Which Would You Suggest?

The 1894 was a good bet. It's just that the recent ones that were made before they moved to New York were made by folks who knew they were going to be out of a job.

My 1894 didn't have any bevel on the breech face, so every round jammed. The store's gunsmith broke the edges and it is much better now, though it still needs some work. The basic rifle design is GREAT, but if they're not built right, they don't have a chance.

Look for an older, used 1894 locally. Buy and bring snap caps with you to check the feeding. Hollow point ammo for .357 is still flat at the point, so it should feed the same as a flat point. Older ones should be fine. Or a newer one, sent in to make it work properly should also be fine. I think these are more versatile rifles than AR15s, because of the caliber. They're good for medium game out to 100 yards, and good for home defense also. Plus, they can share ammo with your revolver. ;) Just don't give up if you get one that wasn't finished properly.

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More on the 1894

The feeding issues are well known. Here are a couple of links I saved when I was looking into it:

http://marauder.homestead.com/files/marlin94fix.html

http://www.marlinowners.com/forums/index.php/topic,35673.0.html

If you're handy, you can do it yourself. If not, print those out when you send the gun to be worked on.

The one guy says it is as simple as the extractor spring being too strong. He said it would not reliably feed HPs until he fixed that.

I tried it, but I was not comfortable with how hard I was having to hammer on a pin in the bolt to get the extractor out. I'm going to print that out and bring it with the gun next time I get down to the shop I bought it from. (I bought the gun new with a lifetime store warranty, so they'll do the work, not Marlin/Remington)
 
You mentioned hollow point feeding problems. Why the hang up on hollow points when a power point bullet will do anything that you need done for the ranges and game that you wanted it for? If a gun doesn't like a particular bullet try another. There is nothing particularly magical about hollow points for a moderate velocity bullet.
 
Old Grump: I liked HPs for HD duty, .44 Specials in this case. This was done with the idea of minimizing over-penetration potential. All HPs that I tried failed miserably in the Marlin. Smaug: The jams went like this: Fire the first round, work the lever, eject the fired casing, next round comes up. As the new round would begin it's slide into the chamber, it would suddenly stop, as if the bullet itself was snagging on the edges of the chamber. I'd have to work the lever back and forth to get the round to go all the way in. The sad thing is, I sent it to Marlin for repair..got it back, still no improvement.:( Since this was my first lever action, I was quite disillusioned.
 
.30-30 though a .308 is a good suggestion. .30-06 makes for a pretty long action for a lever.
Gehr
 
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