Just saw an unusual Marlin 336

[Lonegun1894]

I just had a man bring in a Marlin 336, .30-30 into the shop asking to go shoot it on the range out back. Well, after shooting it, he showed me his target, and said he had just shot it at 25 yds to make sure it was sighted in for close range hogs. I looked at the target, and noticed that most of the 30 or so shots he had fired had keyholed, and the few that didnt showed obvious evidence of bullet yaw. So there we were, scratching our heads trying to figure out what the problem was, (sorry, he was using factory j-bullets--there's one problem [smilie=1: ), when I thought i'd check the bore and see if maybe he had a .35 that was mistakenly stamped as a .30-30. And I found the problem. This gun has NO RIFLING at all in it. Not the slightest hint, and was shinier all the way through than my shotgun. I hope this is just one that got out, and not one of the growing pains that we will see as part of the mess that started with the marlin plant getting closed and moved. The owner said he will send it back to marlin to have them correct or replace it.

Moderators: If this is in the wrong forum, please move it to where it will be more appropriate.

[ReloaderFred]

Mistakes do happen. I've got a .223 that they failed to plug the ends of the barrel when it was phosphate coated. The barrel is like sandpaper and will never come clean. Need to send it back someday........

Hope this helps.

Fred

[roysha]

I just finished opening up a REM 700 .223 chamber that would not readily accept factory ammo unless one literally beat the bolt closed with the palm of the hand. I have no idea how long the owner put up with this situation before he brought it to me, but the gun was long out of warranty. He had had so many blown primers the residue inside the bolt could literally be wiped off in chunks.

Cr*p happens and it seems to be happening more all the time.

[405]

I'd say that is rare to see! Agree that it is probably just one that slipped thru. Now if it were an 1880-1910 gun with a Wild West Show inscription or Annie Oakley's initials engraved on it then whoa- stop the train! :)

[August]

Mistake?? Slipped though ??

Does that mean that I'm the first person who ever saw the bore in my Marlin rifles ?? No one at the factory looked at them ???

That goes a long way in explaining how rough they are.

[Lonegun1894]

While I agree that it seems like someone would have noticed that during an inspection before leaving the factory, I wish I had the money to buy it from him and then promptly send it off to a gunsmith to have it rebarreled in one of those useless and obsolete :kidding: calibers that would ensure the gun would never be accidentally permanently borrowed by friends or family because the ammo can't be bought at wallyworld. :drinks:

[Four Fingers of Death]

I think factories cut back on quality control to save money. 999 out of 1000 guns are ok, so it is cheaper to fix/replace one then check 1000. Buyers are always driving the price down now, so somethings gotta give.

[9.3X62AL]

It's not a 30-30 rifle.......it's a 150 gauge shotgun!

[6pt-sika]

All of mine were made from 1964 to 1975 except one from 2001 !

And they ALL have rifling and shoot fairly well !

And all even the 2001 are smooth to operate ;-)

[Hardcast416taylor]

I was just mentally ticking off how many stations and steps that barrel had to have gone thru with nobody noticing it wasn`t rifled. The final proof firing and targeting alone should have made notice something wasn`t kosher. Aren`t barrels checked for straightness by looking down the bore after being rifled? I would assume that the rifle would be worth a few pennies more being left as is as it is a rarity.Robert

[stubshaft]

It'd be worth a mint on flea bay, "Custom smoothbore Cowboy Rifle".

[Multigunner]

They market smoothbore Marlins in the UK, but only ones I've seen advertised were in the British version of the .410 as was used in converted SMLE rifles.

Those could also be bought with a factory installed built on silencer. Horse breeders in the UK ofte use suppressed small bore shotguns to get rid of varmints without spooking the horses.

Marlin also used to sell a leveraction shotgun built on leftover black powder frames. Not sure if it was a .410 or if it used the .44 shotshell with wooden shot capsule.

I found out about some odd M1 carbine barrels that had shown up with only two grooves, both on the same side. How they managed that I'll never know.

I've seen some real doozies come out of Ruger, hadn't heard the situation was so widespread.

[NickSS]

I never saw a smooth bore rifle come from a factory but I have seen a couple of rifle barrels that would not shoot anything well and they were not cheap barrels but were match grade barrels from known makers that could not be made to shoot well. One of them was put on my custom 306 match rifle by a well known custom gunsmith who specializes in benchrest and match rifles. It shot fine at 100 yards but fell apart at longer ranges. After swearing at it for a few weeks I took it back and after another two weeks I got it back complete with another new barrel. That one was a tack driver and both came from the same barrel maker and both were their premium barrel.

[Lloyd Smale]

buddys gunshop got one in just like yours. NO rifling at all. Seen alot of marlins come from the factory needing work lately. I think they make them for guys who shoot one or two shells a year and dont have a clue what a good gun is anymore.

[largom]

This is the reason I have not bought a "New" gun in 10 years. I have repaired numerous new guns with rough chambers that would not extract a fired case. Working on the inside "guts" will show you just how cheaply they are made. Remington and Winchester were the worst, followed by Ruger.

I will stick with the older guns made without union labor and by workers that usually took pride in their work.

Larry

[Bret4207]

Didn't Marlin and Winchester both offer 410 levers a few years back?

[jmsj]

Didn't Marlin and Winchester both offer 410 levers a few years back?

Yes they did.
My father bought one from Winchester and one from Marlin. He bought them mostly as a novelty.
jmsj

[PatMarlin]

You know I would be tempted to work up some loads and shot loads for that rifle. You may actually have a versatile hunter there.

