I took my 1894C to the range Friday. When it's shooting properly, it is more fun than almost anything else in gundom. With .357s it's a handy, low-recoil carbine that develops useful amounts of power for defense and a fair range of small to medium game.
With .38s it provokes spontaneous glee. Like a centerfire .22. Zero recoil and pops the falling plates at my range like a laser.
BUT my 1894C has one serious flaw. It is somewhat prone to jam up catastrophically while feeding rounds. I had a gunsmith try to fix this one time; it helped but that jams didn't disappear. Now they seem to be increasing. On Friday it happened again. The Marlin utterly froze up, crashed and burned after 30 rounds -- had to bag it up and toss it in the car trunk to fix when I got home.
Its characteristic jam occurs with the lever all the way forward, i.e., extended -- it freezes like that and won't go back at all. The next fresh round has made it up into the chamber, but you can't close the bolt, fire, or do anything else. Like I said, catastrophic. You have to disassemble the gun by removing the lever pivot screw with a screwdriver, then pull out the lever assembly, then the contents of the tube mag suddenly burst free under spring tension. Reassemble ejector, lever assembly, and bolt, tighten the screw on the lever, and you're back in action.
This is seriously impairing my enjoyment of the lever carbine. Is this the fabled "Marlin Jam"? What can be done to fix it? The problem is worse when I use .38 Specials (can never get through more than 15 or 20 Specials without the gun freezing up catastrophically, as above. Which stinks, because they're so much fun), but it happens from time to time with .357 Magnums as well. Enough so that I can't trust the gun for any serious purpose (or even a fun range session) unless and until the problem is fixed.
Any suggestions much appreciated, particularly diagnoses.
