A few year back I purchased, used, one of the late 1970's Marlin 1895s, the straight stocked version.

It came with a Weaver scope mount and had an Uncle Mikes hammer extension.

I removed the scope mount and have used the gun and it worked fine. Last night I decided to remove the hammer extension and I find that the bolt will not close. The trailing edge of the notch ( the one that exposes the rear firing pin) in the underside of the bolt catches on the striations on the top of the hammer. It jams up tight and won't close. When the hammer extension was on the underside of the bolt would ride on that and clear the hammer, no problem.

Any idea what's going on here? The gun has a very light trigger pull so I suspect someone did some work on it, could this have changed the hammer's geometry?


Thanks, Rob

The sear has been shortened and doesn't catch the hammer. You need a new sear. Brownells carries them, but I think they are "FFL only".
You may also need a new hammer depending on what was done inside. I should have the parts in inventory if you want to send it down.

I suppose that was done to improve the trigger? Is it unsafe? I have cocked the gun and bounced the butt on the floor and it holds but something I should be concerned about? It has a nice trigger pull with the extension on.

If the sear angles are correct with the proper engagment to keep it from snapping off with a bounce, its probably safe enough, the problem is it doesn't work without the hammer extention.

The Marlin triggers are adjusted by refitting the sear angles, it only takes aboiut 5 strokes with an India stone on the trigger sear to change. If too many more strokes than that are applied, the nose of the sear is lowered enough that your gun's problem can appear.

thanks for the help.

Rob