Getting a marlin 1894 44 mag to shoot

[glockky]

Anyone had any luck getting a 1894 marlin 44 mag to shoot good at 100yds with cast?

I can shoot 1 1/4" to 1 1/2" groups with 240gr xtp's at 100yds very consistently but have had no luck with cast.

My 1894 has Ballard rifling and slugs at .430. Best groups I can get are 4 1/2" with cast

The bullet I have been trying to shoot is accurate molds 43-255R cast of 50/50 COWW/pure lead air cooled gas checked and sized to .431.

Any help would be appreciated thanks

[BK7saum]

Interested in the outcome. I have a '94 cowboy 44 that I'm about to do serious load development on.

[longbow]

Well, not sure I can directly address the question but I got an 1894 about 25 years ago. It is 1:38" twist with microgroove barrel.

The only mould I could find at the time was a Lyman 429421 which didn't feed well at all and gave lackluster accuracy of about 4" at 50 yards.

"J" bullets seemed to shoot reasonably well but not cast. So. I slugged the bore and found that I had a typically fat Marlin bore of 0.4315" groove diameter. Considering my 429421 cast at 0.429" that explained a few things.

I made got a paper patched mould made that when patched, came out at 0.432" and accuracy picked up immediately. I am lazy so paper patching was abandoned and I made a mould that cast a 0.432" boolit. Accuracy was pretty good but I still got some leading. I didn't solve it for some time but read on the Marlin owners forum about bore constrictions under roll stamping and dovetails so I carefully slugged my bore and found that sure enough I had several tight spots. I decided to hand lap the tight spots out and that worked well for me.

I also reworked the carrier and set the cartridge stop back about 0.090" so now SWC's would feed.

So far my H&G #503 clone by Mihec has won the accuracy contest but my 434640 clone (also Mihec) shoots very close. I have not spent much time at 100 yards yet though so cannot state that 100 yards groups are tight.

Overall after much work and tinkering, I have improved the gun and accuracy dramatically so am happy.

The short story is:

- use a fat boolit that fills the throat and is at least 0.001" over groove diameter
- check the bore for tight spots and lap them out if present ~ I hand lapped but firelapping would probably work too
- once you get it right the gun is fun to shoot and reasonably accurate

Longbow

[Nobade]

I have three ways to get top notch accuracy from my 1894 44 mag.
#1: Use soft boolits and black powder. The BP makes pretty much whatever boolit you use fit the barrel as soon as it lights off. 2 inch iron sight groups at 100 yds are easy.

#2: Use big boolits and smokeless powder. I have a Mountain Mold made 250gr. mould that throws a .433" boolit. Shoots great. If you measure the ID of a fired case and shoot for a light slip fit in that, you will pretty much know what diameter boolits your rifle wants.

#3: Paper patch. I size normal 44 boolits to .427" (off the shelf Lee sizer) and patch them to .433". Load to engage the rifling with a full case of IMR 4227 or a less full case plus granular filler and a card wad under the boolit. This produces ammo that is way too long to feed through the magazine and too long to eject a loaded round. But it also produces 445 Supermag ballistics while staying within 44 mag SAAMI pressure limits, and goes into less than 3 inches at 200 yards. Do not use a full case of any faster normal 44 mag powder to do this or you will overpressure! If you use H110 or any other normal 44 mag powder, stick with starting level book loads and add filler to make up the difference and produce a compressed load.

-Nobade

[lar45]

Back around 87' I bought an 1894 in 44mag. The only bullet mold I had was an RCBS 225 SWC. I cast it with WW and a little bit of bar solder, and air cooled them. I loaded it with 23gns of 2400, the old stuff, and was able to get around 1.5" groups at 100yds. Looking at Quickload now, that load was way over max(about 46k psi) and was probably pushing around 2000fps. Didn't the old 2400 burn faster than the new stuff? So it was probably hotter than that. I'm pretty sure that I got the load out of a magazine or book at the time.
I was young and couldn't understand, that no matter how hard I tried, why I couldn't get all of the shots to go into one hole. I ended up trading it off for a M98 338win mag.

[W.R.Buchanan]

Size to .432-3. Run loads that are in the 1600 fps range with 250 gr boolits which will need gas checks to prevent leading. Lyman 429244 is a good choice.

The barrels on these guns have 1:38" twist barrels, and the only way to make these boolits spin fast enough is to run them faster.

Also it will be more difficult to get heavier boolits to shoot much tighter. But when you consider what you'd be shooting at and the distances you're going to be shooting 4" at 100 yards might be good enough.

To make your gun feed these SWC style boolit you will need to chamfer the chamber mouth. I have written about doing this many times here, so the information is available.

Randy

[hickstick_10]

Anyone had any luck getting a 1894 marlin 44 mag to shoot good at 100yds with cast?

I can shoot 1 1/4" to 1 1/2" groups with 240gr xtp's at 100yds very consistently but have had no luck with cast.

