I don't have a M1894 but I do have a Marlin 336
This is a good opportunity to get on my lubricated case soap box. The chamber in my JM Marlin must have been reamed with a sausage instead of a reamer. It is huge, I think I could rent it out as an Zeppelin hanger. Cases fired in the thing, the shoulders blow out an amazing distance. I hope this picture is self explanatory:
The case shoulder moves about 0.025" on firing. Now if I fired dry cases in a dry chamber, the front of the case would adhere to the chamber, fixing the cartridge in place. Then, as pressure built up, the sidewalls would stretch to allow the case head to the bolt face. The end result would be case head separations and a very short case life.
But, I am doing something that is heretical to the beliefs of the shooting community: I am fireforming my cases by lubricating them.
My Marlin is not a target rifle but in this thing, lubricated cases also shoot well, about 2 MOA to 3 MOA. And that is about all my Marlin 336 will do at distance.
Factory ammunition, not actually bad in this rifle, but my reloads were better.
(There is one individual on this site who claims 2 MOA in a 30-30 lever action at 300 yards, but that individual has never shown any ten shot groups at 300 yards, and I am confident never will. Some characters are so eager to poke someone in the eye with a stick, that they trip over the couch before they get there. )
I have written many pages on how this belief system started, and it is all based on an Army lie dating back before WW1. I have received an amazing amount of hate because people react angrily when someone says their beliefs are lies and their Gods are false. Nether the less, by lubricating my cases I prevent sidewall stretch on the first firing. What is in the picture is a stiff hairgel, which I experimented with as a bullet lube. These hair gels are 99% vasoline and the rest perfumes. Vasoline will work equally well, in fact, case lube will work equally well. Just a little dab will do you, rub the vasoline smooth, chamber the round, and fire the things, like this:
On first firing, instead of the case adhering to the chamber sidewalls, the case slides to the bolt face, the shoulders fold out, and what you end up having is a stress free perfectly fireformed case.
Lee Enfields are well known for eating cases, and yet Parashooter took his cases an extraordinary number of reloads.
After the first firing, size the case so the shoulder is not bumped back by more than 0.003" and only fire those cases dry, in the same weapon. You can lube them up and fire them in any other lever action, but I would recommend using Johnson Paste wax instead of a grease. Greases are messy. Johnson Paste wax works great, it dries hard, and is similar to what Pedersen used on his cartridges:
I believe the cultural ignorance of the history, theory, and practice of greased, oiled, waxed, cases has been deliberately created by groups I call Hatcherites and Ackleyites. P.O. Ackley gained his fame by claiming that straight cases "reduced bolt thrust", and Hatcher repeated the Army lie that grease and oil dangerously increased bolt thrust, even though he knew of all the pre WW2 mechanisms that used greased and oiled ammunition. His Ordnance Department built over 150,000 of these, and other versions which were used in the Army Air Corp
Greasing the case would obviously invalidate any claims by Ackley that his case somehow reduced bolt thrust, and Hatcher is an interesting case about the infinite capacity of the human mind for self deception. Since Hatcher was an Army man, to point out that the Army was lying to itself, for whatever reason, would have resulted in the Army crushing the man and casting him out of the organization. This is testable, in your organization, just point out where they are doing something stupid, or preferably illegal or border line illegal. And be persistent. See what happens. The greater the organizational stupidity or illegality, the greater the chance you will be wearing concrete shoes on the bottom of the bay. Hatcher had to shape and mold his view of the world in order to advance and prosper in the Army Ordnance Corp. I have no doubt he actually believed that grease and oil
dangerously increased bolt thrust, and that he also believed that grease and oil were necessary for the operation of the automatic rifles and machine guns that used greased, oiled, or waxed cases. Like the Pedersen. He wrote this:
Army Ordnance Magazine, March-April 1933
Automatic Firearms, Mechanical Principles used in the various types, by J. S. Hatcher. Chief Smalls Arms Division Washington DC.
Retarded Blow-back Mechanism………………………..
