Custom Marlin Chambering Conversions

These are one-of-a-kind custom rifles, built to customer specifications, with regard to length-of-pull, barrel-length, total-weight, chambering (within the range of feasible options), sights, and other options.

I neither compete nor attempt to compete with any other manufacturer or custom gun shop. What I offer requires vastly more precision handwork than is typical when building any custom bolt-action rifle. My goals are to create a smooth-working, dependable rifle that is as good as it can be. My custom chambering options cover a wide gamut, allowing maximum Marlin performance, in either the 1894 or the 1895 action but useful possibilities exist with the 450 Marlin action (I am open to considering the exploration of versions of the modified 300 Remington UltraMag case, in calibers from 35 to 45.).

All such guns will include
the following alterations

  1. Action tuning;
  2. Trigger adjustment, to customer specification
    (usually, let-off down to about 2# is feasible — I strive for crispness);
  3. Throughbolt installation;
  4. Custom recoil pad installation with keying, to lock pad position on buttstock;
  5. Length-of-pull adjustment;
  6. Hand-rubbed Tung Oil stock finishing;
  7. Stock bedding (glass on buttstock, RTV silicone on foreend);
  8. Round, match-grade barrel of any length — from 16-inches to 32-inches;
  9. Magazine tube of any length, from front of foreend to end of barrel;
  10. On super carbines, shortened foreend length, to improve appearance; and
  11. Robar metal finishing (NP3 on all action parts, barrel exterior, and all other metal parts of gun, except sights, which are finished with RoGuard; optionally, NP3 on all action parts and RoGuard on remainder of metal parts.

Optional alterations and fittings
For general pricing refer to order form:

  1. Conversion to wildcat or commercial chambering (review associated article, What is Possible with a Marlin);
  2. Custom Loading Die sets, when required, extra cost;
  3. Addition of one or two mercury tubes in buttstock — to maintain proper balance, in guns fitted with unusually long or unusually heavy barrels; and to mitigate recoil, in guns that generate unusually heavy recoil, extra cost;
  4. XS Sights Ghost-Ring Aperture sights;
  5. XS Scout Scope Base and intermediate-eye-relief scope, extra cost;
  6. Brownells Twilight Aperture set, with threaded holes along heel of buttstock for on-the-gun storage of unused apertures, extra cost;
  7. Muzzle porting or muzzle brake, extra cost;
  8. With customer verification in writing, elimination of cross-bolt safety (a feature that is certain to eventually kill some unlucky hunter, as it can become set, without the hunter knowing — when that enraged bear charges, it will be too late as the gun goes click, instead of boom!), $50;
  9. Sling swivel studs (when supplied gun is not so equipped),  $50;
  10. Elimination of stock-checkering, to mimic thinner profile of Winchester stocks, $150;
  11. Other options that are feasible are open to discussion, within reason — cost plus labor, at shop rate.


All such work requires a customer-supplied gun of the proper type (gun must have been made after 1975).