Question for you all.

[Boerrancher]

About a year ago I put a new scope on my old 1894 Marlin .357mag Carbine. This is the same rifle I have been packing around to shoot 'yotes with since I was seven. When I tried to zero the scope I couldn't do it, and put the rifle up and forgot about it. This past week I have been playing with it, and the first thing I tried to zero it, but It shot all over the map, like 18 inch 5 shot group all over the map at 50 yards. It was a new scope, but the rifle always shot well with iron sights so I yanked the scope off and shot a 3 shot group real quick and had a 3 inch group. OK so the scope is bad.

I have only owned two Simmons scopes this being the second and both have been junk. I got to looking at the box and paper work that came with the scope, yeah I kept it, and there is no address listed to send the damn thing back. So I will be sure and let everyone know that I have had 2 failures on 2 new scopes, not to buy Simmons scopes.

I found one of my old Tasco World Class scopes in the gun room and put it on the rifle. It wasn't but a few shots and I was on the paper and cutting bullet holes. I let it cool, loaded five in the tube and shot them. I had a 5 inch group all in a straight line up and down. Finally, I got everything right and was shooting 2 inch groups, but it would seem that I would get from time to time flyers that would be way out like 3 or 4 inches. I would usually get one of these out of 5 shots, and there was no telling which shot it would be, it would just randomly throw one out. I made sure all of my boolits were uniform, I have shot this alloy and lube for years.

I have played with varrious boolit sizes, different powders and charges. I have run out of ideas. The best load I have found for it is 5 gr of Unique on the 158 gr swc. I can generally put 3 cutting each other sometimes 4, but the old gun still tosses one or two way out in left field. The ones that are tossed out can be anywhere, high, low, left or right and are never in the same spot. I find it difficult to believe it is the rifle. I haven't shot this gun enough using my Lee mold casted boolits. I know that it never use to do this with boolits from my friends lyman mold. Is it possible there is a something wrong with the mold that I am not seeing? Is it the gun? I need someone to throw me a bone here, cause I am out of ideas.

Best wishes,

Joe

[fishhawk]

Friend has been working with a 357 herrett and would have a random flier using cast. I sat down and start looking real hard and what he was doing first was the expander was making the neck to small and was swagging the boolit down when seating so made a expander that expanded the case to .3565 then went and turned all the necks for uniform thickness then annealed them now no more fliers.

[btroj]

My Marlon 1894c does not like any SWC. It drove me nuts. 5 inch groups at 50 yards? And those were the good ones.

Two things I did discover. Any bullet seemed to shoot better the faster it was driven. The Lyman 358156 was the tops amongst SWC for me but still not good enough.

I bit the bullet and bout a Mihec 359640 mould. Have only shot the HP version so far but it is the second thing I learned- the rifle loves that bullet. It will now shoot better at 100 yards with that bullet than I could do with some others at 25 yards.

I have a feeling this rifle has a steep lease angle, if any! I think the tapered nose on the 359640 helps the bullet center while the shoulder on the swc give variable centering of the bullets. I think this is part of the magic of the Ranch Dog line of bullets also. I hope to get the RD 175 and see how they shoot.

If you want I can send you some of the 359640 bullets. I shoot them in mag cases with 13 gr of WC820. I get 1550 to 1600 fps and good accuracy. I need to scope this thing and see how well it can really shoot.

Brad

[HeavyMetal]

Let's do a little "brainstorming" here.

First I will go with the idea you've checked the rifle completely and have not seen a loose feed tube, and the muzzle has a clean crown.

NEXT let's examine your ammo:

357 case's, not 38 special?

same brand name on the head stamp? One lot would be better but hard to do on a budget.

All Brass or all nickel? I've found mixing these can change neck tension.

Case's trimmed to the same length?

Primer pockets reamed for consistant ignition?

Inconsistant crimp? Trimming will help a great deal with that issue.

weighing your boolits? I found this to be an eye opening adventure! I FOUND 1% of my cast would be way heavy or way light and, once sorted into weight groups, groups got smaller and rounder.

you don't have to do all of this to every piece of brass you own but a select group of 50 may narrow the problem down to ammo or rifle by creating a control group.

Hope this helps.

[doubledown]

I like to use powders that have more volume and fill the case at least 60% or so. In my experience 5 grains of Unique can have different pressures depending on how the powder is laying in the case at the time of ignition. Just my 2 cents, I have had rifles do the same thing and it is aggravating for sure.

[EDK]

First place I would look is boolit diameter. I've got Ballard Rifled Cowboy rifles and they like .360 diameter better than .358. Another thing is weight...the 180 grain WFN from NOE seems more accurate than the LYMAN 358665 158 grainer.

