Marlin Levers

Can anyone bring me up to date on the .357 mentioned? I'm in the market for one like the 1894C, but was turned off by articles like this one:
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That article is seven years old, and dates to the dark ages of Remlin/Marlington. Wipe the slate clean, and start over.

IMO, Marlin is going to be the next H&R within 15 years.
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Funny story: Marlin was OWNED by H&R prior to Remington....

Wait... That's not so funny.
Um...


(Don't worry about it.)
 
Water-Man said:
Buying new machinery may help, but it won't replace the people they lost who knew how to make those levers.
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That's assuming that no one else could ever learn how to make those levers. Were the New Haven staff born knowing how to do it? If not, I'm sure New Yorkers can learn it too.
 
FrankenMauser said:
As you know, DPris, I agree with the quality decline before Remington came into the picture.
Remington truly screwed the pooch with their early production and is still putting out rifles with flaws.

But Marlin kicked plenty of crap out the door, too.
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Hear, hear! I'm glad to have much more accomplished folks who also agree with my opinion of the last JM Marlins.

I had an 1894PG circa 2006 or so. The barrel was torqued such that the sights required either the front blade or the rear to be drifted way to the side of their travel. The magazine tube didn't line up with the barrel. And I'm sure a couple of other oddities I don't remember. But I must've put 6000+ rounds though it anyway.

I currently have a very late JM stamped 336BL. It's pretty, with no major function or cosmetic issues. You have to really look close to decide if the two rear scope mounting holes are straight or not. (They might be out of alignment.) The front holes look matched and I "installed" an XS scout rail successfully. But the bore looks like it was cut with a cutter experiencing a hypothermic level of chatter. And I wrapped some nylon cord around the lever loop to save my fingers from cuts. It's still a good shooter and I can't imagine a rifle more perfectly suited to my local deer woods.

This good news coming out makes me hopeful for the future of Marlin though!

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk
 
The thing that's hard to understand for many is that Remington had to basically build a new company when they bought Marlin.

They bought the name & the branding rights.
They did not buy a workable factory, and they did not acquire a workable workforce.

The old equipment was shot & the workers who knew how to baby-sit that old equipment ONLY knew how to operate that old equipment.

Those aging processes were not efficient, and while many speak reverently about the JMs, QC WAS going downhill.

I got a .44 Mag JM with a busted stock & a stripped fore-end screw from them toward the end, and I got a .410 model in that just wasn't good enough to keep.

I saw the decline.
I have JM marlins going back several years & it was obvious.

Remington could have offered to take the old workers along to Ilion, but considering that new equipment was going to have to be acquired, those workers who were qualified to nurse the old equipment along would have to be re-trained on the new stuff (actual modern equipment much more efficient), it made just as much sense to hire locally in Ilion & train them.

You would have ended up with essentially a "new" work force either way, with a new learning curve.
Continuing to try to manufacture on long outdated, obsolete, and worn out machinery, where the previous owners had not put money into capital improvements for quite some time, would have been foolish.

So, instead of integrating a new product into an existing manufacturing structure, Remington had to reverse-build a manufacturing structure around the "new" product line.

With no workable plant, no trained workers, and no fabrication drawings to work with, it was basically a matter of building a new company from the ground up.

That meant buying new machinery, developing engineering drawings for each model (that the old Marlin plant didn't have), developing new processes, and training new workers on that machinery & those processes.

All of that took time.

Yes- they "underestimated the complexity" of the move & start-up, which they are very much aware of.

Yes- they were in too much of a hurry to get product out the door, before QC could be maintained. But those in charge then are long gone, and people who do care are now doing their best to bring quality back up.

Yes- there are still issues. But those are being worked on.

In the case of the .357, that was suspended what, three years ago?
They knew what they were putting out wasn't cutting it, and they put the model on hold while they refined processes on it sufficiently to re-introduce it in FOUR different versions.

That took so long because other projects were in the works at the same time, and qualified gun engineers don't grow on every bush along the street.
Those engineers had to be used where they were considered the most urgently needed, and the four .357s soaked up time & talent in development.

As far as the levers under discussion go, this isn't a simple matter of "They had a guy could do those edges at the old plant, why can't they have a guy can do 'em at the new plant?"

