So I recently picked up a 1894 in 44 Special (barrel has been set back and re cut) from 1977.
The previous owner told me it double fed and that he never played with it and decided to sell it off.
Upon arrival I noticed that it was missing an ejector.
I took and old ejector from an original 1894 and bushed the button end with a piece of brass to center it and keep it in place. It seems to work well.
However I have an issue from time to time where upon firing the spent case being extracted get back to the point of almost ejection when things tend to bind up. If I tilt the barrel down and do a little jiggling I can close the bolt and try to cycle the gun again and sometime it will eject flawlessly and sometime it will hold up at that some spot. It's not the typical Marlin jam because I can push a the lever a little more and it gets past the bind up and ejects the spent case from the action. The typical Marlin jam would keep binding up tighter.
During this process the cartridge on the carrier seem to be free and not hung up in any way or interfering with the process.
This doesn't happen all the time, just from time to time.
I'm wondering if my issue is something with the carrier or if it's just an issue with having the improper ejector not tossing the spent brass out of the way as early as it should?
I'm going to take the rifle apart and remove the ejector to see if the issue is related. I also have a buddy with what I believe is also a 1977 vintage with the original wire spring ejector. I was going to try out his ejector to see if it solves the problem or not. Also probably swap out his carrier to see if the gunsmith that chambered this rifle in 44 special might have done a little too much monkeying with the carrier in some way.
Also I'm not sure if this is at all related but it can be hard to load the magazine at times like the edge of a SWC or the "case mouth" of a snap cap is getting caught on the mouth of the magazine tube. Does this happen from time to time if the magazine tube was shortened?
Thanks for looking!
I'll try to add some pictures of the jam.