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1894/89 44-40 Project Build

14K views 98 replies 17 participants last post by  shootrj2003 
#1 ·
A few years back when I was a litter dumber than I am now about Marlins I purchased a old Marlin in 44-40. I wanted a 44-40 just because. Who knows why? I found a 44-40 not too far away so I called to check it out. The gun looked like a model 1889 from the pictures and was described as a working 1889 with a 28 inch barrel with a new stock that needed to be finished.

The gun was about a 50 minute ride from me so I took a little trip to see it first hand. I was a little disappointed with what I saw in person. The stock was nothing more than a hack job. The owner said that a carpenter friend put the new stock on it and was still bare wood. He had told me about the dent in mag tube. The bore looked dirty but not all that bad. I could see rifling. The gun looked plausible for a fixer upper. The owner loaded a round in the mag tube and fired a shot proving that the gun did work. There are no model marking anywhere on the gun. The trigger plate was from an 1889. Everything I saw looked like something that I could repair or fix.

We haggled for a while. I complained about the stock, missing lever lock, dent in the mag tube, and the dirty bore. He offered a box of 44-40 to go along with it. The box had an eye popping $79 dollar price tag on it. We settled on half of what he was asking and I became the proud owner of an old Marlin 44-40 and a very pricey box of 44-40 cartridges.

To make a long story short, the gun was not an 1889. It was an early model 1894 with an 1889 trigger plate. The firing pin, though working, was broken near the tip and had been for quite some time. The break was beat to a smooth finish. The first shots with the rifle seemed OK. I cleaned the barrel and the next trip to the range the bullets were key holing at 25 yards. The barrel was completely shot out. This was the most ill advised purchase I have ever made. This was going to be a heck of project.

3 years later I now have a nice looking and fine shooting 44-40.

Here is what I started with:
Gun Rifle Firearm Trigger Shotgun
Shotgun Revolver
Gun Firearm Trigger Starting pistol Revolver
Shotgun

Tool
Gun Rifle Firearm Shotgun Trigger
Wood
 
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#4 ·
I took the gun apart to clean and inspect it. Folks, it is not an 1889, it is a Frakenmarlin. The first indication was the tang serial number on the side of the tang did not match the trigger plate. The gun was made in 1894 by tang serial number. I spend a bunch of time edumacating myself with older Marlins models. The more I learned the it became obvious that the gun was an early 1894 with 1889 trigger plate (I think).

During the inspection I found that the trigger pin was broken. Now I needed a new stock, new trigger pin, and a trigger plate to match the 1894 that I had. I started looking for a new barrel. Yah right.... 44-40 barrels are made of unobtainuim. So how much is a reline? Redmond offered relines for about $300. Viable, but I want to do this myself. Brownell's has liners and everything I need to do it myself. Or so I thought...

Well, time to start fixing things. First item is the firing pin. In playing around with the gun it became obvious that that this thing could fire out of battery. No trigger block and a single piece firing pin. I bought a two piece firing pin to put into it. Here is the two piece side by side with the broken one piece. The retaining pin needs to be moved in the bolt for the two piece pin to work.

Pen Office supplies


Wall


I drilled a new hole (red) the proper location to match the new firing pin. The original hole is marked by the blue arrow.

I assembled the gun and tested it out. It still fires! Ok, we got one problem fixed and gun is a little safer.
 
#6 ·
Take a close look at the original firing pin. That thing has been pounded to oblivion. The hammer has the matching dent as well. I would love to know the entire history of this gun.
 
#7 · (Edited)
Next up, fix the mag tube. This gun has the 28 inch barrel. My sympathies to any of you who attempt to repair one. I looked everywhere to find a mag tube to replace that one. The longest that I could find was 26 inches, and that was not ready made but was a u-fit. The Redmond barrel liners from Brownelle's were also 26 inches long. I tried a couple of times to save the original mag tube. It is basically a folded sheet with a seam on the top. Maybe with about 20 hours of work and making a special mandrel it could be done. All of my attempts lead to the crack opening up and wrinkling. I abandoned that effort. Looks as though this gun is going to end up being a little shorter. I bought the barrel liner, finishing chamber reamer, step drill, and mag tube stock. The original mag tube spring was toast. At least you can get a mag tube spring long enough for the 28 inch barrel.

I wanted to fix the mag tube and keep the gun in working order so opted to make at new tube and add an extension that could be removed later on. Drilling the holes for front mag tube mount was not hard. I made a removable extension for the tube to gain the extra two inches needed. The extension sits under the fore end so it will not be visible.

