Newer Marlin questions?

by jgt, Sunday, July 28, 2013, 07:12 (4141 days ago) @ woody

Woody, As with anything related to gun manufacturing there are no areas where we can say "this is how it is absolutely". Marlin was sold to the group owning Remington in late 2008 and in 2009 sent newhires to CT to train in the North Haven plant. The ATF gave them a grace period to use North Haven rollmarked barrels and Jm stamps during this time. These guns were built in late 2009 and 2010. After that, the tale tail signs on these transition guns is the serial numbers had a prefix of MR and was stamped on the reciever usually with only six number sometimes followed with an alphabetical letter such as "C", later they used a barrel stamp with the letters REM . The wood to metal fit was sloppy and usually proud of the metal. It was common to find screw head buggered from the factory. It was also common to find sights crooked on the barrel and in extreme cases the barrels threaded crooked in the recievers which showed up as a droup in the barrel.

"Real" Marlins had the serial numbers on the upper rear tang and the first two numbers represented the year of manufacturing. That number subtracted from one hundred would tell you the year. For instance an owe four was built in 1996 but a ninty six was built in 2004. Some real Marlin Limited edition and cowboy models had the Marlin type serial number on the right side of the reciever but were eight number and had the first two number as manufacturing dates as were all the Marlin built guns. This was to accomodate those who wanted to use tang mounted sights that were popular in cowboy action shooting and eleminated the need to drill through the serial number or cover the serial number when installing those sights.

In the transition years some guns were built well and shot well. You just have to look them over and decide if you are willing to live with what is there. Good ones were a bargin because no one wanted to get stuck with some unseen flaw so avoided all Marlins from the period. So the fact that it was manufactured during this time period was a bargining chip. AS I stated earlier, none of this is chiseled in stone, but will help you determine what you are generally looking at.