Where production time equals money spent in production costs, the process is streamlined as much as possible, for a smooth and EFFICIENT flow.
Process are developed around the time & equipment need to produce each gun component.

The lever, for instance, is not hammered out of a billet of steel by one worker, and finished from start to end, including rounding off the sharp edges.
It can't be, too time-intensive & too inefficient.

The lever's formed completely by machinery, and as it stands now, the production process & equipment leaves those edges sharp.
The lever does get a degree of final finish in terms of either a light polish & then a blue or stainless "finish", but the process still leaves those edges.

And they are NOT gonna hire one lone worker to sit over in a corner doing nothing but filing & stoning those sharps off each lever.

So, after much nagging by a product manager who gives a damn, the go-ahead was given to allocate $100,000 for new machinery & processes to manufacture that lever in such a manner that those levers come out of the integrated production program WITHOUT skin-scraping edges.

I don't know how the old plant did it, that's irrelevant, since it WAS the old plant.
The old plant could not be saved; whether at that location or any other location, new machinery was needed, and the determination was made that if Remington was going to have to re-build Marlin from the ground up anyway, might as well be at home, in a modern building, right at hand.

In a manufacturing context, even simple little things like these levers (not just on the .357s) takes somebody to see the problem, determine a solution to the problem, persuade upper management that it IS a problem, get approval to run with the solution, get upper management to fund the solution, buy the equipment to address the problem, pull an engineer away from something else he's working on to develop a modified process with the new equipment, get the new equipment installed & functional, and get the appropriate people trained on the new equipment & process.

That does not happen in a week, a month, or sometimes even a year.
Compounded by the "Let's cut costs wherever we can" mentality under Cerberus, the whole Marlin rebuild has been handicapped from the start.

Now it looks like attitudes are changing where they need to change, money is a little looser, key people are getting on board with "better" instead of "cheaper", and we're seeing a slow, but notable, rise in QC.

Barring some disaster in the bankruptcy/sale situation, I'm hopeful Marlin can make a complete comeback.
Getting Cerberus out was a huge step forward.
Denis
 
I'll believe it when I see it. That said, IF they do get their stuff together, I'll be next in line for one of those threaded .357s. 'N if they don't, there's always Henry.
 
In a manufacturing context, even simple little things like these levers (not just on the .357s) takes somebody to see the problem, determine a solution to the problem, persuade upper management that it IS a problem, get approval to run with the solution, get upper management to fund the solution, buy the equipment to address the problem, pull an engineer away from something else he's working on to develop a modified process with the new equipment, get the new equipment installed & functional, and get the appropriate people trained on the new equipment & process.
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Big problem here. This is the difference between company owned or operated by shooters & gun people such as the Bill Ruger days and what to call it ? A Remington type company. Any successful business has to be both smart and nimble.

I don't know how the old plant did it, that's irrelevant, since it WAS the old plant
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This is kind of a problem too. Some things are done a certain way after 100 years of trail and error little detail learned. And those details are never going to be relearned based on the first quote. I am not talking rounded edges, I mean a new gun should feed ammo.

This quality problem is way beyond a Marlin problem, what are the reasons for poor quality 870 shotguns? The fix does not have to be slow. It need not and should not take years. "Smart and nimble" ? Years is an eternity these days.

As far as shotguns and bolt action rifles Remington is dead in my book. Now the Marlin line, we will see if I ever try one again. Today, my personal stand is that I purchase absolutely nothing from Remington not even ammo, gun wipes, remoil, nothing.
 
Yes, the fix does have to be slow, for the reasons mentioned.

The process requires a changing corporate attitude (including Remington) at the top, which is happening, and money, which has been problematical.

Remember the bankruptcy.
Remember the Cerberus "Make it cheaper" operating model.

Back when H&R was going under, an interesting comment was "We've taken as much cost out of the guns as we can." Meaning production costs, in the context of the single-shot line no longer being profitable in competition with cheap bolts like the Ruger American & the Savage series.

I remember at the time thinking "You've also taken as much value out of the guns as you can."

It does take time, not just for Marlin. You have to understand that as an umbrella operation, it's like a family.
One kid needs this, one kid needs that, another kid needs something else.
Decisions have to be made on priorities, just like you do at home.