I cut the requisite piece of tube from the stock and a shorter joiner. I slit the joiner and silver soldered it to the extension. The new mag tube friction fit nicely.

Product Cylinder Auto part
Metal
Revolver


The fore end wood needed to be relieved slightly for the joiner. I installed the new mag tube and spring and cleaned up the follower. So far, so good.
 
#8 · (Edited)
Now I turned my attention to the trigger plate and wood. I found a used trigger plate on eBay for $30 and found a rough stock for a decent price - $25 if I remember right.

I transferred the trigger, trigger spring, and hammer spring to the new trigger plate and began fitting the new stock.

I began by fitting the butt plate to the stock

Working the end grain on the stock is not easy as one might think. The in-letting process is tedious, but enjoyable. I had to force myself to quit and start up later to keep from becoming sloppy or making a mistake. I can see why the "carpenter" did his final fitting of the butt plate using plastic wood! I wish I had taken a picture of that as it was good for a laugh when I pulled the but plate off.

Next the stock was inletted to the receiver and new trigger plate.
 

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#9 · (Edited)
Inletting the stock.
 

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#10 · (Edited)
Shaping the stock and blending it in to tang and butt plate.
 

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#12 · (Edited)
I found the matching fore end to the stock on line just a few hours too late. I ended up refinishing the original fore end. I used many coats of True Oil for the finishing over natural wood. I found it tough to try to match 130 year old wood to new stock. The work took quite a while. I made hooks to hang the parts on to dry between coats. The stock did fall onto the concrete and dented wood under the butt plate. Ugh... I ended up refitting the butt plate. I would post the pics but I seemed to have lost some of the pictures during the refinishing of the fore end and stock as my android phone died.

The finished stock and fore end. Some of the pictures are under natural light and some under fluorescent. Hence the color differences.
 

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#13 · (Edited)
more of the stock and of the finished fore end....
 

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#19 · (Edited)
Here are few pictures with the new firing pin, mag tube, and new/redone furniture. The butt plate and fore end cap have had a quickie True Blue done to them.

Yellow Hardwood Table Wood Floor
Tree Trunk Woody plant Forest Plant


Tree Leaf Plant Autumn Deciduous
 
#23 ·
Here are few pictures with the new firing pin, mag tube, and new/redone furniture. The butt plate and fore end cap have had a quickie True Blue done to them.

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This is how the gun sat for about a year and a half while i contemplated the barrel relining. The Redmond barrel liner was very nice. It is forged of Chrome Molly and looks glassy smooth and sweet as all git out inside. There was only one slight problem though. The chamber cutter's pilot did not fit in bore of the liner. What the heck!? Why would it be bigger? As it turns out 44-40 dimensions are all over the place in the history of the round. You can buy a chamber reamer with removable pilots for quite a bit more. Pacific Tool and Gage makes the one that I bought from Brownell's. You can rent them too. I am thinking that may have been a better option, but, if you break it or chip a tooth you buy it.

View attachment 793873

Looks like I need to find a way to grind the pilot to the correct size.

The second problem to solve is with the step drill. The stepped portion is slightly smaller than the diameter of my barrel. That does not bode well for a precision drilling job. Everything that I read about re-lining a barrel implied that this can be done with a half inch drill and some cutting fluid. With what I had on hand this was not happening. I conjured up making a rig to hold the barrel perpendicular under the drill press. I could do it once, but I also had to add an extension to the drill to drill the 20 something inches.

I also need to find a way to add an extension to the step drill and be able to use it. The pictures shows the stepped portion with the pilot shim that I had to make for it. More on that later.
Excellent work!

The attachments in the posts above aren't opening for me. But I had no troubles with the previous attachments.

I wonder if you can find a tool maker you might be able to have the chamber reamer pilot ground to fit. :dontknow: Same with the step drill - can you find another drill bit and have the step and cutting point reground? Yeah, sounds $$$
 
#22 · (Edited)
This is how the gun sat for about a year and a half while i contemplated the barrel relining. The Redmond barrel liner was very nice. It is forged of Chrome Molly and looks glassy smooth and sweet as all git out inside. There was only one slight problem though. The chamber cutter's pilot did not fit in bore of the liner. What the heck!? Why would it be bigger? As it turns out 44-40 dimensions are all over the place in the history of the round. You can buy a chamber reamer with removable pilots for quite a bit more. Pacific Tool and Gage makes the one that I bought from Brownell's. You can rent them too. I am thinking that may have been a better option, but, if you break it or chip a tooth you buy it.

