I will be ordering a Henry Big Boy Steel soon in 44 mag for our deer season, where we can now use straight wall cartridges instead of shotguns. I'm thinking of a 1-4x20 or 2-7x33 Leupold for a scope. Can anyone tell me how low I can go on ring height and keep clearance for the hammer?
I bought the one piece Talley base and ring setup for my Big Boy Steel from Henry. Have a Leupold 4x on it, which I think is 32 or 33 mm. It isn't the lowest setup, but leaves plenty of room to lower the hammer down safely, which is pretty important the way the Henry hammer block system works. The base and rings are hell for stout!
I just bought a Henry 45/70 and a Henry BB in 357 mag. I bought the BB-RSM base that Henry sells for the BB and it cost me $35.00 for base and shipping. I'll take $25.00 for it and I'll pay for shipping if you are interested in. It is new in the box. I decides to try a red dote sight. I had put a 1 1/2 x 4 1/2 power Bushnell on the 45/70 with low Leupold rings and had to go with the extended hammer spur on it because of scope height. I tried high rings on it to begin with but you couldn't get a decent cheek weld with the high rings. The hammer spur works fine, you just have to get used to it. Henry lever guns are made with combs that work really well for their iron sights but when using a scope, it forces you to lift you head and can't get a good support with the comb. So to get a good medium result, I suggest going with low rings and hammer spur.
I ran an EGW rail and Weaver lows on my BBS .45 Colt with an old Leupold M8 2.5x20.
Not too many rounds in, but hammer access isn't difficult, I had a lot of scope mounting latitude with the rail setup, and, while the cheek weld isn't like looking down the irons, it's not terrible.
Originally, I was going to put a peep on it, then I found a used Vari X III 1.5-5 for my #1 .45-70, that freed up the M8 to roll on the Henry.
If you're a cheek weld fanatic, you might want to just run a peep sight, but my setup shoots well enough, I'm pretty dang happy with it.