Can we put off Johnny's dental work for a couple more months to buy a winter coat for Suzie?
That kind of situation.

Resources have to be allocated between "kids" (companies).
That includes notably engineers and money.

And there's a certain amount of organic transitional delay in overcoming previous ingrained thought patterns.

In that trickle-down effect, when you've been told for years that your priority is "make it cheaper" (which I emphasize again, because it truly was the business model), when word now comes down to "do it this way instead of the old way", the natural conditioned response is "But- that'll cost more!"
Getting over that resistance at multiple levels will not happen overnight.

Company-wide, there's some re-thinking needed at all levels.

That's meeting some resistance by those who don't understand how low Marlin's & Remington's reps have sunk, don't understand the importance of quality, don't see beyond their office door & a paycheck, and are used to just "Get 'em out cheap!" from above.

All this is complicated by the bankruptcy.
But- it is changing.
Believe or not, buy Henry or not, the world will go on either way. :)
Denis
 
I bought the Henry...….…..between the two Marlins. All three are built in 2016.

I originally went to the dealer, to look at Henrys. Just happened to grab a Marlin 1895 CBA 45/70 with an octagon barrel off the shelf, because it looked good. It actually looked far better, than any newer Marlin I had read about, seen videos, as well as pics.


Mostly what I had read, was on the negative side. Yet this Marlin had near perfect fits between the metal tangs, and the wood. It was obvious, that someone had figured out, how to get the CNC machines to co-operate.



The ends of the forearm, though not as rounded as earlier GM models, didn't have tooling or sanding marks. The stocks finish, was a bit lackluster, though.


I put a deposit on it, and went back a second time, to look at the bore with lighting, and some additional inspection. It still looked good. The front sight was where it needed to be.


Best of all, it had the side loading gate, something the Henry misses. This time, I took it home. Pulled the insides of the receiver out, and found the milling to be good. After all, I had once worked in a large machine shop. I'm not new to this.


This is a year ago. In the meantime, this Remington built Marlin has functioned without a single failure. Many brands and loads of factory and reloads. It's accurate, and some simple additional "tung" oil product (actually a linseed product) brought out a beautiful wood finish, with little effort.


After that, I picked up the Henry 45/70. The brass version, because it's kind of purdy, in my mind. Since the Marlin worked out far better, than I had hoped, I added the 336SS -30-30 model, later in the summer. Liked the looks of it, too. It's only fault, was sharp edges on the stainless lever, while the 45/70's blued lever, was just fine. All three, including the Henry, have been nice rifles.


edit: bottom line. Neither of my Marlins were the cheaper ones. Marlin employees actually performed a good job, on the two I bought. I wouldn't have bothered, otherwise. I can't say how the product line is, quality wise, when it comes to the cheaper models.
 
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Denis, thanks for the additional information. I do wish that people could grasp that in the corporate world as well as the world of government there are two constraints, qualified people to perform tasks and the money to fund it. Neither is infinite. On the other hand some people hope that Remington/Marlin bounces back and succeeds while it seems that others want them to fail. I do understand those who have been burned by the downgrading of quality by the bean counters and are skeptical of commitment by Remington/Marlin.
 
I have several Marlins, newest 1970, oldest 1890s. I'm not a Marlin collector
so I'm not interested in new ones at all. I was in business for 20 yrs, went out
in 92. In 80s you could see quality drop in Marlin, Savage and Remington. The
Rugers at that time were still at high standards. Winchester was out of the running. The problems were many but the bean counters calling the shots made
some stupid decisions on marketing side.Savage was pulled out by concentrating
on 110 series BA rifles a good move for them. For everyone else it seemed like
a race to the bottom. Ruger with #1 selling 10/22, screwed them up with plastic
parts. Remington quality on 870s dropped them down and lost the market to
Mossberg 500, dropped 1100 for 1187. Why they mess with their bread and
butter lines amazes me. The latest Bean Counter marketing decision is Colts.
They are making a A2 version of AR to sell to big RVn Vetrans market. The kicker
is the price tag. 3 times what a base model costs. They killed their market before
they started. Much of the trouble in gun industry is non gun people making
product decisions that have no connection to the market. We all have a WISH
gun that we hope they will make again. You have to look at it in terms of how
many can be sold.
 
