My new .22

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PostPosted: Fri May 31, 2013 8:39 pm
Here you go guys. It's a Marlin model 80E, first variation action and a second variation stock placing this one from either 1935 or 1936. She has a bit of wear on the outside but the bore is PERFECT and she's a tack driver sho' 'nuff. It has a detachable mag, and shoots shorts, longs, and long rifles all from the same mag. She feeds perfect too.

The best part is she cost $110 out the door at the lgs. If you run up on an old model 80 or the tube fed version, the model 81 pick it up, you'll like it. Especially if you ind one of these old E models with the military style finger grooves and steel butt plate.

Here are the pics before I cleaned it up. The old stock fairly shines now. It is drilled and tapped for an old Marlin 12R peep sight too. Now I need to get my hands on one of them!

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.270 WIN
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 01, 2013 7:10 pm
Nice little rifle, Col! I always liked the .22's from that era. Some years ago I stumbled across an early Winchester 69A target. My brother liked it so much he had me pick him up a later 69A sporter he found in my area in the paper. They both shoot better than our aging eyes can sight them.

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PostPosted: Sun Jun 02, 2013 3:01 pm
Thanks krag. Those Winchester 69's are fine rifles! I don't know what it is, but just about all .22's that I know of from that era are shooters. The Remingtons, Marlins, later the Mossbergs, and Winchesters, all of them were fine shooters. It was a different era for sure.

The thing about this one that makes me wish I knew its story, is that all the rifles around here that you run up on from the depression era were single shots. We're poor folk here! But this is a magazine rifle! It had to be some fellers prized possession. I'm proud to own it.

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PostPosted: Mon Jun 03, 2013 3:54 am
When I bought my 69A I rushed it right off to the range with a carton of PMC Side Winder ammo the fellow generously through in with the rifle. With the Lyman receiver sight it shot some impressive groups, and still does. My brother's sporter model shoots just as well.

I don't think you can beat the pre war guns for down right honest quality.
PostPosted: Mon Jun 03, 2013 2:53 pm
Very nice Colonel...!!

I own a Marlin Model 80C...no serial number ( pre GCA 1968 )...bolt action chambered in .22 short.long, and long rifle feed from a 7 round "clip".

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PostPosted: Mon Jun 03, 2013 10:44 pm
Shooter it looks like mine only newer. The model 80 and the model 81 both have real reputations for accuracy. I'm sure yours is a good one too.
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 04, 2013 8:12 am
If you can get the peep site, do it. I had a cousin who had a Remington Sportmaster with a peep site and if you could see it inside that site, you could hit it. That marlin has to be exactly the same. What a fun gun to shoot!
--Jim
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 04, 2013 8:19 am
krag96 wrote:I don't think you can beat the pre war guns for down right honest quality.



There is a very good reason for that. Those rifles were working guns. In other words, they literally put food on the table. They were still make to a price point but there is very little ornamentation on them. Everything is pure functionality and if it didn't make the gun accurate as it could be, or easy to shoot and maintain, they didn't put it on. So all of the effort when into the accuracy and usability. Very few .22's back then had checkering. Now almost none of them do not.
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 05, 2013 4:38 am
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There's my Winchester 69A Target model with Lyman receiver sight. From what the guy I bought it said his dad bought it new in 1940 or 1941, post depression-pre war. It shoots as well as I'll ever need a .22 to shoot.

When I was a kid, a cousin had one of those Marlin .22's. I don't remember how it was on paper, (I don't think we ever used it on actual printed targets) but it took quite a few groundhogs up close. I used a Mossberg Model 42B that the safety didn't work all the time, had to carry it with the bolt open, I always admired his Marlin.
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 06, 2013 4:14 am
That winchester is very nice. I know somebody who shoot 200 yard targets with that same gun. It is as accurate as some of those high dollar modern models.
--Jim

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PostPosted: Thu Jun 06, 2013 2:08 pm
ravengunsmith wrote:That winchester is very nice. I know somebody who shoot 200 yard targets with that same gun. It is as accurate as some of those high dollar modern models.


