My take on the Marlin 336SS - essentially complete :)

Cool thread, I would love to see someone show the exact area's the polish up though. I've thought about putting some polishing compound in my post 64 winchester 94 and cycling it repeatedly to smoothen things up a touch a few times, at least with stainless your not worried about corrosion where you've sanded the parts though.
 
Stainless and synthetic isn't my taste in general and certainly not for a lever action. However, I can certainly see why you like it so much. It makes a lot of sense. Nice work on the action. I'm going to save this thread to favourites to have it as a reference.
 
Claven2 said:
Yes, though to keep down the hollow sound, they jam some foam in there. Removable though.
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Interesting, the ramline I have on a Rossi carbine is hollow.... I was thinking of spray foaming it and using some plastic tubing wrapped with tuck tape to mold in some tubular storage cavities in the foam. In my experience the spray foam doesn't stick well to tuck tape but I will have to experiment with it as a release agent.... :)
 
Talking to my gunsmith today, a pachmayer old english should be doable with minimal difficulty, which will be WAY grippier on the should and hold up to field abuse much better than the stock buttplate, so I think I will have that mod done as well. Will post pics when done. Gunco does AWESOME butt-pad fitting.
 
Yeah, the stainless and synthetic looks utilitarian and not pretty, which is what I have the rifle. Frankly though, I dislike stainless and walnut just as much. Pretty much any stainless gun, I find ugly. I do appreciate the usefulness/ruggedness in bad weather though.

I have a nice 1952 336RC in .35 that is blued/walnut and it's much prettier ;)
 
Made a few more minor changes and I like it even better now :)

It's now been fitted with a Pachmayer decelerator (the thinnest one). The recoil of the rifle was never significant, but the rubber pad is more durable and grips to the shoulder MUCH better than the smooth plastic buttplate the stock comes with. I also scraped all the injection mould seams with a razor blade so there are no seams left that can be felt by my hands or cheek.



The plug that replaced the safety was bead blasted from the factory and looked out of place, so I rotary polished the ends on the lathe to match the real screw heads everywhere else on the rifle.



Finally, there was still one blued screw in the grip cap, so I replaced it with an identical stainless screw I got at Brafasco.



So far, great reviews from everyone who's seen it first-hand :) Marlin really needs to start selling some stainless models set up like this from the factory IMHO.
 
I'm more of a Savage and Winchester guy for levers. Though I did buy a Browning this year for moose hunting. But it was only because I could get the Browning in the caliber I wanted.

I did see a really nice used Marlin in 35 Rem this past April at a gun show. Tried to convince my buddy to buy it (he was looking for a deer rifle). I might pick it up is its still available next year.

Thanks for posting the thread.
 
As always , Claven2, a wonderful to read write up. Most informative and inspiring for many of us to tweak our Remlintons.

I slicked up my Marlin 336 compact by cycling the action with several strategically placed drops of TriFlow CLP and now the action is super smooth. Now to carry out the Dowdie Sports Champion stock set replacement gig.

Thanks for that informative report.

Cheers, Barney.
 
A worthy project I like. And this from a guy with a couple old school Marlins I see both sides of the traditional aesthetics versus bad weather practicality debate. I had a stainless xlr at one point kinda wish I still did.
 
TacticalTeacher said:
As always , Claven2, a wonderful to read write up. Most informative and inspiring for many of us to tweak our Remlintons.

I slicked up my Marlin 336 compact by cycling the action with several strategically placed drops of TriFlow CLP and now the action is super smooth. Now to carry out the Dowdie Sports Champion stock set replacement gig.

Thanks for that informative report.

Cheers, Barney.
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Barney:

If you want to improve it a little more with minimal effort, I would suggest the following areas for attention:

1) take out the lever plunger pin and remove the plunger assembly. Slightly radius (about 1mm or less) the pointy tip and use a dremel cut-off wheel to shorten the spring by 1 to 1.5 coils. Re-assemble.
2) stroke the locking block (sides only) on some 200 wet/dry on a plate of glass or other flat surface. Then lightly polish with 600 grit. Doesn;t need to be perfect, just reducing drag.
3) de-bur the round clearance cut on the front of the cartridge lifter. This will prevent intermittent hang-up of the cartridge rim. EVERY recent marlin I've looked at was burred here.
4) lightly polish the sides of the front of the cartridge lifter to at least 200 grit. Don't remove significant material, just smooth them. Even if it's a blued part, the bluing will wear off here anyhow.
5) address the "marlin jam" before it happens. I put about a 0.5mm radius on the culprit surface on the lever. See here. http://www.ktgunsmith.com/marlinjam.htm More common on the 94's, but it takes 30 seconds to do with a file wrapped in 200 grit wet/dry and you'll have the gun apart anyhow.
6) loc-tite the lading gate screw when you re-assemble the gun. 'nuff said.
7) with a fine mill file, take the casting flash line off the striking face of the hammer and the long cam surface between half #### and the fired position of the hammer. Polish both areas to 600 grit. The striking face is going to have all the bluing rubbed off anyhow and the sear cams are out of sight. This will dramatically smooth the cycling of the gun. I would not play with the sear surfaces themselves unless you have a Marlin hammer sear filing fixture.
8) with a dental pick or similar, pry up on the lever safety spring from the inside of the lower tang. you want to bend the spring so that you reduce the tension required to hold the lever closed, but to leave enough tension that the lever safety reliably re-engages. If you go too far, drift out the pin, bend the spring arm back down and start over. This is a trial and error job.
9) to disable the cross-bolt safety "on the cheap", set the safety to fire and with the buttstock off, tighten the allen key holding in the spring-loaded detent all the way down. This will lock the safety in the fire position and you won't have to worry about it ever again, though it's not as pretty as replacing it with a blank.

I hope that helps bud! If you do these steps, the gun will smoother than any JM gun ever was out of the box ;)
 
Oh, and for purely "show and tell" reasons and to assuage the "blued and walnut" fellas, here is my other 336 - this one is the 336RC in .35 Rem I mentioned. This is a 1952 gun stocked in oiled black walnut, which is pretty early for a 336. It pre-dates checkering, gold triggers, D&T on the top strap, cross-bolt safeties, white-line inserts and even the "bullseye" plastic doo-hickey they inlet into the stock toes.

This one was still "stock" when I picked it up (except for sling swivels), the only changes I made were:

- installed a vintage steel Redfield aperture rear sight (these guns shipped already drilled and tapped for a redfield or FP sight)
- replaced the OEM tangent sight (it was an early non-folding flat-top, not the later folding semi-buckhorn) with a fancy blank
- swapped out the original 1952 hammer with one out of a 1957 gun. The pre-57 hammers have nay 3 serrations on the tip of the hammer and are not undercut for a hammer spur. The post-57 hammers (but pre-cross bolt safety) are interchangeable and have much grippier hammer serrations and you can install a proper hammer spur on them.
- put a slight radius on the tip of the lever plunger to make cycling easier

This one is a pleasure to hunt with, but I hate taking it out in the rain ;)


 
Update:

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I've made a few changes to the gun in the original post.

First of all, I did not end up liking XS Sights setup. It was great for shooting within about 30 yards or so, but at 100m, the sights were far too coarse and I averaged around 6" groups at that distance. I was actually able to shoot better with the OEM sights.

So I've gone another route, I phoned Korth and and ordered an FX-II Leupold 2.5X UltraLight scope with a custom-installed German No.1 reticle. I hunted around and found a set of older NOS US-made Milled 2-piece bases (not the late production mexican junk) and a set of (now hard to find) Leupold super-low rings.

I like it. It's about perfect now.
 
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