I picked up this Remington 141 in 35 Remington for a $300 song due to a ring in the barrel about 3/4" back from the muzzle. Unfortunate, because the rifling was SHARP and still showed tooling marks from the rifling cutting tool. I did try shooting it as-is, but it would group two with three flyers, or group three with two flyers.
So $75 later, my gunsmith cut the barrel to a nominal 18", crowned it, removed the front sight from the cut section and silver soldered it back on the barrel.
I moved the rear sight up two steps on the elevator since that's where the calculations said the rear notch needed to be, and using Remington factory ammo hit an 8" gong 5/5 offhand at 150 yds. And again. And again. In fact, there were two young fellas and the GF of one of them shooting a scoped .22 at 25 and 50 yds, and I overheard the GF say to the one, "That old guy shoots better than you do at longer range, and without a scope!" Nothing like twisting the knife there, GF.
Back in the day, the .35 Remington and the Remington 14 / 141 was the "National Deer Rifle of Northern Pennsylvania," significantly more popular with serious deer hunters than Winchesters and Marlins in 30-30 or 32 Special. Pump actions were the weapon of choice in PA before boltguns became popular between WWI and WWII, and especially after WWII when the price came down on boltguns, due to archaic laws prohibiting hunting with semi-auto rifles and shotguns. Hunters that owned pump shotguns opted for pump rifles to take advantage of repetitive drill and muscle memory.
The Remington 14 was designed by America's other Prolific Arms Designer, John Pedersen. He was responsible for the Pedersen Device, which turned the M1903 Springfield into a semi-auto rifle firing a .30 caliber pistol cartridge, and also the Remington Model 51 pistol, the Model 10 pump-action shotgun and the Models 12, and 25 pump-action rifles. Pedersen and John Browning co-designed the Remington Model 17 pump-action shotgun, which was later redesigned and made in three highly successful forms: the Remington Model 31, Browning BPS, and the incredibly popular Ithaca 37. John M Browning called Pedersen "the world's best firearms designer." A Pedersen design competed with John C Garand's rifle for the semi-auto rifle the US Army and USMC sought in the 1930s, losing to the Garand design which of course became the "US Rifle, Cal .30, M1".
The Model 14 and 141 had a unique magazine tube assembly for two reasons -- the sheetmetal mag tube was spirally fluted, and this feature caused the cartridges in the mag tube to sit slightly off-axis. This intentional misalignment never brings the primer of one cartridge in contact with the tip of the bullet of the cartridge behind it. Second, the entire mag tube, cartridge stop, and elevator assembly moved rearward into the receiver for positive cartridge feeding, instead of relying on mag tube spring force alone to push a stack of cartridges back onto a cartridge elevator built into the receiver as with a lever gun.
The .35 Remington was a better performer at any distance than the 30-30 or 32 Special, and pretty much rivaled the also-popular 38-55 for northern PA deer hunters. The Remington 14 and its replacement Model 141 had solid reputations as intrinsically accurate rifles when shooting the .35 Remington, and reputation that still stands today. It is not for nothing that it was the rifle & cartridge of choice of prolific author and outdoorsman Zane Grey.
Original Model 14 Carbines and the extremely elusive 141 Carbines bring stupid high 4-digit $ money these days. I have $375 tied up in my "faux" 141 Carbine, which to my mind rectified a problem and made a great "car rifle" at the same time. Short, slick handling, fast, accurate, effective, and relatively inexpensive for a "project" gun -- what more could a PA Ridgerunner want?
OK, Straub Amber beer.
Noah
