Lee 200gr LRNFP Marlin 1894 results

[lead_her_fly]

I have been having a dickens of a time getting this rifle to shoot right. It is in the 44Mag caliber and I want it to shoot something less than 5" groups at 100 yards with cast boolits.

My H&G #503 throws a .430" boolit with the hardest alloy I have, Linotype, and it just won't shoot accurate at all. Of course, I am trying to eek out all the velocity I can with it, 1800fps or so.

Well, I gave up on that mold from this rifle, thinking I need a smaller bore and faster twist to get the EK to shoot well from a Marlin, and got a Lee 6 cavity mold in the "Cowboy" boolit configuration, RNFP.

It is only a 200gr but it comes out of the mold @ .432" from 18lbs of wheel weights and 2lbs of Linotype. They were sized to .431" and I used WLL BAC for a lube. This is a little harder than I normally use but I thought it would work in the shallow Ballard grooves of this Cowboy gun. I forgot to mention that it has a 22" Octagon barrel with Ballard rifling.

At any rate, I got the thing to shoot pretty good for the first time out with this boolit.

I loaded up some over H110 with Wolf Large Magnum Pistol primers and headed to the range. I took along the M629 Classic with a 5" barrel.

From the handgun I got right at 1360fps and the rifle gave an astounding 1905fps! There was no leading and accuracy was getting there. I had about 1 1/2" group at 50 yards but it was 40F and I wasn't using a rest.

I am going to up the charge just a tad to see if I can get the ES and SD numbers to drop out of the "20" range, high teens will be OK for me.

Well, I think the combination of bigger and lighter and harder may have helped this situation. Maybe even powder type had something to do with it. I was using Lil' Gun before.

Any input you have is welcomed.

[longbow]

I have had poor results using SWC boolits in a Marlin 1894 .44 mag microgroove as well.

I can't say I have ever gotten stellar results though 245 gr. to 265 gr. RNFP or TC designs shoot quite well.

There are some mitigating factors:

- open sights and old eyes
- Marlins apparently are notorious for oversize barrels and spec out 0.4315" (which mine is)
- Marlins apparently are notorious for tight spots in the barrels under dovetails (mine had those too)
- my Lyman 429421 casts at 0.429"/0.430" so undersize for the barrel ~ resulted in gas cutting, leading and poor accuracy

I am still working on this gun and boolit combination but have given up on SWC's in it. I have filed the cartridge stop to allow longer OAL to accomodate the 429421 and H&G 503, tightened up and Loctited all screws and filed and polished the carrier to try to accomodate the SWC nose (shoulder jams on the chamber mouth regularly). I am getting reasonable accuracy from the H&G 503 which casts much oversize at 0.434" after lapping to get cavities round and even but it still won't feed reliably.

I will stick with TC and RNFP designs at 0.432"+ for this gun. They feed well and even better after mod's but not the SWC's. If SWC's were giving outstanding accuracy I might put up with poor feeding.

Also, so far I have been unable to get decent accuracy from any boolit (or bullet) over about 265 grs. Others have been successful with boolits 300 grs. and over but no load or boolit (or bullet) over about 265 grs. I have tried has given any kind of accuracy past 50 yards.

If I stick to 265 gr. max. and 0.432" or better diameter the gun seems fairly happy. Oh, and I mostly use ACWW so not real hard. As long as the diameter is there I don't see gas cutting on recovered boolits. If they are undersize they can be soft or oven heat treated alloy and they gas cut.

Longbow