I have been looking for a Marlin 39 Mountie for about 10 years. I scored a full-length 39A about 7 years ago, and it’s been a good rifle but didn’t quite scratch the itch. I’m a sucker for a straight-stocked carbine. A couple of weeks ago on my day off my son and I stopped by the LGS and while I was perusing the handgun counter, he was looking at the long gun rack. He saw this and immediately grabbed me. It was rough…lots of finish wear and pitting, broken front sight, cracked stock, and some unforeseen mechanical issues, but the price was right so it came home with me.












I stopped at my buddy’s house on the way home from the range to shoot it, and within the first mag it locked up. Turns out the hammer screw was loose and the trigger was binding against the lever. I got that corrected, but it was still ugly. I’ve rust blued a few guns in the past with reasonable success, but I didn’t have a container long enough to do a barreled rifle action. The brownells ones are insanely expensive for what they are, but I found a welded aluminum tool tray on Amazon that looked like it would do the job.



48 hours in an evaporust bath, a few hours of sanding and metal prep, another 24 hours in acetone, and then pretty much a full day of coating and boiling parts, followed by another 12 hours in an oil bath to stop the rust. I also cleaned up the wood furniture a bit and added a few coats of BLO. It’s not perfect, but it’s a far cry from what it was!







I took it out today and had another issue. It wasn’t feeding consistently. The shell latch is working properly, but the lifter isn’t consistently dropping all the way. When I got home I took the full-size 39A apart and checked the lifter/lever engagement. On the full-size gun the “roller” contacts the lever extension all the way through the return stroke all the way down to the receiver. On the Mountie it doesn’t do this, so if you throw the lever hard enough there’s enough momentum to drop the lifter, but sometimes it won’t go down far enough to pick up a shell from the magazine. I’m not sure if something was out of spec with this gun from the beginning, or if the lever got bent at some point. Unfortunately, parts for this thing aren’t easy to come by, so I’m not in a hurry to go modifying major bits. I made a shim to increase the diameter of the roller and keep it in contact with the lever through the entire (or at least more of the) return stroke. It seems to be working well in dry fire. If it works on the range I’ll make one to more precise tolerances and tig weld it on there. If anybody here has any experience tuning these things and has any ideas, I’d welcome your input!

Congrats on your find and buy!! They are a fantastic rifle. I have had my Mountie since the 50s and would never consider letting go of it. It brought home a lot of squirrels and rabbits when I was much younger. You are doing a very good job of bringing the old girl back to her former glory!! They make good guns for family "hand downs".

That is going to be very satisfying when you get that first flawless tube of ammo through it.

I took it to the range this afternoon and put 60 flawless rounds through it with zero failures to feed, so the washer mod did the trick. I brought it home and had my son practice together welding a few of these little washers to some screws. After watching him melt a handful of them I decided not to turn him lose on discontinued Marlin parts that are next to impossible to find. I went the JB Weld route...not as robust, but less permanent.

I also fashioned a replacement stock ear out of a piece of walnut. We'll see if that holds...I may have to drill and pin it. I'm working the next two days so that will give everything time to cure before I reassemble and go try it again.

That turned out very nice! Congratulations!

Wow! You turned that into a sweet shooter!
Good job & congratulations on getting one of your grail guns on your terms!

Yeah, definitely a nice addition to your collection and some good work bringing it back to a functional shooter.

I got it out to the range again yesterday, and even though it was freezing out (about 9 degrees) and I was wearing gloves, it ran great! A couple of failure to fires, which very well could have been the ammo as the primer impacts looked pretty solid. Feeding was 100%, though, and my stock repair held up fine.

Loading tiny .22 shells in super cold weather kinda sucks. I got though about 75 rounds before I'd had enough. It's supposed to warm up some this week...hopefully I can get out and shoot it some more.

Yours is also a "Golden" Mountie. I see just a hint of gold color on your trigger.

I have the rifle in the "Golden" version. Amazing how accurate they are.

PC

quote:

Originally posted by PCWyoming:
Yours is also a "Golden" Mountie. I see just a hint of gold color on your trigger.

I have the rifle in the "Golden" version. Amazing how accurate they are.

PC

Yeah, the gold was mostly gone from the trigger when I got it, but even with evaporust and pretty aggressive sanding I couldn't get all of the rest off. I ultimately decided to just leave it and blue the rest to prevent rust. I've never been a big fan of the gold bling anyway...just wish I could have gotten it all off for a more even finish.

This gun must have gotten a lot of trigger time in the past to wear it off like that, especially considering how hard it was for me to get it off when I was intentionally trying to do it!

92, you might make your tuning request over on the RC site. There are some real Marlin 39 experts over there who will likely help you. There is a Marlin specific area there. That's the place to go for anything .22 related. Good luck with it and you did a nice job on the refinish.