve. It would serve better if it were a bolt action single shot, with a stash of a couple boxes of ammo, though, too. Unreliable, is a crappy word to have to associate with anything Survival related. I thought it odd that there was not space to store ammo in the AR7 stock.
If you want to use the gun for anything else, like as a backpack gun, maybe look hard at the other options.
Cheers
Trev
IMO, if they had forgot about the floating idea, and put a steel barrel on it, it would have been a much better gun. The mag release was very easy to hit, and didn't have much of a spring on it, but the mag would not drop free at the time, rather would fall out a few minutes later, when one was no longer paying all that much attention to it. Much time spent retracing the path to find the dropped mag.
The failures to feed, and the stovepipes I could live with, up to a point. The crappy accuracy, lousy sights, the barrel that would not stay pointed in the same direction for the third through seventh shot as it heated up, not so much. And on mine, the leading was horrid. Slow or fast, the barrel eventually picked up a scab or several, of lead in the bore. Not great for accuracy either.
For a "last resort, emergency use only" firearm, to be tucked into a kit and left there for the most part, it would serve. It would serve better if it were a bolt action single shot, with a stash of a couple boxes of ammo, though, too. Unreliable, is a crappy word to have to associate with anything Survival related. I thought it odd that there was not space to store ammo in the AR7 stock.
If you want to use the gun for anything else, like as a backpack gun, maybe look hard at the other options.
Cheers
Trev
rb_roadrace
Regular
- Location
- Nova Scotia
I bought a Charter Arms AR7 from SIR Mail Order probably about 30 years ago, fired a few rounds through it and consigned it to the back of the closet in disgust until recently when I read on here about the chamber bevel modification. About 30 seconds with the Dremel tool and now it gobbles up everything I feed it. It was more of a novelty anyway than a serious survival tool, for me at least.
Here in NS a "game getter" really has little practical value as a survival kit component. If you can keep warm and dry and have decent signaling capability, SAR will find you long before you'll have to worry about starvation. Though something that goes BANG would sure help to ease those chills down the ol' spine when the coyotes start howling in the middle of the night.
Here in NS a "game getter" really has little practical value as a survival kit component. If you can keep warm and dry and have decent signaling capability, SAR will find you long before you'll have to worry about starvation. Though something that goes BANG would sure help to ease those chills down the ol' spine when the coyotes start howling in the middle of the night.
the trouble with the newer henry's is that the bolt is heavier than the older versions. they made it haevier so it won't fire subsonic ammo and this makes it really ammo sensitive. i also had to chamfer the lower chamber mouth and re contour the feed lip on the mag to prevent stovepipes, but even then, if the ammo has too little recoil it wont spit the case out, but if it has too much recoil it tends to crush the empty case between the bolt and chamber. apparently this can be cured by drilling numerous holes in the bolt reducing it's mass and therefore it's inerta, but really? why should you have to mod a gun SO much?
i am a former lover of these guns. i wanted one really really bad and was willing to look past all the complaints, and figured it couldn't really be that bad... could it? keep your expectations super, super low and you may not be dissapointed.
i am a former lover of these guns. i wanted one really really bad and was willing to look past all the complaints, and figured it couldn't really be that bad... could it? keep your expectations super, super low and you may not be dissapointed.
I'd figure that not cycling would be a good thing, if one wished to keep the noise levels down with subsonics and a can, no?
But anyone with the desire to shoot other than Hi-Vel ammo in a new AR7 would be able to make it work if they were so inclined, so I figure that purposely making the bolt so it won't cycle the stuff, is a bit of a waste of time.
Cheers
Trev
But anyone with the desire to shoot other than Hi-Vel ammo in a new AR7 would be able to make it work if they were so inclined, so I figure that purposely making the bolt so it won't cycle the stuff, is a bit of a waste of time.
Cheers
Trev
I think the newer Henry's have a tighter quality control than the older parent companies did. I think you have to take into consideration what this little gun was designed for. Its not going to shoot and function like your Ruger 10/22 or Remy 597. It is at best a last resort, a Sh!t H!ts The Fan Rifle and a lazy afternoon plinking gun. Mines not perfect but then neither is any other .22 on the market. I agree that they should have molded a spot in the stock to store a box of ammo. Although the new magazines hold 8 rounds you can probably ony keep the spare one loaded. The one stored in the magazine well would classify it as a loaded weapon when transporting.
300Spartans
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- Canada of course
Hey, James Bond shot down a helicopter with one! 
Well, your ideas may be different than mine in that respect, but as a "Last resort" kind of gun, the last thing I would want to have is anything other than absolute certainty that it would work for it's intended purpose. In all weather, at all times.
The only thing mine ever did that met my expectations, was float. Not the very first thing on my list of requirements in a .22 rifle.
Cheers
Trev
I meant it had to better than a sharp stick. My spear chucking skills are poor at best. If I had a choice of a SHTF gun it would brobably be a 12 guage. But I would take my chances with the Henry and a couple full mags for a short while anyway. I would like to find one of the pistols. I don't ever remeber seeing one on the E+E. Maybe for some obscure reason the GunGrabbers have prohibeted them. Any one know? Any one out there have one? How do they stack up compared to the rifle?
