Is not a bolt-action…But I'd say this is a precision lever-action…
My dad was a Marlin guy. He passed a few months back, and I inherited his firearms collection…Which included some fairly hard-to-find in good condition vintage Marlins… Including a 1958 336 in .30-30 Win with gloss blue finish, and beautiful tiger-stripe American Black Walnut stocks. An old 60’s or 70’s 336 in .444 Marlin.
And a more recent built (I’m guessing 90’s) NIB 1894 SS in .44 Mag that he never shot or even pulled out of the box. Still had only iron sights and plug screws in the top of the receiver.
So, I decided to mess with the 1894 SS first, as it’s a lightweight and handy little rifle to carry around the woods or property, and I gave it a bit of a modern upgrade… Some purists might consider it blasphemy, but once you see how it shoots, you might reevaluate your opinion.
So, first things first, I needed an optic…So I swapped the Vortex Strike Eagle 1-8x24 SFP off of my 16” .300 BLK, leveled it in a set of Seekins Precision 30mm Low rings, and mounted them on the new EGW 0MOA pic rail I got for it, and bore-sighted it with a Sightmark laser that is made to fit in the chamber for individual cartridges. I’m really impressed how close that got me… 2 shot sight-in at 50, then 2 more to zero it at 100.
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Since I have owned .44 Mags for many many years, I already had a good collection of factory Hornady LeverEvolution 225gr sitting around, and decided to start there with sight-in and testing loads. This is also where my testing stopped…
Here is a 3-shot group (8” target) @ 100 yards with factory Hornady LeverEvolution 225gr ammo, on a clean bore that only had 4 sight-in rounds through it.
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