# Marlin 1894 vs 1894 Cowboy



## Reddbecca

For some time now I've considered picking up a Marlin 1894 in .357 Magnum to serve as a companion piece to my Ruger New Model Blackhawk. The problem is I've kinda got this thing about numbers and I'd like a lever action carbine to hold 10 rounds instead of 9. Trouble is the regular 1894 in this caliber only holds 9 rounds, while the Cowboy version in the same caliber holds the full 10.

What do you think? Is the longer octagonal barrel and extra round capacity with the higher price of having the Cowboy over the regular 1894?


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## iwantabuggy

If money was no object, I'd go for the 10 shot octagon barrel. I seriously doubt there is any significant difference in accuracy or velocity and I like the look and nostagia of octagon barrels. Marlin's site it not showing the prices. What is the difference in price?


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## Reddbecca

MSRP for the $576 for the 1894, $822 for the 1894 Cowboy. But since there's no gun stores around here I can't determine how much they usually sell for on the open market, so the MSRP doesn't help determine that much.

I'm not a CAS member, so I wouldn't be using it for that. I mainly want a good rifle to match my Blackhawk and give me some added power and performance to my ammunition, and serve well as a home defense gun.


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## iwantabuggy

Whoah! That is a big difference. I'd be picking the cheaper one in that case. I have a 1894GS. It is a pretty nice rifle.


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## Reddbecca

1894 GS?


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## cwoparson

The reason the 1894C cowboy holds 10 rounds is because it is designed for 38 special where as the regular 1894C will shoot both .357 mag and 38 special.


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## Reddbecca

cwoparson said:


> The reason the 1894C cowboy holds 10 rounds is because it is designed for 38 special where as the regular 1894C will shoot both .357 mag and 38 special.


I think you've got the wrong gun. The 1894 Cowboy currently in production has a 20" barrel and is marked for both .38 Special AND .357 Magnum.

http://www.marlinfirearms.com/Firearms/ ... 5Colt.aspx


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## iwantabuggy

Reddbecca said:


> 1894 GS?


Guide gun Stainless. Oooops. It's an 1895 GS. My bad.


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## Reddbecca

iwantabuggy said:


> Guide gun Stainless. Oooops. It's an 1895 GS. My bad.


Oh, one of those lightweight shoulder busters designed for saving you from bears but at the cost of your shoulder being crushed.

I don't have anything against the guide gun, but if I were gonna get one I'd have to find a good lightweight load that's easier on the recoil than standard stuff. But then again it's not really a plinker in nature.


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## iwantabuggy

Reddbecca said:


> iwantabuggy said:
> 
> 
> 
> Guide gun Stainless. Oooops. It's an 1895 GS. My bad.
> 
> 
> 
> Oh, one of those lightweight shoulder busters designed for saving you from bears but at the cost of your shoulder being crushed.
> 
> I don't have anything against the guide gun, but if I were gonna get one I'd have to find a good lightweight load that's easier on the recoil than standard stuff. But then again it's not really a plinker in nature.
Click to expand...

Yup, this was after 12 shots on my first time trying test loads. The 12 shots were from the prone position. Every shot really hurt. I have had a few incidents since, that show me I didn't develope a flinch.  You should have seen my shoulder 24 hours after this picture was taken.


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## cwoparson

Yep you're right, they are chambered for the .357 also. Might have been the 1894 CBC (Cowboy Competition) I was thinking of which is 38 special only.


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## Reddbecca

Well as I remember it Marlin used to make a .38 Special version of the 1894, but it seems they discontinued it.


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## Plainsman

Reddbecca, I have the Marlin Cowboy Action in 44 mag and it holds 10 rounds. I like an octagon barrel, and the action is smoothed up in the Cowboy Action, and the rifling is not microgrove, but the type for cast bullets. It levers very smoothly compared to the many other Marlins I have used. I had the Winchester and that had a very tough spot that often pulled the stock down when shooting rapidly which in most cases was only for fun anyway.
One of my favorite loads is nine grains of Unique under a 240 gr round nose flat point cast bullet. I still have some Bull X like that but have also tried the Oregon Trail bullet and it performs well also. I should stipulate that this is my favorite load for plinking and rabbits in my Smith and Wesson revolver. However a year ago I used this load to cleanly take a doe, and after looking at the wound channel I will never again spend money on jacketed bullets for my 44 mags. 
I am just short of 60 years old and can not see my open sights worth a darn anymore, so I put a Marbles peep sight on the tang. It shoots like a dream with that load. I hope to use it again next year. I take a half dozen rifles with when I go deer hunting if I am lucky enough to have four or five extra tags. Some are long range out to and beyond 1000 yards with adjustable scopes, bipods and magnum rifles, while other tags will be filled with old falling block action, octagon barrel 45/70's and lever action 44 mags.


