Marlin 1894-sticky feeding issues; suggestions?

[DHart]

I have a fairly new Marlin 1894SS in .44mag which cycles nice and smoothly due to "tuning" via Jonah's procedures on Marauder's website, but when cycling live rounds through the gun, just after each round's bullet tip enters the chamber, there is a significant increase in resistance getting the round into the chamber. I can muscle the round into the chamber, but my other 1894's don't have this resistance when feeding. Does the chamber mouth need to be openned up a little bit? I'm hesitant to touch that.

I would just send it to Marlin for adjustment, but since I've polished the action a fair bit, they may frown on that... but on the other hand, perhaps that's exactly what I should do. Any suggestions?

 

[1911Tuner]

Sticky

Howdy DHart,

I just noticed that this one hadn't been answered yet. Sorry. Got so wrapped up in pistol talk and fixin' pistols, that I got blindsided. Sounds like a headspace problem...as in not enough...or a tight chamber. maybe it got through without being finish reamed. The cartridge mouth is hitting the chamber shoulder before the bolt can go to battery, or the chamber is under SAAMI spec. You can color the cartridge with a felt-tip marker and see where the tight place is. I'd say that this one belongs to Marlin. A smith will need to remove the barrel to finish ream it, and the job would be pretty costly. They'll probably do it for nothin' even if the rifle is
fairly old.

Luck to ya, brother!

Tuner

 

[DHart]

Johnny... thanks for the reply. I got some replies on other forums which suggested extractor adjustment... it was definitely too tight... I loosened the extractor tension a little and voila! Excellent feeding. Thanks again.

 

[1911Tuner]

Extractor?

DaHELLyousay! And here I thought only 1911 extractors caused problems...

 

[DHart]

Yep.

To check out the theory, I took the extractor from my 1894CBC in .45Colt and put it in the 1894SS and the feeding issue went away. So I relaxed the tension on the extractor that came in the 1894SS and all is well.