Target Sports

HEARTBEAT RIFLES: THE MARLIN 444

Created on 29th May 2009

In the last of his series on 1950s and 1960s rifles, LAURIE HOLLAND investigates his kind of levergun - or so we heard through the grapevine

MY FINAL subject, for the time being at any rate, in this series about ‘Heartbeat' period sporting rifles seems to fit the theme to a T. Look at the number one chart singles for the year it was introduced - 1965 - and you get a raft of songs that could form the soundtrack to a Yorkshire TV saccharine sixties rural police drama - ‘Go Now' (Moody Blues); ‘You've Lost That Loving Feeling' (Righteous Brothers); ‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine' (Marvin Gaye). But look closer, and you'll find this is faux-Heartbeat. The 444's roots are in the 1890s, and it's still in production today.

Three men

Marlin's lever-action rifles owe their existence and features to John Mahon Marlin and designer LL Hepburn. Marlin moved to New Haven, Connecticut, in around 1863 to make pistols. His first lever-action repeater appeared in 1881, and shook market leader Winchester by chambering the .45-70, an achievement that was to elude the latter company until 1886. However, Marlin's early efforts were far from perfect, and the company took on Andrew Burgess, succeeded by Lewis Hepburn, whose patents still define today's actions. It was Hepburn who introduced the main difference from rival Winchester's products - the solid-top action and side-ejection rectangular section bolt that kept dirt and foreign bodies out of the action. Marlin and Hepburn introduced new improved models in 1888, 1889, and subsequently every year bar one between 1891 and 1897, encompassing the whole gamut of contemporary American cartridges.

A large manufacturing consortium bought Marlin out during WW1. It became the Marlin-Rockwell Corporation, specialising in making machine-guns and the BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle). The postwar collapse in military orders saw the company go bankrupt and default on a $100,000 mortgage. Enter Frank Kenna, an astute and energetic lawyer and businessman who was instrumental in keeping the company going and ultimately prospering. Kenna said that only he, a few small boys and a stray dog attended the Sheriff's Sale that saw him buy Marlin-Rockwell - lock, stock and mortgage - for $100. Kenna sweet-talked the lenders into further patience, and got sporting rifle production restarted. (He had to repeat this feat later in the aftermath of the Great Depression!)

Three models

Returning to leverguns: Marlin only used three designs. These encompassed the entire range from the end of the Great War to the present day, despite scores of model variations and designations. They are the rimfire Model 39 (originally M1891); the short-action M1894; and the long-action M1893. It's the last that interests us: a side-ejection design introduced in .32-40 and .38-55 chamberings, with .25-36 Marlin and .30-30 Winchester soon added. The M1895 used a scaled-up 1893 action to handle the .45-70 and longer .40s and .45s, but only lasted until 1917.

The M1893 rifle was reworked and renamed in 1936 (its title was later abbreviated to ‘Model 36'). The action was left unchanged apart from a revised hammer profile to facilitate scope mounting. Like the Models 39 and 1894, it still had a Hepburn-design rectangular section bolt that fitted a long, broad slot, machined almost the entire length of the right side of the receiver and sitting completely flush when the action was closed. The downside of this arrangement was that only the left and top receiver walls were solid - a constraint if more powerful, higher pressure cartridges than the .30-30 were to be adopted. In this context, the development that took place in 1948 was significant. The rifle, subsequently renamed the Model 336, had its action redesigned with a solid right receiver wall (ejection port and loading gate aside), and was given a new circular section bolt that slid through a central aperture in a beefed-up rear wall. A second mechanical change introduced in the early 1960s was in-house-designed Micro-Groove rifling that used a large number of shallow grooves and claimed to reduce pressures and improve accuracy through gripping the bullet lightly at many points.

Blue-collar

Since its introduction, the 336 action has been used in every centrefire model that chambered anything longer and produced higher pressures than pistol numbers. It briefly performed that role too when the company first adopted the .44 Remington Magnum cartridge in 1963, only to drop it after a year. The 336's action and bolt throw were far longer than needed for the 44's 1.61" COL, and one imagines there were feed problems, hence the short life of this variant and the reintroduction of the short-action Model 1894 in 1969.

The 336 (including its Model 1893 and Model 1936/36 predecessors) was Marlin's primary offering to the American deerhunter throughout the last century. It was produced in scores of versions, barrel lengths, grades, and the occasional special or commemorative model. Most were equipped with pistol-grip sporter stocks. There has always been a budget model in the line-up with plainer wood and finish chambered for .30-30, and, until recently, .35 Remington - blue-collar guns for the working man for whom a rifle is just an expensive tool to get venison into the freezer. In fact, with American deerhunters moving en masse to bolt- action rifles chambering new short high-performance cartridges such as .243 and .308 Winchester, leverguns were very mature products in marketing terms by the 1960s, with both sales volumes and relative prices in decline.

