Marlin 1892
A Story of Conservation
These old marlin 22 lever guns are possibly the greatest 22s ever made. When you load one of these rifles up and wander off into the woods, you suddenly become a boy again!
The first was the Model 1891, introduced that same year, then came the models 1892 and 1897, introduced in 1896 and 1897 respectively. The 1897 was a take-down rifle and the 1892 was the solid frame version, a continuation of the 1891. We know that Annie Oakley used both the 1891 and 1897 models in her exhibition shooting. The model 39 was introduced in the mid 1920s followed by the 39A introduced in 1939. It remained in production until Remington took over Marlin around 2008.
This Marlin 1892 chambered for the 22 long rifle cartridge came with a number of issues. The rifle was made between 1907 and 1915. The bolt is from a newer model 39A, however, and it had excessive headspace. The chamber was also damaged, it had a groove worn into the upper portion, as if it had been struck by the firing pin repeatably. The only way the firing pin could have reached into the chamber would have been because it was broken. The original bolts on these rifles had a weak area prone to cracking upon repeatably firing high velocity ammunition through it. High velocity 22 rimfire ammunition was introduced in about the mid 1920s, and Marlin upgraded the bolt with a stronger one for the model 39 in about 1930. Perhaps the original bolt from this rifle broke from having high velocity ammunition fired through it? I can only speculate. Firing a cartridge in this chamber would result in a stuck case, due to the case expanding into the groove worn into it. The rifling in the bore was very worn, especially near the muzzle, possibly from improper cleaning. A clear solution for these problems would be to reline the barrel. Not only would it solve the damaged chamber and worn rifling, but for this rifle, I could also correct the headspace for the newer replacement bolt.
I would only get the enjoyment from this 1892 if I could get it operational again! So I acquired a Redmans 22LR liner for it and removed the barrel from the receiver and set it up in the lathe. This barrel was long enough (24 inches) to reach through the headstock and be supported between a four jaw chuck and outboard spider. I won’t go into the details of installing a liner here, you can read about that in the story I wrote about the Winchester 1906.
After the liner was installed I crowned the muzzle, keeping the original flat type crown. I cut the muzzle back nearly 1/8 inch to remove a large dent on the outside top edge of the muzzle. This rifle had the less common rimfire chamber type where the cartridge rim counter-bore is in the barrel instead of the bolt. This really helped for correcting the headspace. The headspace was about .020” too long before it was relined, so I cut the new chamber shorter so that the bolt would now close up tight. The breach of the rifle had a lot of geometry to it that had to be hand filed with little jewelers files so that the bolt could close correctly and the extractor would also function correctly.
After rust bluing the muzzle to match the original finish, I reassembled the rifle. Now I just needed to load it up and test fire it! After loading a couple of cartridges into the magazine, however, I discovered another problem. Not only did this replacement bolt have excessive headspace (before relining), but it was also not timed correctly. After opening the bolt and letting a cartridge onto the elevator, then pushing the bolt forward with the lever, it would push the cartridge too far forward by the time the elevator would begin lifting up. The nose of the cartridge would run into the breach below the chamber jamming up the rifle. Upon examination, I could see that I needed to remove material from the surface on the bolt that the lever pushes on to close it. Fortunately, the lever transitions from that surface to another surface that keeps the bolt locked up, so removing this material would not effect headspace at all. I removed the bolt and set it up in the milling machine. I removed .005” at a time from that surface, and reinstalled the bolt each time until it would chamber the longest 22LR cartridges that I had. Finally, ready to test fire!
These old rifles with their original bolts should never have high velocity 22LR fired through them. Use only standard velocity ammunition. Because I have a newer stronger bolt, I should be able to use the high velocity cartridges; however, it just doesn’t feel right to me. Besides, I’ve found standard velocity ammunition to be much more enjoyable. It’s very quiet since it’s slower than sound and it seems to kill stuff just as dead anyway! This rifle is an absolute joy to shoot! It functions perfectly, and is exceptionally accurate! It has become my go-to rifle for dispatching pests around the homestead and I’ve already lost count of the critters I’ve killed with it. It still needed one more improvement though.
I could see the accuracy potential of this rifle at 50 and 75 yards, but I couldn’t see the sights and target well enough to make those hits consistently. I thought about making a version of my KRA sight for it since it is drilled and tapped on top of its receiver for a receiver sight. More specifically, it is drilled and tapped for the Hepburn peep sight which has a .900” hole spacing instead of the .500” spacing of the current KRA sight. Since I also had a Marbles tang sight that would fit the rifle I decided to give that a try. The tang sight was made for centerfire Marlins like the 1893, so it was a bit too tall to work with the factory Rocky Mountain front sight. It simply needed a taller front sight to work with the tang sight I had on hand, so I made one. I really liked the factory front sight on this rifle, But it can always go back on if I change things up in the future. I wanted the new sight to resemble the old one, and it’s not a sight that is still made. I decided to machine the front sight out of one solid piece of steel instead of the traditional two piece Rocky Mountain style. I shot a group from 75 yards with the tang sight adjusted as low as it could go, with the factory sight still on it. The bullets of course struck high, well above my point of aim. I measured the distance from where they struck to where I was aiming on the target. I multiplied this number in inches with the distance between the front and rear tang sight (sight radius) and divided that number by the distance to the target in inches (2700 inches). This tells me how much taller the front sight needs to be. I used 75 yards because that is the mid range trajectory, the highest the bullet travels in relation to the line of sight. With the rear sight as low as it goes and the rifle zeroed at 75 yards, if I were to be either closer or farther from the target, it would strike low, requiring the rear sight to be raised.
With the height of the new sight known, I milled out a sight for it in a few hours on the manual milling machine. I then hand fit the sight dovetail to the barrel with a triangle file then hot blued the sight and finally installed it. It worked perfectly! A superb sight picture, the blade only about .060” wide. When looking through the aperture, the sight and target come into crisp focus. And best of all, no further adjustments were needed, I got lucky with the windage, but the elevation was spot on because I worked out the math beforehand to know the exact height the front sight needed to be.
It sure is a real pleasure to bring one of these old rifles back to being able to shoot just as good as it did when new! Maybe it will go another hundred years performing its intended job, being enjoyed by a boy wandering in the woods, whether that boy is ten, forty, or eighty years old!