[John Taylor]

Someplace in my old tool box is an Autolite spark plug with no threads. When I found it I took it to the boss and ask him to order the special installation tool. He told me it takes a hammer to install, said the extractor tool was a special order.
Took a bolt out of the bolt bin one day and was having a very hard time getting it started. When I took a closer look I found that the threads had no pitch, just a bunch of V shaped grooves, not left hand or right hand. ( another one for a hammer). This bolt was probably intended for the nut that I got out of the same bin with not threads at all.
I can understand a spark plug or a bolt getting out that way but a gun should be hands on at some point.

[Four Fingers of Death]

Someplace in my old tool box is an Autolite spark plug with no threads. When I found it I took it to the boss and ask him to order the special installation tool. He told me it takes a hammer to install, said the extractor tool was a special order.
Took a bolt out of the bolt bin one day and was having a very hard time getting it started. When I took a closer look I found that the threads had no pitch, just a bunch of V shaped grooves, not left hand or right hand. ( another one for a hammer). This bolt was probably intended for the nut that I got out of the same bin with not threads at all.
I can understand a spark plug or a bolt getting out that way but a gun should be hands on at some point.

I load my own as a rule, but even so, over the 48odd years that I have been shooting I have bought a lot of Winchester ammo (and used a squillion rounds of Winchester 223 at work) with narry a problem. I opened a pack of Winchester 3006 ammo that I had picked up in a trade and lo and behold one round had the bullet seated bass ackwards! The guys at the range were prattling on saying that I should ring Winchester, etc and I said, 'nope, nearly half a century and I would have shot off a small truckload load of their ammo without a problem, I reckon thats pretty good performance, s I will put it on the top shelf of my ammo locker with the other oddities there.'

[Four Fingers of Death]

I forgot, do any of you guys remember the old (and when I say old, I mean realllll old) sparkplugs that used to unscrew? The base was left and the ceramic and electrode, etc was removable. These were really handy when you had a dud cylinder which used to oil up plugs. You would screw the base in and then screw the plug into it. This kept the plug away from the oil and it would go a lot longer before the plug oiled up. Very handy if you were a young guy raising a family with rather miserable means. I had an old Holden (Aussie GM sedan). The engine was so worn, that I ended up with three of them installed!

I had that car so long and did so many miles, I had repaired every part of the car at least once. The only part that made it was the motor, but I had replaced the harmonic balancer, several lifters, a rocker arm and the distributor.

Great old car!

[bizzledude]

Yeah, I never heard about the factory move or any problems with Marlin...
I should have done more research but figured over a century of reputation would hold it's own.

http://www.marlinowners.com/forums/index.php/topic,89272.0.html

Here's my new 1895 with canted sights, it looks worse than a Century Arms AK rebuild.
Marlin is taking it back and repairing for free to be fair.
We'll see what they do.

I'm glad I saw this thread, I'm checking for rifling in my barrel too before I send it back! :shock:
:roll:

[Suo Gan]

Marlin is making a 336 chambered in 410 lever shotgun again, was it one of them perhaps???

[Four Fingers of Death]

They sell lots of smoothbore rifles in the UK don't they? To get around some of their silly laws apparently. Maybe it was a barrel accidently placed in the rifled barrel bin?

[Lonegun1894]

oK, legalities in the UK aside, does anyone have any experiance with these smooth bore rifles? I have a muzzleloader with a smooth bore and rifle sights, and it's not half bad out to 75 yds using a patched round ball. But, when I tried a conical in it, it made my shotguns firing buckshot look like they have impressive accuracy. The group I was shown by this man with the smooth .30-30 was about a foot across, and that was fired off a rest and at 15 yds. Would these oddities be any better with a round ball, or is there some other trick to making them work? Edumacate me?

[KCSO]

The other explanation is that the gun wasn't put together by Marlin. At one time a whole boat load of Marlin parts, barrels and barrle blanks were sold dirt cheap by GPC. For all we know some doofus screwed a blank into a damaged Marlin rifle and never looked down the tube, or did and just sold it. Marlin's are pretty variable and i have had some that a strap wrench would unscrew the barrel and some that took a barrel vise and a cheater on the action wrench. Never underestimate the BYM!

[Firebricker]

Was this an old or new gun ? I heard the ones out of the new plant don't have the JM proof mark on the left side of barrel. FB

[Four Fingers of Death]

The other explanation is that the gun wasn't put together by Marlin. At one time a whole boat load of Marlin parts, barrels and barrle blanks were sold dirt cheap by GPC. For all we know some doofus screwed a blank into a damaged Marlin rifle and never looked down the tube, or did and just sold it. Marlin's are pretty variable and i have had some that a strap wrench would unscrew the barrel and some that took a barrel vise and a cheater on the action wrench. Never underestimate the BYM!

That makes sense, we had a change of Marlin importer some years back and a gunshop in Sydney bought the lot. He still has plenty of bits and pieces. He is smart enough not to do something dumb like that, but it would be possible.

[Good Cheer]

Reminds me of the 30 carbine a gunsmith north of Houston was brought because the owner couldn't get it to stay on target. The rifling was straight with no twist.

[Lonegun1894]

Was this an old or new gun ? I heard the ones out of the new plant don't have the JM proof mark on the left side of barrel. FB

I was told it had just been bought brand new from Academy, so I would assume it was new, but I did not know about the proofmark to ID where it had been assembled, so I cant vouch for that part. I know every manufacturer will screw up on occasion, but this caught me off guard. I didn't know about the parts being sold off either, so that is always another possibility. I mean, imagine the lack of quality control some unethical types would stoop to if they knew that the parts (being clearly stamped "Marlin") would become Marlin's problem if any defects were found by the consumer after the purchase was already made.