.444 and .45-70

Given the three-quarter century lifespan, the 336 was chambered for relatively few cartridges before the 1960s, common denominators being the .30-30 Winchester (since 1897) and the .35 Remington (since 1905) - effective woodland numbers, but hardly ballistic superstars. Marlin engineers Thomas Robinson and Arthur Burns expanded the design's capabilities by developing a .44 (0.429 to .430" bullet diameter) cartridge, and Remington agreed to manufacture it. This, the .444 Marlin, is a large, powerful number which at 2.57" (65.28mm) COL just fits the 336 action. Hornady's two 265gn loads produce 2,325fps from a 24" barrel - 3,180ft/lb of muzzle energy - and the standard Remy 240gn JSP load only a little less at 3,070ft/lb. With its large calibre blunt bullets, the .444 is a relatively short-range cartridge, but is still effective at 150yd.

Rather than name this model the 336 Big-Bore or suchlike, Marlin decided to call it the 444 in recognition of the cartridge's enhanced capabilities, advertising it as producing a ‘ton and a half of energy'. It moved the 336 into the elk and moose rifle category once the heavily constructed 265gn Hornady bullet was introduced. Its success encouraged Marlin's managers to undertake a riskier venture - reintroducing the .45-70 chambering in standard production sporting rifles in 1972. Again, this used a suitably tweaked 336 action and Micro-Groove barrel, but Marlin resurrected the Model 1895 tag in recognition of growing interest in large-calibre 19th Century firearms and cartridges among American shooters. As such, it was initially a limited production 19th Century lookalike model given a straight English-style buttstock, small forend and simple sights.

Development

The original 444 employed a 24" barrel and a straight-wrist, high comb buttstock with two stock/barrel bands, the front example clamping the magazine tube and barrel together. Its length and stocking didn't find favour with close-cover ‘brush-hunters', and Marlin responded after a few years with the revised 444S (Sporter) model with a 22" barrel and pistol-grip stock, both standard ever since. The Micro-Groove barrel had a slow one turn in 38" twist, Hornady's 265gn JSP the longest bullet that was stabilised. The bands were replaced by a forend nose-cap in 1976, and the next significant update was the adoption of a cross-bolt hammer-block safety in 1984. This change was introduced across the levergun range, the designation of which was changed to 444SS (Sporter, Safety). Apart from minor changes to sling mountings, the 444 has stayed largely unchanged since, apart from being a recipient of another near across the range move - a return to conventional deep-groove (‘Ballard' form) rifling, with the twist rate increased to one turn in 20". These changes allowed the use of heavy (300-350gn) cast-lead bullets. The M1895 underwent the same changes, becoming a near-copy of the 444 externally with the 1895S version of 1980. The only significant visible difference being the 444 having a thick rubber buttplate incorporating a recoil pad.

Safety

With the cross-bolt safety, lever-action Marlins have an apparent surplus of such features. In addition to this device that places a steel bar between the hammer and firing pin, the sear is only freed when the action is in battery. Likewise, a two-piece firing pin only comes into alignment then. There are also two traditional levergun safety measures widely used in the field - manually dropping the hammer to the half-cock position and thumbing it back as the rifle is raised into the shoulder, or carrying the rifle with the lever slightly open, snapping it shut just before the shot is taken. So, the cross-bolt facility seems redundant, but actually provides a vital aid for safe loading and unloading, especially with cold, gloved hands, it being physically impossible for the rifle to fire if the trigger is inadvertently pressed.

XLR and Express

There is still only one 444 Model available 43 years on, but there are currently four base 336 models listed, all in .30-30 only, apart from the 336C which retains .35 Remington as an option. The M1895 version has grown to four models, one (the 1895M) chambered for the .450 Marlin, a heavily uploaded .45-70 with a case-belt to stop it being chambered in old .45-70 guns. New kids on the block are ‘XLR' models: 336s tweaked to optimise use of Hornady's LeverEvolution flex-tip bullet ammunition, the first pointed bullet cartridges that can be used in tubular magazines. Developing this theme, Marlin and Hornady jointly developed the .308 Marlin that gives a 0.308 160gn LeverEvolution bullet 2,513fps MV. It will be available shortly in the 308MX and 308MXLR 336-based rifles. Short (18.5") ported-barrel .45-70 ‘Guide Guns' complement the standard 22" models, and various stainless rifles are available. For a design that first appeared 115 years ago, the 1893/36/336 is going like the proverbial train at the moment.

Reactions

The 444 is my kind of levergun - solid and heavy, with the slick, smooth operation of the 1894 revolver cartridge numbers. The big straight-wall cartridge offers the handloader a lot of flexibility, ranging from mild, subsonic lead or electroplated bullet loads using fast-burning pistol powders (especially the new Vihtavuori and IMR high-bulk products) up to full house jacketed loads at 2,300-2,400fps. What about accuracy? My first 240gn JSP handloads saw five-round 100yd groups drop below the 2" mark as MVs reached 2,000fps - the point where the 444's impressive recoil starts to become noticeable. As with 1894s, the rifle is easily field-stripped by undoing a single setscrew, which gives easy bolt removal and lets the barrel be cleaned from the breech end. My 444SS example dates from sometime between 1988 and the move to Ballard rifling in 2000. Although it's not the most common rifle, there are a few around if you look.