chris in va
Member
I’m trying to sell my AR and pick up a lever in 357 or 45c. The Henry side gate looks nice but can’t find one locally to try out. A gun store here does however have Rossi’s in both calibers, so just wanted to get your thoughts.
My thoughts:I’m trying to sell my AR and pick up a lever in 357 or 45c. The Henry side gate looks nice but can’t find one locally to try out. A gun store here does however have Rossi’s in both calibers, so just wanted to get your thoughts.
. . . so just wanted to get your thoughts.
. . . and just picked up a Marlin 1894 CST in 357.
The Marlin is a bitch to load . . .
All marlins and rossi's need an action job. Henry's are heavy. You can usually find a 30/30 in a pawn shop for a lot cheaper than the pistol caliber guns.
Thanks for the info. Looks like 2 things I can easily do.Yeah, the Marlin 1894 in .357 needs some work to load easier. One thing to do is to cut the full length magazine spring down to a length appropriately sized to the 16.5" barrel. I cut my 1894 CSBL mag spring by 5". The original mag spring size in my gun was 27.5", working size now is 22.5". I learned this from others on the net.
The other thing that needs to be done can be seen in this Aussie speed loader video.
Don't fall for the loading gate being the issue, because it's not. That just sells lightly sprung loading gates, but doesn't fix the key issues mentioned above.
Magazine loading in my 1894 CSBL is easy breezy after doing that work. Out of the box, it was a nightmare.
Hopefully Ruger will take care of this issue where Marlin wouldn't.