Good old carefully cut rifling in those old .22s will still do some amazing shooting! Col, I'll bet that Marlin of yours will turn some heads with the targets it'll shoot! Gib and Gary Gault, (former builders of 1000yd match rifles in my area) always said, "Shoot at least ten rds. of .22 ammo to condition the bore when choosing what works best in your rifle." They said it had to do with the lube on the bullets coating the bore. I know they never cleaned the bores in their .22 match rifles unless they were going to store them for a while either.

Jim, I haven't had the opportunity to shoot my 69A at more than 50yds, (yet) but I had a Remington 513 heavy target .22 I used to love shooting at 300! It had a big old Unertal 16X scope on it and it was a real hoot at long range!

I still have the Mossberg 42B and it shoots as well as it ever did despite being over 70 years old. It out shoots every other .22 I have except the Winchester.

They made em right back then! I wish Ithaca would make a quality .22 repeater in Upper Sandusky!
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 07, 2013 4:16 am
I believe it. Those old Remingtons were great, too. LIke I said, they had to be, people literally depended their lives on them and the factories knew it.

I tell you, if anyone could build a super accurate .22 repeater, it would be those guys. Right now it is all they can do to get 37s out the door, but they could make a great .22
--Jim

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PostPosted: Fri Jun 07, 2013 10:26 am
Y'all are right. When it came to accuracy all the old manufacturers seemed to turn out good shooting rifles. Just as Jim said, folks around here had to have a good .22. When the smoke house was empty of hog meat, and the root cellar was getting low, you got by on squirrels and rabbits, even ground hogs and opossums. If you wanted to eat you had to have a rifle that would shoot, and be cheap enough you could afford it.

That's why most of the old ones here are single shoots I reckon. Most of them plain too. But their beauty is in the way they shoot. This old Marlin is only limited by one fault, the nut behind the butt!

Still I'd love to have one of those 69A's. I hear they are scary accurate.
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 08, 2013 11:15 am
Pretty wood is nice, but it won't put a lick of food on the table. WInchester and Remington both knew this and put out great rifles at every price point. My family needed good .22's to keep the varmints out of the fields. They could eat you out of your entire harvest, so accuracy equaled survival.

Col, you have no idea how hood they are until you shoot one. A friend of mine shoots 200 yard matches with a winchester 52 and he beats guys with really high dollar rifles. 69's are just as good. I had the chance to get one a few years ago complete with the Lyman sights and I turned it down. Boy am I sorry now.
--Jim

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PostPosted: Sat Jun 08, 2013 2:55 pm
Fellows, I remember reading an article in Shooting Times back in the 70's where Skeeter Skelton put the question to a good friend of his, I think it was Dobe Grant. "If you could only have one gun...". They mauled the question around for a while over some whiskey by the fire, continued it over a meal, then into the next day. Dobe went about some chores on the ranch while Skeeter wrote some notes. There was a shot or two heard and soon one or more jack rabbits appeared for cleaning and the pot. Dobe turned to him and said, "A .22. A .22 rifle." then lay a Winchester Model 62 on the kitchen table, end of discussion.

I own more guns than any one man needs, mostly center fire rifles, and some damn good ones, but if things got to the point where I would have to depend on any one gun to eat with, it would be a .22 rifle.

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PostPosted: Sun Jun 09, 2013 2:54 pm
Colonel26 wrote:Still I'd love to have one of those 69A's. I hear they are scary accurate.



While my 69A is a very accurate rifle, I consider the true beauty of it is, it's a sporter weight rifle. It shoots as well on average as the Winchester M75 heavy match rifle I had, and the two Remington 513 heavy match rifles I once owned. I was ready to buy a Winchester M 52C once until I lifted it. At 14+ pounds it wasn't something you wanted to go very far with! I don't match shoot anymore, and to convert that '52 C heavy match rifle to a sporter weight rifle would be a crime against all humanity! As I grow older, I appreciate lighter weight accurate rifles.

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PostPosted: Sat Jun 15, 2013 7:29 pm
Guys I agree completely about the one gun thing, and the varmints.

I've been terrorizing the black birds with Ithaca shotguns and this Marlin. She'll sure shoot!

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