Marlin Mirco groove barrel and leading?

[homesteading1]

I was told today by a friend that I should not shoot lead bullets in my 1894p because it has a micro groove barrel and it will badly lead and \or damage the rifling.
I scanned this section but did not see anything about this, Does my Marlin 1894p have this type rifling? will it harm it to use cast lead?

Thanks,
Dave

[btroj]

Even f it does it doesn't matter. Size them to fit your barrel and they won't be a problem.

I size to .359 for mine and it shoots lead quite well to over 1700 fps.

There are lots of old wives tales about micro groove barrels out there. You won't find many old wives here.

[homesteading1]

Thanks, Was as I suspected, just another" I heard"warning about something I read somewhere.
But glad I asked before I take her out this weekend and put a couple boxes through her.

Dave

[Ziptar]

If it's got the word "Microgroove" Stamped on the side of it is a microgroove barrel or count your grooves, if there are 12 of them its a Microgroove.

No disrespect to your friend but he is flat out wrong. Cast bullets leading Microgroove barrels is an old wives tale.

I shoot cast exclusively in my .45 Colt 1894 with a microgroove barrel and not only have I never had any leading, it's dead on accurate with cast bullets. You can put me in the Microgroove is actually BETTER with cast bullets camp.

The key to shooting cast in a Marlin with a MG barrel is to slug your bore and size your cast bullets .001-.002 over your bore size and you are good to go. Mine slugs out at .4505, I size my bullets to .452 and lube with White Label Carnuba Red.

Even pushing SAA-270s over 10 grains of Unique I've yet to get any leading.

Good read for you here: http://www.leverguns.com/articles/fryxell/microgrove-barrels.htm

[odfairfaxsub]

my wifes 44 mag loves cast, bright rifling

[williamwaco]

I was told today by a friend that I should not shoot lead bullets in my 1894p because it has a micro groove barrel and it will badly lead and \or damage the rifling.
I scanned this section but did not see anything about this, Does my Marlin 1894p have this type rifling? will it harm it to use cast lead?

Thanks,
Dave


Not true.

Not true today.
Not true yesteryear.
Never was true.

As with any barrel, sizing diameter is critical.
If you can, slug it.
If you can't slug it, shoot it, and if it leads badly get a larger sizing die.
I like .002 to .003 larger than bore diameter.

[stubshaft]

Your "friend" was wrong. Like any barrel you have to work up loads that work in your barrel. That includes boolit size, lube, powder selection and primers.

[Ragnarok]

Marlin has made like a million micro-groove barrels in .22 Lr caliber...never hear any gripes about leading

Another thing!...I own a Marlin 1894 Cowboy competition carbine in .45 Colt...has 'Ballard rifling'...I've had it gather lead. So..just because a Marlin doesn't have micro-groove rifling..doen't mean it won't lead...does that make sense?

Side-note: Ballard rifling looks like plain old rifling to me....micro-groove rifling looks the same as plain old rifling except more lands and grooves...

[ReloaderFred]

My wife and I both shoot Marlin 1894's in SASS matches and have put probably 10,000 rounds through them, all lead. I've yet to find any leading in either of them, and lead is all that's put through them.

Your friend needs to get out more and stay off the computer.............

Hope this helps.

Fred

[6pt-sika]

I have maybe 26 Marlin's with Micro Groove rifling and guess what !

I shoot cast bullets in ALL OF THEM with no problems !

And they are ALL 44 cal be it 444 or 44 MAG !

[MtGun44]

More mule manure from 'experts' that have never shot a single round of cast.

Bill

[stubshaft]

They don't want to ruin their barrels by shooting hard lead thru them.:holysheep

[Gtek]

Wait a minute, my owners manual says to not use reloaded ammunition. Oh My! Another thing I have been doing wrong. Gtek

[longbow]

I have a Marlin 1894 microgroove in .44 mag and it did lead badly with cast but... the barrel runs 0.4315" groove diameter so the Lyman mould I bought for it that cast at 0.429 was undersize and the barrel had tight spots under the dovetails which I understand is quite common.

Moving up to 0.433" minimum diameter boolits helped bunches and lapping the tight spots out solved the rest. No leading now!

So, slug your barrel to determine boolit diameter (at least 0.001" over groove diameter) as Marlins run large. If leading is still a problem with a proper fitting boolit then check for tight spots and hand lap or fire lap to remove them.

With smooth barrel and proper fitting boolits it will shoot fine.

Longbow

[rintinglen]

Under-sized, soft lead bullets will lead if driven too hard. In my shade-tree gun smith days I twice had Marlins (IIRC, both 44's, but I don't guarantee that) come in with barrels that looked like sewer pipe. Both were Micro-groove barrels shooting undersized bullets, factory luballoy in the one and who knows in the other. I ended up plugging the barrel and filling the bores overnight with Mercury to de-lead the barrels. At the time, I parroted the party line from the reloading manuals. I have since learned oyherwise.
Properly sized boolits shoot very well in microgroove barrels and they don't lead any more than any other rifled barrels, as thousands of satisfied users will attest.

[pls1911]

I've converted several folks from 30-06 and .270 to pleasant shooting 30-30s in the past couple of years.... especially with lead bullets. Wacks critter just as dead as anything else when a shot is placed properly.
Unfortunately, I cannot get any one of the converts to start casting....

[1kshooter]

I have maybe 26 Marlin's with Micro Groove rifling and guess what !

I shoot cast bullets in ALL OF THEM with no problems !

And they are ALL 44 cal be it 444 or 44 MAG !

