Marlin Makeover - Part I

This gun has definitely seen better days.

No way to remove all those pits without losing the letters.

Now for the good news: Like many of the older designs, this Marlin was made from real steel and plenty of it. That gives us a lot of material to work with and makes this project worth pursuing. We will not be able to fix all of the deficiencies time has wrought on this old shell shucker, however. A total restoration would involve welding certain areas back up to original specs and recutting all of the lettering where removing the pits would obliterate the markings.

What we can do is refinish what is there while preserving as much of the lettering as possible (thereby leaving some pitted areas) and carefully return the gun as close to its original condition as possible. We will also need to decide what the final appearance of the gun will be. Factory new? Used, but well-cared for? The idea here is to redo the metal and wood so that they look correct without any places appearing extra nice or extra beat-up. I’m sure we’ve all seen examples fine old guns redone with a mirror finish on the bluing and the old pitting still visible behind the glare. Or, more common is an old time weapon with obviously new replacement parts added on where needed with no effort to match their finish to that of the rest of the metal. That is what I’m going to try to avoid while attempting to make this old piece of American craftsmanship look as good as possible.

Left side of receiver.

Right side- rough but not impossible to fix.

The first step is to completely disassemble the gun and take a good, hard look at the components. The hard part was coaxing out all of the screws that were rusted in place. Drilling out any stuck screws used to be my preferred method, but since I started using Kroil, (471-100-008), that operation has become less and less necessary. All of the other penetrating oils I have tried in the past rarely did anything but make the part smell worse. Kroil is the only one I have tried that really penetrates all the way through and helps break the rusty bond between screw and threads. With the proper screwdriver bit and a drop of Kroil, I can remove almost all of the screws that I would have been forced to drill out before. It also makes those old barrels easier to remove and it only takes a couple of drops. I sure wouldn’t go without it these days.

Once the gun was completely taken apart it was much easier to see what had to be done. For starters, the magazine tube had to go.

Magazine tube is a lost cause.

The dents and bends were bad enough, but filing out all of the pitting would have left the walls paper-thin. Luckily, Brownells carries a .645” Replacement Tube (#770-200-645) that is the exact diameter as the factory part. All that I had to do was duplicate the holes for the screw and magazine stud at the muzzle end and then shorten the whole thing to match the original. Also needed were the two screws that secure the forend tip in place and the forward trigger guard screw. Luckily, the ones for the present day Model 1894 are the same thread pitch, and with a little recontouring of the head can be made to work. The rest of the screws on the gun were in good enough shape that they would look good with a little cleaning up.

All of the critical parts of the action seemed to be in fairly good shape and the gun did function well considering its condition. The sights were quite a different matter and I decided to replace them with a new Marble’s front and rear, and possibly a tang-mounted peep sight in the future. The wood on the forearm is a replacement while the rear is an old original buttstock from an 1894. It may not be correct on this gun but I like the way it looks and feels so it will stay for the time being. The rifle was also missing the loading spring and its screw when I acquired it but new parts for the 1894 were very close and were easily modified to fit. Now that all the parts were there, it was time to get serious.

About this time I decided a little something special might be fun, so I asked Dave Bennetts, our in-house color case expert, about coloring the lever, bolt, trigger, and hammer on this gun. This is not the original look for this particular model, but we are not trying to fool anyone by attempting a complete restoration. I felt that coloring these parts would ensure their hardness and durability and give a distinctive look to the piece by adding contrast to the blued receiver and barrel. Dave said it would be no problem, but the parts would need to be annealed first. This softens the steel and prepares it to be rehardened, plus makes it a lot easier to polish or file. We packed the parts in charcoal as if to harden them and put them in the oven to bake at 1450 degrees for about an hour, just to be sure the temperature inside the steel containers was equal to that of the oven. Then we turned off the power and left everything to cool down in place overnight. Now the parts were fully annealed. After a brief visit to the bead blaster to clean them up, they were ready for filing and polishing along with the rest of the gun.

Forend with old mag tube and partially-finished cap.

I had already done some filing on the barrel before relining it so, it was set aside for the time being. The rest of the parts had so much corrosion on the inside and the outside that it was necessary to bead blast them before filing to remove all of the rust and get down to clean metal. After blasting away all of the crud it was evident that some of the pitting on the exterior was fairly deep and would require a good deal of work. The only way to remove that much metal while preserving the original lines and contours is to carefully file the metal down by hand until the pitting goes away.

Left side beginning to clean up.

Starting to look better!

This is done with whichever file happens to fit the area best. With all the curves and bends on the Marlins receiver, my needle file set and my fingers got a serious workout. It took a couple of evenings to get the receiver and lower tang metal ready to polish which was the worst part but the rest went much more quickly. Most of the parts needed a little filing to remove pits, but then cleaned up very quickly with abrasive cloth wrapped around files or on sanding blocks. The metal was taken down in steps to 320 grit. and then blended with a gray abrasive pad to give it a uniform look. The screws were then chucked up in an electric drill and trued up by turning them against a vertical belt sander. Then, they were polished on the buffing wheels. A light coat of oil was applied to protect them from corrosion until they could be blued, and with that done, all of the metal parts were ready to go.

The letters remain but so does the pitting.

I wish I could tell you that all of the parts were perfectly smooth and free of pitting after all of that filing and polishing, but the truth is some areas could not be brought back completely. Due to the amount of play already in the working parts I was forced to limit myself to a little light sanding after bead blasting in the contact areas to preserve as much metal as possible. Thus, while the exterior of the bolt is nice and shiny, the rest of the places where it rides and hides in the receiver are still somewhat rough looking.

The same holds true for the interior of the receiver as well. The color casing and bluing will camouflage this to a great degree and make it harder to notice. The other area that is really going to stand out in this respect is the top of the receiver and the barrel where the pitting around the letters is there to stay. If this was a full-fledged serious restoration the pitting would have to be removed and the markings recut to bring it back to as-new condition. As it is, I simply bead-blasted the pitted areas to clean them out before bluing, did some light sanding, and let it go at that.

When it came time to refinish the wood, there were only a few small gouges in the buttstock that were easy to fill with sanding dust and super glue. Most of the wood was in good shape and sanded down fairly quickly. After final sanding, I wetted both pieces to raise the grain on them and to see how they would match up. The old buttstock had a little red coloring to it while the forend wood was pretty plain colored. I wasn’t sure how to add just enough red to the front end to match without going overboard. There happened to be a can of Art’s French Red Stock Filler (#464-101-008) on the shelf so I took a little of it on a brush and put a thin coat on the forend and immediately wiped as much back off as I could. I also went with the grain instead of across it, as you would normally do in order to fill the pores. That way very little of it stayed on the wood. The result was a slight reddish tint that looked good and came very close to matching the older stock. After a thin coat of Tru-Oil the two pieces looked even closer, so I decided to quit staining while I was ahead. After a few more coats of oil, the wood was ready to put aside until the gun could be assembled. Now all that remained was to get the metal final prepped and ready to go.

Next time we’ll fire up the heat-treat oven and the bluing tank and see what happens.

Marlin Makeover - Part II