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## Reddbecca

So the microgrooving works best for jacketed bullets? How much would I be giving up with cast bullets, and is there any way to make the microgrooving work better with pure lead?

The more I read about reloading the more I get the impression that I could make excellent .357 loads with cast performance bullets of varying weights for all kinds of uses.


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## cwoparson

Marlin still does a limited production now and then on the 1894CBC just for the CAS crowd. If your interested in one of those you will have to stay in touch with Marlin as they are snapped up pretty fast.

As to the Microgroove rifling, they will shoot cast lead bullets just fine if you keep them clean between shooting cast and jacketed. The problem was those into CAS wanted to shoot cast at slower speeds without all the power of regular loads and the cast lead bullets just wouldn't bump up enough to seal the bore at lower speeds. Loss of accuracy and bore leading was the result. By going to Ballard rifling that problem was resolved. I hand cast a 158 grain round nose and a 158 grain flat point from wheel weights and heat treat them for my 1894C which has Ballard rifling and they shoot just fine. My brother has a older 1894C with Microgrove rifling and uses the same load and he has no problems. The trick is to keep the speed up to 1400 fpe or so, preferable 1700-1900 fpe with a bullet BHN of 18-20 for hardness. You won't be shooting pure lead anyway which is way to soft as that is for the black powder crowd. Cast Performance bullets are in that BHN range of 18-20 with mixture of 6% antimony and 2% tin and they are gas checked which makes them even better. I've got some of their 180 grain WFNGC bullets and actually found them to be to much for deer. There is no expansion at all, small hole in and small hole out. They work pretty good on feral hogs though.

One of the best loads I've found for hunting is the Speer 158 jacketed soft point loaded to about 1800-1900 fps. Out to 80-90 yards they perform great on deer sized game. You can drive the Speers a lot faster but accuracy starts to suffer.


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## Reddbecca

Keep them clean? You mean the usual thing like scrubbing the bore with solvents after an outing rather than just letting your gun sit and soak in its own filth? That shouldn't be too difficult to do, that's my regular practice after a round of shooting.

So higher speeds for lead bullets to get best performance from the microgrooving? I think I can do that just fine. I like to shoot .38s since they're cheaper, but it's really not all that hard to find copper coated bullets for reloading purposes. Accuracy might not be the greatest but I can always experiment with different loads to find something that works.


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## Plainsman

Reddbecca said:


> So the microgrooving works best for jacketed bullets? How much would I be giving up with cast bullets, and is there any way to make the microgrooving work better with pure lead?
> 
> The more I read about reloading the more I get the impression that I could make excellent .357 loads with cast performance bullets of varying weights for all kinds of uses.


Both rifling types will work, but I find the microgrove to lead up faster. Although my favorite load is 9 gr of Unique I load cast bullets as fast as jacketed. That same rifle performs as well as the Microgroves I have had with full charges of 2400 and H110, and with cast or jacketed. The only jacketed I have shot in it however are the 180, 200, and 240 Hornady XTP.

Many manuals will not show fast loads for cast bullets so look at the Lyman manuals or better yet Cast Bullet Handbook. They recommend #2 alloy for most of their loads. #2 alloy consist of 90% lead, 5% tin, and 5% antimony. This gives a Brinnel hardness of 15, but expands on game unlike the cheaper production high hardness alloys. Tin is the secret here as it keeps leading down while keeping the alloy more malleable than those which rely on antimony for hardness and stopping excessive bore leading. I don't know of any companies currently producing bullets of #2 alloy. These you must cast yourself.

