What Henry model numbers actually mean
Henry publishes no decoder, so here is one. What the prefixes and suffixes mean, why the Golden Boy is not the brass one, and modern Henry vs the 1860.
H001, H006GR, H012MX, H015B-4570. Henry’s catalog reads like a parts list, and Henry does not publish a decoder anywhere. So here is one, reverse-engineered from Henry’s own product tables.
First: modern Henry is not the 1860 Henry
Search “Henry rifle” and you get two completely different things tangled together. Henry Repeating Arms says it plainly on its own site: there is no affiliation or lineage to Benjamin Tyler Henry or the New Haven Arms Company, which made the original.
Henry Repeating Arms was founded in 1996 by Louis and Anthony Imperato, in Brooklyn. The first rifle shipped in 1997. The original 1860 Henry was designed by Benjamin Tyler Henry and built by New Haven Arms, whose corporate lineage runs to Winchester, not to the modern company. The name is a tribute.
The one place they meet is the H011 New Original Henry, Henry’s faithful reproduction of the 1860, with serial numbers starting “BTH.”
The prefix tells you the family
- H001 — Classic Lever Action .22
- H002 — U.S. Survival AR-7 takedown
- H003 — Frontier pump .22
- H004 — Golden Boy
- H006 — Big Boy, polished brass receiver
- H009 / H010 — large frame: .30-30 and .360 Buckhammer (H009), .45-70 (H010)
- H011 — New Original Henry, the 1860 reproduction
- H012 — Big Boy Steel, blued steel receiver
- H014 — Long Ranger, detachable box magazine
- H015 — Single Shot break action
- H023 — Lever Action Supreme
- H027 — Homesteader 9mm carbine
Here is the trap most people fall into: the Golden Boy is not the brass one. Its receiver is “Brasslite,” an alloy. The Big Boy H006 is the polished brass gun. Everyone assumes the opposite because of the names.
The letters after the number
- G = Side Gate. Henry’s own manual is titled for “Side Loading Gate” rifles and covers the H009G and H010G models.
- R = Carbine. 16.5″ barrel and lower capacity, against 20″ on the rifle. Not “round” and not “large loop,” whatever a retailer listing says.
- L = Large Loop lever. Henry sometimes writes LL to avoid colliding with the M.
- M = Magnum, and it depends on context: .22 WMR on a rimfire, .357 Magnum on a Big Boy.
- C = .45 Colt. V = .17 HMR. B on a Single Shot = brass receiver.
- X = X Model — synthetic stock, threaded muzzle, M-Lok slots.
Current Henry model numbers often append the caliber with a hyphen too — H001-22, H015-4570, H023-223. Older listings use the un-hyphenated form. Both are in the wild, so searching one may miss the other.
What Side Gate actually changes
The obvious answer is that you can top the magazine off without removing the tube. The part almost everyone misses is better: Henry kept the tube.
A Side Gate Henry loads both ways — through the gate or through the removable magazine tube. Marlins and Winchesters are gate-only. That means you get fast topping-off and the tube’s advantages, chiefly that unloading is quick and does not involve cycling live rounds through the action.
Side gates are the G models across the Big Boy, Big Boy Steel, .30-30 and .45-70 families, and standard on the X Models. The Golden Boy rimfires and the H001 Classic .22s do not have one.
The ones worth knowing about
- Lever Action Supreme (H023) — a clean-sheet design with a rotating bolt and detachable box magazines, in .223, .300 Blackout and .450 Bushmaster. Because it is not tube-fed, there is no bullet-shape restriction, so spitzer ammunition is fine.
- Long Ranger (H014) — the other non-tube Henry, in .223, .243, .308 and 6.5 Creedmoor.
- Homesteader (H027) — a 9mm semi-auto carbine with an interchangeable magazine well: Henry mags, or wells that take Glock, SIG P320 or S&W M&P magazines. Note there is a non-threaded 18.66″ variant, which exists for a reason and is worth a look for New York buyers.
Made in America
Henry’s claim, in its own words: “Every one of our rifles, shotguns, and revolvers is produced in the U.S.” Three facilities — Rice Lake and Ladysmith, Wisconsin, and Bayonne, New Jersey. The tagline is “Made in America, or Not Made at All.”
Worth being precise: that is a statement about where the firearms are produced. Henry does not publish a component-level sourcing breakdown, so we would not stretch it further than they do.
One caution on shopping by model number
Henry publishes no discontinued list, and it recently renumbered its catalog into H-series families. A model number that returns nothing may simply have been renamed rather than dropped. And retailer product titles frequently get the suffixes wrong — we have seen an R model described as “large loop” when Henry’s own table says carbine.
If you are trying to match a gun you already own, bring it in. Reading the barrel stamp beats guessing from a listing.
Route 112 in Medford.