I am not a lever gun expert. I inherited this one and wanted to have it tuned up and rechambered. I the Marlin 336 rechambered to .30-30 Improved, an action job done, and the trigger was supposed to be cleaned up to offer as light and crisp a break as possible with a requested weight of no more than 4-4.5lbs. The gun was also re-blued because it has quite a bit of surface rust and some light pitting on the receiver from where it had not been maintained before I go t it. It has taken over a year to get this thing back and I just opened it up and took a look at it.

It appears that the chamber was cut after the metal was re-blued, chamfered after bluing for certain, and there is light rust in the chamber and the top of the barrel "extension" for lack of better words. It appears to have rust leaching from the threads also.



I have cleaned as much of it as possible from the action as possible but have concerns about long term serviceability.

It feeds ok as far as I can tell given the two cast lead dummies he provided and I just sized and loaded the empty case he sent with a Hornady FTX and it seems to feed fine as well. The cases come out scratched to hell though. It doesn't want to eject empty cases unless I run the gun hard. Two questions about these cases:



1. In the top picture of the cases, why does the groove above the rim disappear when I resize the cases? Is the brass thin and soft or is the chamber oversized and is the cases being over-worked at the web?

2. What causes these dents just below the shoulder? They were on every case he sent.

The trigger is inconsistent. It will break with no creep about 60% of the time and about 40% of the time it has somewhere between a little and lot of creep. I primarily shoot bolt action and AR guns with good triggers. What is a realistic expectation for a lever gun trigger?

I want to gather some information here before I go back to the smith with my complaints.

Nobody?

I haven't heard back from the smith but he shipped me the gun without charging me for it, just sent an invoice. Does anyone have a recommendation for a fix for any of the listed isses? Will polishing the chamber get rid of the longitudinal scratches on the case?

I went and shot the rifle today to see if I could replicate the scratches and dents. Cases do come out scratched but not dented. I think the dents below the shoulder may come from feeding them through the gun but cannot say for sure until I load some up and go try it again.

Well Scratches on the brass that weren't on the brass when you ran it into the chamber have to be coming from the ... Chamber. I really can't advise on polishing the chamber but I would guess that if it's rough enough to scratch cases, it would be hard to polish out. You could take a new case, not sure how your going to get an undamaged AI case to use, and JB Bore cleaner it up and give it a go. Can't hurt. Might help.

It looks to me like the edge of the chamber was not broken or polished. It doesn't take much, 320 grit for a second to break the edge and lightly polish the chamber.

As for the dents, I doubt they are of importance. They are likely formed during extraction. If the case comes out with force, it gets dented against the reciever. That is not a bad thing.

The ring on the case is being resized. Brands of cases, reamers, etc all differ a little. I have seen a match reamer for .300 Win Mag leave a pretty obvious ring on Federal cases, but not Winchester cases. Alternatly, I have a 30-06 AI reamer that cuts a tight chamber, and Redding dies won't resize it enough, but Hornady will. My dad had to work with Redding to get dies that would work. My Hornady set worked fine.

Jeremy