5 Attachment(s)
Slicking up my 1894 Marlin in .44 Mag for Cowboy Action Shooting
Getting into Cowboy Action. A lot of people use Winchester 1873 in .357 Mag to match their revolvers but I already had an 1894 Marlin in .44 Mag, so I decided to use it together with a brace of Ruger .357 New Vaquero Bisleys and a Stoeger 12-ga Coach Gun. (That's another story. How fun is a classic break-open double barrel 20"?!)
They say the Winchester 1873 has perhaps the ideal action. And watching them in action is a thing of beauty. They lever fast, smooth, reliably and easily.
My Marlin, on the other hand, has a resistance to it. Hard to unlock the lever and takes real effort to cock the hammer easily. Slows you down.
The guys said to reduce the hammer spring strength and polish the parts that exhibited any wear in the bluing due to rubbing.
From Brownell's I ordered Part Number 969000114 MARLIN REDUCED POWER HAMMER & FINGER LEVER SPRING KIT ($8). (Wolff 969-000-114WB Reduced Power Spring Kit Mfr Part: 33110)
Attachment 235457
https://www.brownells.com/rifle-part...?sku=969000114
When the kit arrived I took the rifle apart and polished as many surfaces as I could using Flitz polishing compound and uxcell Mandrel Mounted White Conical Felt Point Polishing Tool. This combo doesn't remove metal. It just polishes.
Attachment 235465
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1 $3.29 for 12.
I chuck the polishing tips in my $28 Harbor Freight 1/8" miniature air powered die grinder, which works great. It's smaller than a Dremel, quiet and is very maneuverable.
Attachment 235466
I installed the reduced power hammer spring easily.
Installing the finger lever spring looked much harder as it involved driving out a tiny pin (part #16 below) that didn't want to move, so I didn't do it, at first.
Attachment 235458
After reassembly, the rifle still exhibited resistance to moving the finger lever. It didn't want to "unlock" without effort.
So I removed the lever via its single screw, drove the pin out with a 1/16" drift, pulled the latch and its spring, reinstalled the new lighter spring and put the pin back in.
The secret to pin removal was to lay the lever directly onto my thin rubber cleaning mat, then pound the drift onto the pin. I had tried laying the lever on an armorer's block, but everything moved all over the place, making it really difficult to aim the drift. Laying the lever on a thin mat allowed me to start the pin moving out of its secured place.
Reassembled the lever into the rifle. What a difference. The rifle cycles much easier now. That lighter finger lever spring really makes it easier to get the lever moving.
Best part is that I still have the old springs should I want to restore the rifle to factory. No snipping of coils.
The buffing of surfaces helped too. Very easy to cycle the rifle now.
One final thing:
I got tired of jamming those giant .44 Mag cases into the loading gate and cutting my fingernail. Those edges on the factory gate are sharp!
I looked around and found an aftermarket gate that's made of aircraft grade aluminum from Ranger Point Precision. https://www.rangerpointstore.com/cat...rms-parts.html
They make a great low-pressure, smooth-edged gate that drops right in. For $42 (cough). But my wife, who's also into Cowboy Action, didn't like how difficult it was to load the Marlin. Especially that last round. So I put in this Ranger Point Gate. Much easier to load now. I chose the gold-anodized version, to match the trigger color.
Attachment 235463
One note of warning:
Very heavy loads may cause the lever to pop down. If it does, the gun won't fire. That spring is strong for a reason. This is for light Cowboy Action loads (like 6 grains of Trail Boss pushing a 200 grain cast bullet) not hunting.
UPDATE:
I found that installing a light hammer spring and using the factory 2 or 3-piece firing pin caused a lot of light strikes and failures to fire. There simply was not enough hammer energy to make the multi-part firing pin strike the primer hard enough.
I installed a one-piece firing pin and have not had a misfire since.
https://onlineoutpost.net/product/18...wboys-indians/