In the Lyman Cast Bullet Handbook they have loads that will push 158 gr lead bullets to 1460 fps out of a revolver with a 4 inch barrel. You would have to chronograph to find out what that is in a rifle. I have shot that load in a New England Arms single shot Handy Rifle, but I have not chronographed it.


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## cwoparson

What I was getting at was to clean in between using jacketed and cast bullets. If you are shooting cast and then shoot jacketed right behind it you will foul the barrel. Some people think the jacketed bullet will clean out any lead that may have accumulated in the barrel. This is not so. All you will accomplish is flatten the lead if there is any lead there into the lands. On the other side of the coin if you are shooting jacketed and switch to cast without cleaning the copper fouling will grab at the lead and cause some lead fouling. I don't clean my guns after ever shooting session. I'll run a wet patch followed by a dry patch to prevent rust but if I'm not getting fouling then why bother with a complete scrubbing. Most people turn right around and shoot a fouling shot before shooting the next time out anyway.

To remove lead, if there is any, I take about a two foot strand length of a copper chore girl cleaning pad, wrap it around a copper brush and scrub the bore with some cleaning solvent. I've yet to find a solvent that actually removes lead. It takes scrubbing and this is the best way I've found. there is a product that has impregnated cleaning patches for lead removal but I don't recall the name.

Best thing is to prevent leading or minimize it to start with. The rules I go by is (1) don't drive the bullet to slow or to fast. (2) Don't use bullets that are to soft or to hard. (3) Make sure bullets used are at least .001 over bore diameter. (4) Though not necessary I like to use gas checks. Sounds like a awful lot to have to know just to use cast bullets but it really isn't. Check out http://castboolits.gunloads.com/ which has a wealth of information on shooting cast bullets.


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## Reddbecca

I've read a lot about casting bullets, made me want to just buy lead bullets and load them up. I heard that with all you need to buy (resizing dies, heaters, melting pots, special tools, lubricators, etc.) the savings of making your own bullets from lead only come from reloading thousands upon thousands of arounds. I don't even shoot that much to begin with, so for now buying quality bullets from either Mt. Baldy or Cast Performance would probably be the best way to go. Either that or pay a reloader guy to cook me up a batch.

Whenever I go shooting I really only shoot one type of bullet or another, so I might not have to worry about doing copper/lead/copper and getting fouling going on. Then again that might change if I get to shooting more often that I do now.


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## cwoparson

Plainsman I think, at least in my opinion the tin is more for fill out in the mold than for hardness. I've always looked at antimony as the main hardness ingredient but that is difficult to increase unless I use magnum shot. I figure at best the wheel weights I smelt down are giving me about 4-5 % antimony and maybe 3% tin though probable closer to 2% tin. I add 95/5 solder to raise the tin content and I figure I'm getting about 11-12 BHN. I oven heat treat at 420 degrees for one hour and then water quench for a hardness of around 18 BHN. Do I need them that hard? Probable not but since they are mostly plinking and varmint loads it works out okay. Besides it is something to keep me busy in the winter months. Smelt them down in the summer, cast them in the winter and shoot in between.

I talked to a distributor once and he told me the reason everyone sells and ships bullets harder than actually needed was because customers complained the bullets got beat up in shipping and didn't look nice and pretty. Go figure.

Lead has gone sky high in the last year are so and it seems that good jacketed bullets are just as cheap as quality cast bullets now days. In some cases even cheaper. Wheel weights are becoming impossible to find. What I use to get free is either recycled now days or the shops are asking as much as a dollar a pound.


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## Reddbecca

Something I found out about Marlin rifles. Both the 1894 and the 1895 models, both regular and Cowboy variants, have the standard ballard 6 groove rifling instead of the 12 groove micro rifling. At least according to their site.

Does that mean that if I reload for a Marlin 1894 I won't have to worry as much about bore leading if I shoot plain lead?


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## Plainsman

> Plainsman I think, at least in my opinion the tin is more for fill out in the mold than for hardness.


Yes it does that, but my old Lyman cast manual says it says that it also keeps the metal malleable so they expand on game. 
I have 300 lb of pure lead from a dismantled Xray lab, three five gallon buckets of wheel weight, and about 100 lb of linotype. I need to get my hands on some tin, but it's getting expensive. I'll save the pure lead for my muzzleloading bullets.


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