New 1894 Marlin in 44spl/44 mag bore diameter?

I have an 1894 Marlin in 44 spl/44 mag,I bought it new just this past June. The fit and finish is really very good, but the gun had to go back to Marlin, the carrier was out of spec. Marlin treated me pretty good, they paid the shipping, and even sent UPS to my home to pick the gun up. 10 days later the gun came back, I loaded some dummie rnds and put them through her about 100 times, and she cycled pretty good,if not I was just gonna get rid of her. But since she’s running the way she should I’m gonna invest in a mould, and sizer for her. I read somewhere that Marlins have a “ fat” bore, and while I am gonna get her slugged before I order the mould from NOE, I’m just wondering for you guys that have the new Marlins what bore diameter does your 44 1894 Marlin have. Also what boolit shape do they seem to like the most? The dummies that I made were from some extra boolits that I had laying around, they were 7 Hornaday 240 grn hollow point XTP’s, and one store bought 200 grn .432 cast rnfp. I put all eight in the mag and cycled them and no malfunction, I repeated the test 12 times so I hope she’s fixed for good. The boolit I want is from NOE’s brass mould it’s a 200 grn RNFP, a really good lookin boolit. Any input will be appriiated
Paul

I predict you will enjoy that one. The RNFP will be the right choice

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Very recently a friend asked me to load some test ammo for his Marlin 1894 in 44 Magnum. He requested jacketed bullets only, heavy pressure hunting ammo. (sigh) We started with Hornady 240 grain bullets, listed as .430" diameter. The rifle hated them and created patterns rather than groups. Bullets flew wild all over the target. From there we went to lighter weight bullets while trying to please the barrel's rate of twist. Our first attempt was Hornady 200 grain .430 bullets. This combination almost produced groups, but there was enough variance in the shots that neither of of felt good about the results. Next came Sierra 210 bullets listed at .429" diameter. The first 5-shot group produced one ragged hole! Not content to stop there we fired a second group and the rifle repeated the ragged hole group. All 3 loads were were assembled with H110 powder, maximum charges from the Hodgdon reloading data site. I can't claim the rifle has a tight bore, but it did not like anything Hornady made (both .430" diameter). In spite of this, your results with a cast boolit may and probably will vary from this. Hope there is some info here that will benefit your search.

Some people claim the Marlin (pre Remington) barrels were out of spec., since they generally run .431" diameter, but that is the SAAMI spec. for .44 Magnum rifles, but the SAAMI spec. for .44 Magnum handguns is .429" diameter.

I talked to the Remington rep at the SHOT Show last year and the year before about this, and he made notes and said he'd take it up with their engineers. I had pointed out to him that no one makes a commercial .431" diameter bullet, unless special ordered, and he agreed. It's possible they've changed to the .429" diameter bore for the newer rifles, and you'll only know by slugging the bore of your rifle and finding out for sure.

Hope this helps.

Fred

I suggest you consider the Lee 44-200RNFP in 6 cavity for your Marlin. The Lee 200's work very well in my lever action .44 mag rifles(Winnie and Rossi).

I have two Marlin 1894S Microgroove rifles, one is a .44-40 made in 1993, the other is a pre-safety, JM marked .44 Magnum produced about the same time. BOTH rifles shoot well with SOFT bullets of 1:30 alloy sized .430". Never slugged the barrels, as target results showed me all I needed to know:

Attachment 209624Attachment 209625Attachment 209626

I have a Marlin 1894 JM in 44mag I bought new in 1998. As of late it jams up something fierce on me every time I try to load anything through it. Very frustrating.
I think I might have to buy a new carrier and install that to fix her. I miss shooting this rifle.

Anyone else run across this problem?

I wore out the carrier in one of my Marlins after thousands of rounds in SASS matches. Here's one way to fix it: http://www.ktgunsmith.com/marlinjam.htm

Here's another link with better pictures: http://marauder.homestead.com/files/Marlin94Fix.html

Hope this helps.

Fred

My 1894 Marlin didn’t have 200 rnds through her when she started jamming up,when I called Marlin and explained what was happening the girl on the other end knew right away it was an out of spec carrier. For her to be able to diagnose my problem over the phone, and before I could finish telling her she knew what it was, they must have lots of problems with out of spec carriers. But as I said in my opening post, Marlin took good care of me, they paid the shipping, and sent a UPS truck to my house to pick up the rifle. If I understand the Marlin jam correctly, after a few thousand rnds the carrier gets a gauge in it, and the fix is to put a harder metal were the gauge is. If that’s correct why doesn’t Marlin just make the carrier out of a harder metal and end the dreaded Marlin jam once and for all, I mean the problem has been around forever, and I’m sure Marlin knows this better than we do.

