Stick feeding Marlin 1894-suggestions?

[DHart]

Sticky feeding Marlin 1894-suggestions?

I have a fairly new Marlin 1894ss in .44mag which cycles nice and smoothly due to "tuning" via Jonah's procedures on Marauder's website, but when cycling live rounds through the gun, just after each round's bullet tip enters the chamber, there is a significant increase in resistance getting the round into the chamber. I can muscle the round into the chamber, but my other 1894's don't have this resistance when feeding. This happens with two different types of .44mag factory ammo. None of my other 1894's have this issue. Does the chamber mouth need to be openned up a little bit? I'm hesitant to touch that.

I would just send it to Marlin for adjustment, but since I've polished the action a fair bit, they may frown on that... but on the other hand, perhaps that's exactly what I should do. Any suggestions?

 

[TN-popo]

I had the exact issue with an 1894P (bullet would feed in, lip of the casing would catch). Sent it to Marlin. It came back slick as s#%t through a goose and they did a trigger job on it as well.
I didn't ask for the trigger job, so maybe that was part of the original fix.

All free of charge.

PS. The manual warns against Blazers for this very problem, so if these were one of the ammo types you tried, chalk it up to ammo related problems.
Hope this helps.

 

[larryw]

For some reason, the occasional Marlin comes out of the factory with a tight chamber. Sounds like you're one of the "lucky" ones with a gun that requires a trip back to the factory to get sorted out.

Muzzle down, action open, can you drop a loaded cartridge into the chamber and it drops all the way in without help? I can on mine.

You can probably send just the receiver/barrel assy to them for rechambering. That way you hang onto the parts you smoothed up and that won't raise any issues with modification, or the possiblitiy they may replace these parts with factory new items.

 

[DHart]

Ammo does drop freely into and out of the chamber by hand. But when the lifter presents the ammo to the chamber it is with a noticible upward angle (round is angled upward somewhat from the rim to the bullet nose). I have a feeling I should just give a call to Marlin and let them fix her up. I don't think my slicked up parts should be an issue (I hope), but this problem existed before I did a thing to the rifle... if anything, it runs smoother now, except for the hesitant bullet entry into the chamber.

 

[treeprof]

What ammo specifically is sticky?

 

[DHart]

Fixing a sticky new Marlin 1894SS

I recently bought a Marlin 1894SS in .44mag. The new rifle action was (as expected) quite stiff. In addition (not expected) the rounds (two different .44mag loads: Fiocchi semi-jacketed soft point and Winchester Super X semi-jacketed hollow soft point) did not cycle smoothly through the gun, but were presented to the chamber mouth at an angle which created cycling resistance and left a scrape mark along the sides of the fed cases.

Following Jonah's Marlin Tune-up Guide on Marauder's website,

http://www.marauder13.homestead.com/Rifles.html

I went through and polished and tuned the action parts as directed. The action became really nice and smooth! Wonderful, indeed. But my feeding issue remained. At the suggestion of several guys on the SASSnet forum, I suspected the extractor was not allowing the rim to slide up smoothly, therefore the feed angle was too steep for smooth feeding.

I swapped in the extractor from my 1894CBC .45 Colt into the 1894SS .44mag and feeding improved significantly. This gave me more confidence that this was not an OAL issue, but indeed just an extractor issue. But looking closely at the tips of the two extractors, I could see no notable difference. The spring on the 1894CBC extractor did have a little less tension however.

Then I took a look at the extractor tip on my 1894C in .357 mag that was tuned up by a professional and noted that the entire tip of the extractor was polished quite bright.

So I decided to do some extractor tip polishing and try to reduce the spring tension just a tad.

I took my Dremel and lightly addressed the various angles on the tip of the stainless extractor, then worked the spring tension down a touch, and put the extractor back in the .44mag and loaded her up for a cycling test.

VOILA!!! The extractor tuning did the trick... all rounds now cycle through the rifle nice and smooth!

Now I think I'll go buy some .44 special factory rounds and see how they cycle through the gun.

Jonah's tuning guide on Marauder's website and the extractor polishing tune-up has turned a stiff and barely functional 1894SS .44mag into a slick and smooth running rifle!

Nice too that I did all the work myself; so I understand the rifle a lot better now than before this process.

Now, I'm still considering having the rifle barrel cut back to 16 or 17" so as to have a really great handling, little brush gun. (Remember, this is NOT a rifle I use for CAS.) Thanks to all on the SASS website who helped me through this process.

Update: Today I picked up two more types of .44mag ammo: Speer Gold Dot and American Eagle JHP. And I also bought a box of Winchester Super X .44 special 200 gr. Silver tips. Came home, loaded up the rifle and test cycled all three ammo types through the rifle: all feeding and ejecting nice and smoothly! I love this rifle now! (And know a lot more about how it functions).

 

[pdufren]

Fixing a sticky new Marlin 1894c

My new 1894c was having problems feeding anything over 1.575", which was a real bummer since I had already bought a batch of Laser-Cast 180gr LFPs. The crimp groove is for a 1.60-1.61 crimp, which made them impossible to feed at that length. After loading a batch to 1.575" COL with less than stellar perfomance using the LEE Factory Crimp Die to make a "forced" crimp groove, I began searching for a better solution. DHart's recommendation on polishing the extractor was exactly what I needed. Upon close inspection, I noticed that the extractor had very sharp burrs on the critical edges. I used a very fine Arkansas stone to remove the burrs. It will now feed 1.61" cartridges flawlessly.

Thanks for sharing this bit of information.