Marlin 1894 question

[John William McCandles]

Is it possible to shoot .44 Russian in a stock pre safety Marlin 1894 in .44 Magnum caliber?

Thanks
JW

[Pettifogger]

A .44 Russian is simply the .44 Special shortened which is a .44 Mag shortened.  Only way to find out is to try it.  As rounds get shorter in an unmodified Marlin, they feed less reliably.  Some rifles may feed fine.  Others may jam.

[John William McCandles]

Just wondering if anyone had tried them in an 1894 Marlin. Is the Marlin as touchey on OAL as a toggle link Winchester?
Only reason I am asking is I have the '94 Marlin that the wife will be shooting until I can come up with a '66 Carbine for her in .44 spl. She shoots a 5 1/2" R&M in .44 for a pistol.
I shoot a '66 sporting rifle in .44 spl. that I had tried .44 Colt in. Feeding is no problem but extracting the spent case is. What I want to do is install the short cartridge carrier in my '66 so I can shoot .44 Russians in my '66 and R&M's. Then do the same to a '66 carbine when I find one for her. I shoot black powder and I belive she will stick with smoke less or may go bp later but I'd like to get down to loading one round for CAS.

I will try a .44 Russian cartridge in the '94 and see how it goes worst thing that could happen is I have to dig it out.


Regards
JW

[Pettifogger]

The 73's are NOT touchy about OAL.  They actually accept a pretty broad range of OALs.  The thing is the guns, both the Winchester and the Marlin, were designed for ammo that is nominally 1.592" OAL.  When you start going below 1.400" (which is almost .200" below their design parameters) you can start having problems.  Don't put 60 octane gasoline in a Ferrari and then say they are fussy about gasoline.  Feed them what they are designed for and they work fine.  If you have time read this.  It explains why a toggle link will or won't feed certain types of ammo.  http://www.theopenrange.net/forum/index.php?topic=5274.0

[John William McCandles]

I have only messed with 1866 clones and didn't know the '73 weren't as picky about OAL.

Thanks for the info and link.

JW

[Lumpy Grits]

Is it possible to shoot .44 Russian in a stock pre safety Marlin 1894 in .44 Magnum caliber?

Thanks
JW

Hi. NOT to be a smart a$$ but you will not know till you try it.
FWIW: My pre-safety .44 will feed anything. I have seen some that don't too.
Good luck, and keep us posted.
Cheers,
LG

[Angel_Eyes]

Ditto on the problem, my 1976 Marlin will not feed anything under OAL!!

But then, I have always thought that if it's called a .44 magnum, then thats what I feed it.

Now, the load thats in the case is a horse of a different color.

Good luck with your experiment,,,,you do know how to strip it, don't you??? 

AE

[John Taylor]

I have converted a few 94s from 54 Colt to 45 acp and found that the timing of the lifter needs to be changed on most. If the round is to short the lifter/carrier will get hung up on the next round in the mag.

[Adirondack Jack]

Both the 1873 (or 66) and the 1894 Marlin can be converted to .44 russian.

In the instance of the 66 or 73, a new carrier with an integral mechanical cartridge stop works best.  Without a new carrier, a toggle link would choke on .44 russian as it would try to feed two and it gets ugly.  With the carrrier I designed, they run sweet. see the website for those.


In the case of the Marlin, they try to feed two of the short cases and lock up tight instantly.  But they can be trained     it's a job that will take the average person about  3 hours the first time, is maddening at first, until you begin to understand Marlin timing, then gets much easier.  I have two Marlinss running Cowboy ,.45 Special, a round nominally shorter than .44 Russian.  
I did one yesterday cutting the carrier to feed a "long" .45 special round at 1.460.  It will feed anything from 1.125 to 1.460
The other is cut for 1.175 max, and feeds anything from empty cases at .895 up to 1.175.  The angle feed and exquisite timing tuning makes em very forgiving on OAL, unlike a stock rifle.

The same methods apply.  You need to slightly modify the ears on the front of the bolt, and heavily modify the carrier.  The carrier top deck gets cut into an angle feed ramp, and the bottom gets a shim of jigsaw blade epoxied in place and adjusted as needed with careful filing to achive timing.  Best idea would be to use a second carrier, so you could swap the stock one back in for .44 mag, BUT, you can and I have make em run .44 russian, special and magnum, but that is a really touchy timing job I fiddled with for a week or two.

A rifle set up to handle .44 ruussian would be called a widdermatic
one set up for dual cartridge use (more difficult, touchier timing) would be a widdermAJic

http://marauder.homestead.com/files/Widdermatic_Marlin.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RssZK2ljFJw&feature=channel

[WaddWatsonEllis]

OAL Length in a '73 Winchester;

I bought a  Uberti/Taylors & Co/Codymatic in.45 Cal .... when I ordered it, I asked if it could be set up to shoot .45 Schofield (Which is what I shoot in my pistols).

The rifle shoots the Schofields just fine, and only balks if one of the reloaded shells has had it's bullet radically pushed into the shell (i.e. short OAL) ...  if I let one of the visually shorter cartridges into the Winchester, it jams so bad the shell has to be removed at the loading table ... The cartridges will fire in the pistols just fine, so if I catch them I just fire them in the short guns ...

The last time I had a jam there were six remaining cartridges in the weapon ... so I took it in the shorts on scoring and came out dead last ...

[Coffinmaker]

WWE,

Normally, the '73, '66 or Henry will function with with .45 Schofield just fine as long as you run bullets no shorter than a 200grn RNFP.  Shorter bullets and they will double feed and jam. 
As AJ indicated, changing out the carrier will allow .44 Russian in any of the Toggle Link rifles.  I use to make my own special carrier for short rounds (very time consuming and expensive) until AJ came out with his.  I've changed out all my carriers to AJs in all my toggle link  guns.
I currently shoot 160gr RNFP bullets in my .44s.  Sweet.

Coffinmaker

[WaddWatsonEllis]

Coffinmaker,

Thanks for the input ... what I have found is that the 'shorter OAL' shells fire just fine in the Schofields ... so, since this is the second time my reloader has cost me a better-than-last place showing, I think I am going to have to take a woodworker's 'inside' caliper and temporarily mark all the short shells so that they will go into my Schofield pistols ... short of buying new ammo each time (which I can't afford) or reloading my own (which I can't afford the initial outlay), this seems t o be the best and simplest answer to my problem ....