OK Rem/Marlin is not going to change to .429 bores because the SAMMI Spec for .44 Magnum rifles is .431 +/- .002. The larger dia. is due to the rifles inability to vent gasses like a Revolver does and thus the safety margin for pressure is much less. Factory .44 Mag ammo is loaded to 36,000 psi and the 1894 action is good to about 45,000psi ( actually 43,500) so there is not much room for customer error. Thus the larger bore dia. to cut pressure back. No manufacturer builds guns to be fired with Handloads. They can't control you or yours so all guns are designed and produced to be safe with Factory Ammo.

It takes an act of God for Remington to make any changes to a gun, and that is because they are a big Company and their Engineering Dept. looks very carefully at any changes to the production. This takes them along time as they aren't to keen on changing a production operation that is producing a good quality product. The current guns are way better than anything JM Marlin ever produced, despite what you might hear to the contrary.

As far as your boolit size goes get a mould that drops at .432+ and size to .432 for your rifle. a 200 gr boolit will stabilize just fine in the 1:38 twist barrel as that was what the barrel was designed to shoot anyway.

if your mould is dropping undersized, then you can powder coat the boolits which will add .002-.004 to the OD which can then be sized down to what you want. Powder coating is a good thing anyway as it eliminates Leading for good.

We have tried to get them to adopt a 1:16-1:20 twist rate on these guns for the last 10 years and it still hasn't happened. Any one who has looked at this knows that the 1:38 twist ratio has been outdated for 75 years, but change comes slowly to big manufacturers.

hope this helps.

Randy

My 1894 Cowboy needs .433 bullets. I get them from Dardas. The 200 gr RNFP feeds fine. Currently I am running them at 1330 fps from the 24" barrel with no leading. Groups are 1' or so at 50 yards using the 24x scope I have for load testing.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Outpost75

I have two Marlin 1894S Microgroove rifles, one is a .44-40 made in 1993, the other is a pre-safety, JM marked .44 Magnum produced about the same time. BOTH rifles shoot well with SOFT bullets of 1:30 alloy sized .430". Never slugged the barrels, as target results showed me all I needed to know:

Attachment 209624Attachment 209625Attachment 209626

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No sir, Outpost, you certainly don't need to bore slug...just do it!

I found with my 44 mag rifle the best weight to use was what typically is seen on shelves.
Tried 180 gr. 200 gr. (225 were reasonable accurate but 240 jacketed gave the best overall accuracy. With a mold purchase having the same grain weight (240) . Best it is a Gas Check mold than a plain base. (If you intend to bump up the 44s velocity so to hunt Big Game with.)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by W.R.Buchanan

OK Rem/Marlin is not going to change to .429 bores because the SAMMI Spec for .44 Magnum rifles is .431 +/- .002. The larger dia. is due to the rifles inability to vent gasses like a Revolver does and thus the safety margin for pressure is much less. Factory .44 Mag ammo is loaded to 36,000 psi and the 1894 action is good to about 45,000psi ( actually 43,500) so there is not much room for customer error. Thus the larger bore dia. to cut pressure back. No manufacturer builds guns to be fired with Handloads. They can't control you or yours so all guns are designed and produced to be safe with Factory Ammo.

It takes an act of God for Remington to make any changes to a gun, and that is because they are a big Company and their Engineering Dept. looks very carefully at any changes to the production. This takes them along time as they aren't to keen on changing a production operation that is producing a good quality product. The current guns are way better than anything JM Marlin ever produced, despite what you might hear to the contrary.

As far as your boolit size goes get a mould that drops at .432+ and size to .432 for your rifle. a 200 gr boolit will stabilize just fine in the 1:38 twist barrel as that was what the barrel was designed to shoot anyway.

if your mould is dropping undersized, then you can powder coat the boolits which will add .002-.004 to the OD which can then be sized down to what you want. Powder coating is a good thing anyway as it eliminates Leading for good.

We have tried to get them to adopt a 1:16-1:20 twist rate on these guns for the last 10 years and it still hasn't happened. Any one who has looked at this knows that the 1:38 twist ratio has been outdated for 75 years, but change comes slowly to big manufacturers.

hope this helps.

Randy

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That is very true......Our needs won't change there standards !!!! New Manufactures will change for the needs !! Ol Deuce

My new 1894 slugged at .4315. Zero makes some great 240gr JSP's that mic @ .4315 and they shoot great! Get them from Roze Distribution.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ReloaderFred

I wore out the carrier in one of my Marlins after thousands of rounds in SASS matches. Here's one way to fix it: http://www.ktgunsmith.com/marlinjam.htm

Here's another link with better pictures: http://marauder.homestead.com/files/Marlin94Fix.html

Hope this helps.

Fred

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Thanks Fred. I'll order a new carrier and fix the lever when I have some extra $$$