I have been using TITEGROUP in my 357 loads for a couple years. Good accuracy and no leading with the plain base boolits. I do load some gas check boolits for rifle specific loads...you might try that too. Conventional wisdom on the MARLINS is larger diameter, harder alloy, gas checks and higher end velocity.

Go over to lasc.us and read Glenn Fryxell's article on 1894 MARLINS...and the rest of them sometime too! Glenn is THE MAN on cast boolits.

Another thing to consider is the barrel band on an 1894c. There have been some threads discussing accuracy problems because of barrel bands versus fore end caps. IIRC consensus was you're good for the first three rounds and then the group opens up. The MARLIN Cowboy rifles seem more accurate than a round barrel gun with barrel bands, but my 30/30 TEXANS were well used versus the almost NIB 30/30 Cowboys.

I tried a lot of calibers for coyotes/feral dogs molesting the calves when I lived near Gray Summit (77 to 95.) 357 or 44 lever guns carried good and did ok, but the best gun I had was an M1A. There ain't no flies on that heavy big boy for taking care of business.

:Fire::cbpour::redneck:

[gasboffer]

I had a Marlin 94 .357 several years ago. Wouldn't group with jacketed bullets or hard cast boolets. I tried some Remington (I think they were SJ hollow-points, don't know if the SJ was short-jacket or semi-jacket) Apparently the jacket was pretty thin, and the groups were semi-wonderful. I slugged the barrel and found tight spots where the iron sights, (front and rear) were dovetailed into the barrel. Also tight spot where the barrel band was.
Started loading soft cast boolets and accuracy was vastly improved.
Good Luck!

[Wayne Smith]

Joe, you haven't responded to any of the ideas above, so I don't know if you have ruled them out or not. If you have you may need to look at lube purge. Too much of a soft lube can rather randomly leave the boolit after it has left the barrel and thus unbalance the boolit. This is a likely cause of such apparently random scatter, assuming you have ruled out the more basic issues mentioned already.

[leadman]

Is the scope mount really tight. I will run each screw thru the base seperately to make sure the screw does tighten the base to the gun. I have had to run a bottoming tap in some holes to clean them out.

I also had a Marlin (son has it now) and found it did not SWC boolits. The Lee 158gr RFN shot very well in my gun. One was a light load of Unique, another load was with Lil Gun. Even at 1,700 fps it did not lead. These were sized to .359".

[Crawdaddy]

sounds like this rifle shot well with cast bullets out of a Lyman mold, doesnt shoot well out of a Lee mold.

To me that indicates a size or a weight issue.

The most likely is size. I suspect the Lee is dropping bullets smaller. Slug your barrel to find out what size you should be shooting and then measure the Lee bullets. Or measure a bullet out of the Lyman mold and compare to one out of the Lee mold.

[MtGun44]

Look for forend pressing on the barrel or frame unevenly, or the forend hanger being too
tight. If the forend is not consistently loading the barrel, it can move shots all over the
place.

As to Simmons scopes, they used to be a run of the mill cheap scope. Meade telescopes
bought the company and designed some really great new scopes, both optically and
especially mechanically, and marketed them as their "Master Series". These were truly solid,
reliable scopes for low prices, quite surprising. Then Meade sold the division, and they apparently
quit making the Master Series scopes -although some may still be in inventory somewhere.
No idea what current scopes are like, probably back to ordinary Chinese cheapos - meaning
some are OK and many are not. IMO, the Master Series are among the very best of the
inexpensive scopes - from a mechanical design standpoint, at least.

Bill

[alfloyd]

I would check the base of the cast boolits. If you have a base that is flat with no defects they shoot better. If the base is not flat or has corners that are not all the same all around, they will fly different than the good ones.

I had this problem on my swaged bullets with base defects. After I corrected the base problem the flyers went away.

Just me thoughts on the flyers.

Lafaun

[Mk42gunner]

Joe,

I hate to say it; but will anyway. Try another scope, the way I read your post you got good groups at first with the Tasco, but the iron sight groups beat it after the rifle cooled down.

Robert

[44man]

I don't know if Simmons got better. I went to buy a 3X9 scope and the man behind the counter handed me a Simmons and said to look at the far wall. Then turn up the power, everything went bad out of focus so I bought the Bushnell.

[white eagle]

Joe
don't know if it has been mentioned or not but maybe you alloy needs to me harder

[Cap'n Morgan]

Try shooting a couple of groups without the forend and magazine tube. Any friction between barrel and forend or barrel band can shift the barrel ever so slightly between shots. It doesn't matter with open sights as the front sight moves with the barrel, but with a scope it's a different matter.

[hiram1]

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