...or even the rarer ...444MAGNIUM lol;)

[fordwannabe]

2 years ago Ihad a fellow at bear camp tell me flat out, you can't even shoot cast boolits in a microgroove, won't work. Now you gotta understand he works at a gunshop and I don't so I can't possibly know anything. Well being the *** that I can be, I asked him if he really believed that?
Yup it 's absolutely true!
"well then start running BITCH"
HUH
If I can't even do it then you'll be safe after a few yaRDS ,GET AFTER IT! TIMMY HAND ME THAT 35 REMINGTON ,HERE.
Needless to say the other guy was pretty quiet for a while. But I also took him to the sand pit the next day and let him fling a little wheel weight down range to prove not only can you it is very accurate and then we looked down the bore....NOPE NO LEAD.
Tom

[ocelott]

I've got to agree with everyone so far - I've been shooting cast out of my 1894cs (357mag) for almost a year now - I've put close to 1000 rounds through the pipe - no leading to speak of that doesn't come out with simple cleaning...with nice grouping to boot

[jimkim]

The same rules apply when loading for either conventional or microgroove barrels. Find a good fitting bullet. Use a good lube, and proper bullet hardness and as long as your barrel isn't rough as a cob, you won't have any leading issues. I lernt thet rach ere. :guntootsmiley:

They were right. I haven't tried any super fast loads yet, but I've pushed a Lyman 311041, Ideal 308291 and RD TLC311-165-RF over 2400fps without ANY leading. All of this was done with two Marlin 336's with microgroove barrels.

[Three44s]

You would be surprised at how many shooters, both handloaders and non-handloaders that firmly believe that shooting lead through a firearm will damage it.

I pity those fools and thank them for letting me have their share of the diminishing supply of lead to run through my guns!!!

Just ask one of these brainiacks this:

How is it that .22 RF (ie. 22 shorts, longs and long rifles) work then? ......... HUH??


Three 44s

[geargnasher]

The same rules apply when loading for either conventional or microgroove barrels. Find a good fitting bullet. Use a good lube, and proper bullet hardness and as long as your barrel isn't rough as a cob, you won't have any leading issues. I lernt thet rach ere. :guntootsmiley:

They were right. I haven't tried any super fast loads yet, but I've pushed a Lyman 311041, Ideal 308291 and RD TLC311-165-RF over 2400fps without ANY leading. All of this was done with two Marlin 336's with microgroove barrels.

SHHHHH! You're letting the secret out! [smilie=l:

I think that the wive's tales about cast and Micro-Groove rifling have their origins in Lyman manual loading. I've noticed that a great many of the .30 caliber loads in the Lyman books are sized .308". I've also noticed that the Micro-Groove barrels I've slugged tend to be a bit on the large size, having .301+ bores and at least .309" grooves. I believe it was a Glen Fryxell article I read that explained the process Marlin uses to make the Micro-Groove barrels, and it can tend to make them a bit large.

Now, anyone who has any experience at all shooting cast boolits in a rifle caliber knows that a .308" boolit fired in a gun with .309" grooves will lead to buggary.

Anyone, apparently, except for the ballistic technicians at Lyman.

So slug it and size appropriately like for any other gun, and be happy!

Gear

[DEVERS454]

I think I have found through trial and error that microgroves have nothing to do with leading of a bore.

My old Marlin 336 30-30 would NOT shoot cast bullets from wheel weights worth sh*t until I either cast REALLY hard bullets (heat treated) or used a gas check.

Then one day I took a chance and loaded down some 30-30 with case bullets w/o gas checks until they were just under 1500fps. Zero leading and very consistent.

I just use gas checks on my 30-30 these days. Less hassle then heat treating.

[largom]

Can't shoot cast in microgroove barrels and you can't shoot cast over 1600 fps.

Both false statements.

Larry

[jlchucker]

More mule manure from 'experts' that have never shot a single round of cast.

Bill


Yeah, Bill. Not only have they probably never shot a single round of cast but they probably read every gun magazine in the store, and also believe most of the **** that gets posted on a few other gun-focused websites. IMO the real truth about the microgroove fable gets exposed almost daily by the regular posters here--and we all do shoot cast, pretty much out of everything that we have that goes "bang" or "boom". :lovebooli

[TXGunNut]

Originally Posted by jimkim
The same rules apply when loading for either conventional or microgroove barrels. Find a good fitting bullet. Use a good lube, and proper bullet hardness and as long as your barrel isn't rough as a cob, you won't have any leading issues. I lernt thet rach ere.

They were right. I haven't tried any super fast loads yet, but I've pushed a Lyman 311041, Ideal 308291 and RD TLC311-165-RF over 2400fps without ANY leading. All of this was done with two Marlin 336's with microgroove barrels.

SHHHHH! You're letting the secret out! -geargnasher

Come to think of it, a properly sized boolit will likely do better in a MG barrel than a a same-sized Ballard barrel. Every mechanic knows a fine-thread bolt is stronger than a coarse thread, right? Same principle, or so it seems to my feeble ETOH-crippled mind.

[Fishman]

The 1894P I own has ballard rifling. I have shot the Lee 310 RF GC out if it almost exclusively with zero leading problems sized at .430. The two pigs I have shot with it had big holes through them and the bullet continued on to other locales while they stayed put.

I like that little rifle. In my experience, the porting allows me to shoot a full bore load with almost no muzzle rise. Use hearing protection and go to work.

[Boerrancher]

I was given a Marlin 1894C in a 357mag 33 years ago, when I was a young kid, by a good friend of my father's. It was because of this gun that I started casting not long after it was given to me. To the best of my knowledge that gun has never had a jacketed bullet run through it. It has a micro groove barrel, and I can count the number of times it has had a patch run down the bore since I've owned it, on one hand. Never have I had a leading problem. Some of the cast loads I have tried haven't shot well, but that was not because of leading.

Best wishes,s

Joe