There is one queer thing, however, that is common to almost all blow-back and retarded blow-back guns, and that is that there is a tendency to rupture the cartridges unless they are lubricated. This is because the moment the explosion occurs the thin front end of the cartridge case swells up from the internal pressure and tightly grips the walls of the chamber. Cartridge cases are made with a strong solid brass head a thick wall near the rear end, but the wall tapers in thickness until the front end is quiet thin so that it will expand under pressure of the explosion and seal the chamber against the escape of gas to the rear. When the gun is fired the thin front section expands as intended and tightly grips the walls of the chamber, while the thick rear portion does not expand enough to produce serious friction. The same pressure that operates to expand the walls of the case laterally, also pushes back with the force of fifty thousand pounds to the square inch on the head of the cartridge, and the whole cartridge being made of elastic brass stretches to the rear and , in effect, give the breech block a sharp blow with starts it backward. The front end of the cartridge being tightly held by the friction against the walls of the chamber, and the rear end being free to move back in this manner under the internal pressure, either one of two things will happen. In the first case, the breech block and the head of the cartridge may continue to move back, tearing the cartridge in two and leaving the front end tightly stuck in the chamber; or, if the breech block is sufficiently retarded so that it does not allow a very violent backward motion, the result may simply be that the breech block moves back a short distance and the jerk of the extractor on the cartridge case stops it, and the gun will not operate.
However this difficultly can be overcome entirely by lubricating the cartridges in some way. In the Schwarzlose machine gun there is a little pump installed in the mechanism which squirts a single drop of oil into the chamber each time the breech block goes back. In the Thompson Auto-rifle there are oil-soaked pads in the magazine which contains the cartridges. In the Pedersen semiautomatic rifle the lubrication is taken care of by coating the cartridges with a light film of wax.
Blish Principle….There is no doubt that this mechanism can be made to operate as described, provided the cartridge are lubricated, …. That this type of mechanism actually opens while there is still considerable pressure in the cartridge case is evident from the fact that the gun does not operate satisfactorily unless the cartridges are lubricated.
Thompson Sub-Machine Gun: … Owing to the low pressure involved in the pistol cartridge, it is not necessary to lubricate the case.
“Blow-Forward” Mechanism: We have seen above (blowback mechanism)
that some method must be provided to hold the breech block against the barrel when the gun is fired, because otherwise the pressure of the powder gas pushing back on the cartridge case would drive the breech block back away from the barrel and let the cartridge out while the explosion was going on. With the blow-back gun the breech block is allowed to move in this manner, but is made heavy enough so that the movement does not occur too quickly.
Instead of allowing the breech block to move back, it would be quite possible to attach the stock and al the frame-work of the gun firmly to the breech block and then allow the barrel to move forward when the gun is fired instead of allowing the breech block to move back. Several automatic pistols, notably the Schwarzlose, have been constructed on this principle.
In 1917 an inventor appeared at Springfield Armory with a machine gun made to fire the Krag army cartridge, having the framework of the gun solidly fixed and the barrel loosely mounted so that it could move forward against the action of a spring when the gun was fired. This gun operated, but it was necessary to grease the cartridge case to prevent the front part of the case, expanded by the pressure, from sticking to the barrel as it moved forward.
One trouble with this system is that it greatly accentuates the recoil. The normal tendency of the explosion in the cartridge case is to push the bullet in one direction and the cartridge and breech block in the other. When there is no provision for locking the breech block to the barrel but instead it is attached to the framework and stock of the gun, and the barrel left loose, it is obvious that the explosion drives not only the breech block but the stock to which it is attached back against the shooter’s shoulder with a considerable amount of violence.
This inventor had besides his machine gun, a semiautomatic shoulder rifle built on this principle, though the mechanism was only crudely worked out. He demonstrated this gun by firing a number of shots with it and then allowed the Armory officials to fire it. I fired one or two shots with it and the kick was so terrific that I felt as though a mule had landed on of his hind feet on my shoulder. I seemed to be kicked back two or three feet from where I was standing and tears actually ran out of my eyes from the blow, which marvel as to how the inventor, who was a frail, pathetic looking man, managed to shoot it without any signs of discomfort. After showing his model he returned to a nearby factory to complete the mechanism but a few days later we were distressed to learn that he had taken his new gun and deliberately blown his head off with it. Probably the kick was too much for him after all.
Anyway, as long as you stay within published loading data, lubricating your cases will not cause damage to a rifle in good mechanical condition, but will prevent case head separations, which I consider to be a good thing.