The Marlin's stocks were unblemished, but the bore was filthy and the action was scratchy and stiff, with a five pound trigger pull. A good scrubbing revealed a shining bore with the desired Ballard style rifling perfect for cast lead bullets. I completely disassembled the action, stoned and polished the obvious wear points, lightened the springs, and polished the sear notch. That really helped! The action is now very smooth and I have a 2 1/2 pound trigger pull. Since I don't shoot barrel sights very well, I removed the rear sight and installed a Marble's tang sight intended for the newer Winchesters with tang safety. It fits very well on the Marlin using just the single tang screw to mount it.
Next I slugged the bore and found it to be right at .431". The ammo I had loaded for my Smith & Wesson revolvers had plain-based cast lead bullets sized at .429, but I went ahead and tried them anyway. Accuracy at fifty yards was only fair with a five-shot group going about four inches. I fired another 95 rounds at various targets out to 150 yards with surprisingly good results. The rifle is a pleasure to shoot! Back at home I was expecting the bore to be heavily leaded, but it cleaned up easily with only light leading present. Now to get a .431 bullet sizer die and do some load testing. Yeah!
SHASTA
