A couple of years ago I picked up a 1905-ish vintage '94 Marlin with a so-so bore figuring I could have it relined if it didn't shoot well with the 70 gr Speers I intended to try (knowing that plain lead bullets would not do well in the poor bore). Of course those Speer bullets had been discontinued by then, dang!

So, I resorted to the still available 60 gr Hornadys and ended up with no luck getting those to group consistently with multiple powders fast or slow. Until today. I finally tried what an older Lyman manual suggested as an "accuracy load", namely their starting load of 13 gr IMR4198 with small rifle primers.

Result: one-inch 50 yard groups with iron sights and my old eyes. Repeatable.

The moral of the story: don't give up on those rough old bores (myself included) until you have tried everything you can think of, including dangling prepositions!

Need a like button.

Those old lever guns with bad bores will shoot great if not you work on them like you did, until you find the right mix....My experience with the old Winchester, Savage and Marlins tells me that the low velocity loads always seem to shoot well most of the time contrary to some reports, I have a 30-30 SRC trapper, a 25-35 SRC, a 94/64 cross bred 30-30 and three older Savage 99s that have found a perminent home for various reason, one of those reasons is the must shoot under 2 inches, the keepers usually shoot around and inch, but over the years many didn't make the grade, but most all shot at least 2 to 2.5 inches with irons at 100 yards off a bench rest..I love taking them to turkey shoots, and having nay sayers stop by with bett'en money to play..