Considering how many great-condition older Marlins are out there looking for good homes, I just can't get excited about anything Remington is making today.
 
I’m in the market for a .357 Model 1894 myself. I’ll be glad when they are rolling off the lines ready to go without making 3or 4 trips back to the factory for repairs. I love marlins myself, have a couple of 50’s models that I wouldn’t part with at all.
 
Fishbed77 said:
Considering how many great-condition older Marlins are out there looking for good homes, I just can't get excited about anything Remington is making today.
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Oh? Well please point! I'm looking...

Seriously, the older .357 Marlins are not easy to find these days. People know folks want the old guns, and they're priced accordingly... when they can be had at all.
 
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Your right about that, I’ve been looking steadily for almost 2 years for one. No bueno. I snatched the one .44 magnum I did manage to run across.
 
Some good news here regarding the Marlin .357mag.

That is one of the last 2 rifles I want to buy- and my 1954 Model 39A has conditioned me to prefer Marlin lever actions!

[and there is no Savage 99 in .357mag- so I can still love my '57 Savage .308!].

Thank you!
 
Oh? Well please point! I'm looking...

Seriously, the older .357 Marlins are not easy to find these days. People know folks want the old guns, and they're priced accordingly... when they can be had at all.
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You are going to have to go to places like Gunbroker, but they are there. The days of walking into a gun store and finding a desirable used rifle are over (at least where I live). People either hang onto them, or know what they have and sell via the internet. But they are out there, and they are superior to anything Remington is making these days.

Not a .357, but I nabbed a beautiful 1960-manufactured Marlin 39-A for well under $500 last year off Gunbroker. Saw plenty of other rifles while I was looking.
 
What Marlin needs to do is...

Now that all drawings are on electronic CAD file.

Redo the 336 into a box feed .308/ .243 [6mm Rem] action and bring it into the 21st Century.
With a wider receiver, with dual vertical sliding lugs [ala Win 1886 / 1892] for the higher pressure and allow using the spitzer-type bullets, there by eliminating the tube magazine.
 
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jrothWA said:
Now that all drawings are on electronic CAD file.

Redo the 336 into a box feed .308/ .243 [6mm Rem] action and bring it into the 21st Century.
With a wider receiver, with dual vertical sliding lugs [ala Win 1886 / 1892] for the higher pressure and allow using the spitzer-type bullets, there by eliminating the tube magazine.
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It's not about that, it's about the old ways.

When you pick up a lever, it's like you're stepping back into the old days with Wayne and Palladin.

Some people don't get it.
 
Now that all drawings are on electronic CAD file.

Redo the 336 into a box feed .308/ .243 [6mm Rem] action and bring it into the 21st Century.
With a wider receiver, with dual vertical sliding lugs [ala Win 1886 / 1892] for the higher pressure and allow using the spitzer-type bullets, there by eliminating the tube magazine.
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It's been done ... better.
They're called the Winchester 1895; Browning BLR; and Henry Long Ranger.
The dual vertical lugs are a bad idea, anyway. By necessity, they have to be at the back of the bolt. For better lockup and 'bringing something into the 21st century', they should be at the front of the bolt. The BLR and Long Ranger solved that by using a rotating bolt head that locks at the front of the receiver. (Yes, the Long Ranger is arguably a tweaked knock-off of the BLR. I don't care.)


The Marlin 336 is not easily adapted to box magazine feeding (fixed or detachable) for reasons that include almost every, single part that is inside a 336.
What you're asking for would require pretty much a complete redesign. And if you're completely redesigning, you might as well start from scratch.
(...And call it something stupid like the "Marlin DoMillennium Vîgintî".)
 
Then we are talking about a Win M88.

Lugs need to be forward , eliminating the bolt springing [like the SMLE, with rear lock-up]

Yes the interior will need a redesign but magazine could be based on the Remington 788 magazine.

And "Yes, Pilgrim" i have 1972 336, which was detailed and stoned to give a "butter-smooth' cycling.
Plus a Win M94 dressed up as the 1967 "Canada Centennial" Carbine, looking for a rifle to add to accumulation.

And havw two M88 to boot.

I hear you Pilgrim.!
 
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