My 1894 has Ballard rifling and slugs at .430. Best groups I can get are 4 1/2" with cast

The bullet I have been trying to shoot is accurate molds 43-255R cast of 50/50 COWW/pure lead air cooled gas checked and sized to .431.

Any help would be appreciated thanks

If you're using the stock iron sights at 100 yards you better have some sharp eyes or that will contribute to the groups.

What powders have you tried and what loads?

[glockky]

I have a 3X9X40 nikon on it. I have used 2400, 296, and 300MP

[JesterGrin_1]

This will sound Bad. But if you are getting 1 1/4 to 1 1/2" groups at 100 yards with the Hornady 240Gr HP/XTP's with full tilt hunting loads I would leave it alone and just shoot the Hornady's and not waste a bunch of Powder and Primers not to mention time and aggravation trying to get Cast to Shoot well.

But then again I am first and foremost a Hunter so I only wish to have pretty much full tilt Hunting loads. Plinker loads as some call them will not do.

But if you really just have to shoot cast then I would do as suggested. And that would be to size your Boolits at .432-.433 with a Gas Check and use H-110 or W-296 powder.

As some say Been there Done That and have the T Shirt but will not Return to that endeavor again lol.

To explain it in a nutshell I expended probably 600+ rounds of many combinations with an 1894 Marlin SS .44 Mag trying to obtain what I would consider good Hunting accuracy. And the BEST I could do was right at 2 1/2- 2 3/4" Groups at 100 yards. But every now and then I would get a flyer that could open it up to about 3" or so. So in the end I just did not trust it enough to hunt with it and traded it off and got a Marlin 1895GS in 45-70 Government and for a Lever Rifle it is a darn Tack Driver.

[jr545]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v492/AR-JR/gun%20stuff/IMAG0036.jpg (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/AR-JR/media/gun%20stuff/IMAG0036.jpg.html)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v492/AR-JR/gun%20stuff/IMAG0033.jpg (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/AR-JR/media/gun%20stuff/IMAG0033.jpg.html)

5 shot group @ 100yds of HP bullets during load development from a early '90's 1894
Rifle has grouped 10 shots under 2 inches after further refinement.
Solids shoot a might better.
Need to have Al cut me another mold that will drop .4335 and I might be able to whittle that group down some.

[yellowfin]

What OAL are you guys loading to for successful feeding? I'm helping out a friend by loading some .44's for him for his Marlin and he lives a couple hours away so I don't get to check the chamber first before this batch. I see Alliant lists 1.605, Hodgdon says 1.620, and Lyman says 1.645 all for the same bullet. What works?

[W.R.Buchanan]

Yellowfin: the accepted max OAL is supposed to be 1.610. However the guns will feed up to about 1.665 with a degree of reliability.

One thing that contributes to this is chamfering the chamber mouth. Removing the sharp edge that gouges into the boolits eliminates a lot of feed problems for SWC boolits and WFN boolits with large Meplats. You will only run into OAL issues with large SWC's as most all of the RN and WFN designs will load and crimp shorter.

jr545: I guess you're pretty much sold on 432-265HP with 18.7 gr of 2400. I like it when someone finds something that works and stops searching and begins shooting. Endless load development is needless when you achieve acceptable results.

Let the shooting begin! :Fire:

Randy

[wv109323]

My 1894 .44 Mag. will shoot with jacketed and hard cast .429(240 gn) commercially cast bullets. I have not been able to get my 240 cast or my 200 grain cast bullet to shoot. They drop at .431. I am going to beagle the 200 and try again. Anyone shoot the 200 gn. cast? What is the load?

[schutzen]

As some have stated a hard cast boolit is best. I had good luck with an alloy of 20 lbs WW's and 1 lb babit sized to .430 or .431. I ran these through a mid-1970's 1894 in .357 & .44.

[Nobade]

I don't know about that, I have no problem getting it to shoot with very soft boolits as long as they are either big enough or propelled by black powder. Whatever size is a thumb press fit in a fired case, in my rifle that is .433", gives the best accuracy and doesn't matter how hard it is unless I am going for top velocities, then they get paper patched.

-Nobade

[schutzen]

I never thought about paper patching for more speed. When I was shooting this I was looking for clean kills on white-tails in thick brush. The hard cast did well. Seemed to grab the Micro-groove rifling well and held together well in the deer. I have more time to play now, I think I may give the paper patching a try.

[Nobade]

It works great, only rub is the ammo ends up being way too long to cycle through the action so it's a single shot only. But it shoots like you wouldn't believe. Be careful with your loads if you do this, you are much closer in case capacity to a 445 Supermag than you are to a 44 mag, so regular 44 data doesn't apply.

-Nobade

[44man]

Wrong twist for past 50 yards. I gave up and sold mine. Marlin made the .444 with 1 and 38 ". Got complaints and changed to 1 in 20" but never changed the .44. I complained and they sent me a copy of Greenhill. Sorry I am not shooting a cannon ball from a BP cannon.
you might try a RB in the .44 or shortest boolit you can find.
I made molds to .434" with no luck.