Tool accessory


Looks like I need to find a way to grind the pilot to the correct size.

The second problem to solve is with the step drill. The stepped portion is slightly smaller than the diameter of my barrel. That does not bode well for a precision drilling job. Everything that I read about re-lining a barrel implied that this can be done with a half inch drill and some cutting fluid. With what I had on hand this was not happening. I conjured up making a rig to hold the barrel perpendicular under the drill press. I could do it once, but I also had to add an extension to the drill to drill the 20 something inches.

I also need to find a way to add an extension to the step drill and be able to use it. The pictures shows the stepped portion with the pilot shim that I had to make for it. More on that later.
 
#25 ·
This place is full of enablers right? First buy a gun, follow it with several others. Start reloading. Now create you own custom projects. Well folks, there is none greater than Kingstrider. His project threads got the better of me.

I always had access to a lathe growing up. My grandfather was an electrician by trade. He had lathe and milling machine in his basement. He made steam engines from scratch - including making the casting molds. I made my own bench vise from castings in shop class. Am I a machinist? No, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn last night.

I found a old Southbend 9a for a reasonable price. Not too big, but big enough that I should be able to complete this and other various projects. I would have preferred a bigger Heavy 10 but it was just too big and too costly. Folks, it is a ball of monkeys getting a 600 lb lathe into the basement. I did it, and by myself. :)

Now I have the lathe with a 3 jaw chuck and some basic tooling. I have my grandfathers Starrett Last Word indicator and another dial indicator. Time to learn how to machine all over again. And yah, you want to machine? You have to hold on to stuff and measure stuff and ..... I spent what I spent for the late in tool holders, tools, a 4 used 4 jaw chuck, a set of ER32 collet chucks, some old but good micrometers and depth gages. My grandfather always said the machines are cheap, the tooling is expensive. He was right.

So lets tackle the barrel re-lining. I admit it is a little intimidating - especially the part about cutting a new chamber. Who am I kidding? It is darn right scary!

I spent many hours watching you-tubers This Old Tony and Tubal Cain honing my machining skills. I also spent some time watching Jim Green, the Down East Gunsmith videos. I completed several projects before I gained the confidence to continue.

With that diatribe complete, hold my beer and watch this!:beerglass:
 
#26 ·
I do not know what the heck is going on with the attachments today. Sometimes things work well, then other times when I submit the page I can see the images. After I go back I can follow the links to the images. Mods, any idea?
 
#27 · (Edited)
First things first. I needed to precision grind the pilot of the chamber reamer to match the id of the liner bore. I have a Dremel and my grandfathers old die grinder. I decided to try the Dremel first. The Dremel does not have a standard thread on it. That would be too easy. I needed to make a tool holder with the matching Dremel thread. Others have done it on line. You start with a 3/4 inch nut and the id to match the thread minor diameter. Next you cut inside threads to match the pitch of the Dremel.

The Dremel thread is "wacky size" at 3/4 x 16 tpi or M19 x 2 is and I do have a tap for those threads. Cutting inside threads is just like cutting out side threads right? First thing that you need is a cutting tool that can fit inside id of the nut. My first try failed. It turns out that you need to have the compound slide set at -29 degrees versus 29 degrees for external threads. I got it done on the second try. I brazed the nut to a piece square stock that I turned down in the 4 jaw chuck.

Product Room Table Linens Furniture


Nut Tool Screw Clamp Household hardware
 
#28 · (Edited)
Next mount the Dremel on the lathe and the reamer in the collet chuck. The Dremel is actually pretty flimsy so we need to go slow and take small passes until the pilot fit inside of the liner.

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#29 · (Edited)
Now to machine the step drill so that an extension can be added and removed. I was hoping that I could drill the end of the drill and mate a smaller diameter drill rod in the hole. Nope! The end of the drill was just as hard of the rest. I have the Dremel grinder all set up so I ground the end of the drill to match the diameter of the drill rod and turned an adapter to mate the two. The OD of the adapter was smaller than the OD of the step drill to prevent issues drilling deep in the bore. The adapter was silver soldered to the drill rod when required to produce a 24 inch drill with very little run out.

View attachment 793903

I machined a pilot for the drill to match the ID of the existing barrel. This will help keep the drill concentric at the start and during the drilling operation. The pilot was press fit on the step drill and then ground concentric to the drill using the Dremel grinder in the lathe.

View attachment 793905
 

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