Alphecca

Not sure, but it sounds like the square end of a wad cutter may occasionally catch in the mouth of the chamber, where a semi wad cutter or round nose would funnel itself into the chamber.

Give it a try, It might do to have some rounds made up without powder and using fired primers, so that you don't have anything going bang or spilling powder everywhere...

keep a sturdy cleaning rod handy incase anything gets stuck and you need to tap it out.

Then give that leaver all sorts of slow & gentle and fast n rough treatment, muzzle down, muzzle up and all ways side to side too...

I'm not sure what accuracy will be like with a flush seated lead WC, cos that's quite a jump it has before it hits the rifling, but then lever guns are for usin & havin fun with, and none of us shoots less than 4" at 100 yards off hand...

I can't imagine why an "underpowered" Cowboy load would be an issue in a lever gun, unless it's so underpowered that the bullet doesn't make it out of the barrel. Or maybe if there's not enough pressure to expand the brass to seal the chamber. Otherwise it makes no sense to me at all.

Keith's right about wad cutters. You need some kind of bevel in front to feed correctly. As for cartridge length, it looks like some can be too long in overall length (case length alone is almost certainly irrelevant) to feed properly. I suspect this is an issue only with handloads, but it's certainly possible that some factory .357s are too long.

Marlin Owners is a great site for all your Marlin questions.

My 1894 C is an awesome gun as well. marlin's love the heavier bullets with the .357's it seems. I would try 158 - 180 gr hollow/flat nose/round nose bullets. I hadload my 357 rounds, and I can get 1" @50 yds if I do my part with iron sights.

Length is indeed an issue but it is as much an issue of too short as too long - a full wadcutter in a .38 S&W special case is short and lacks a guide into the chamber so it may go astray from tubular magazine to chamber - compare the length of the .38 case with other cartridges the 336 action was designed around. Remember the need to carefully clean the chamber when short cases (.38) are used in a longer (.357) chamber. That's one reason many load light in a full length case.

If you remove the magazine plug, spring, and spring guide, you can compress the spring to see how much the guide can be shortened. This will allow a few more rounds to be loaded; I think mine will accept 12 .357-length cartridges.

My loads are 158gr. LSWC bullets over 3.0 gr. of BullsEye, quite a light charge. I wouldn't be afraid to go lighter, if I felt the need.

Accuracy can vary, depending on bullets. I had some machine-cast bullets that grouped about 10" at 50 yards. A Club Member's home-cast bullets will do 2" or 3" at 50 yards, without trying to work up any special load. Mine is for CAS use, so I don't much care about utmost accuracy.

I also drilled & tapped the tang for a Marble's sight. It's nice, but I decided to not use it for Cowboy shooting, so removed it.

Love the Marlin!!

Sweet gun! I"ve been drooling on them too.

I've run afoul of the cartridge length problem and believe me, you do not want to load a too long cartridge in a lever gun! It will hang up on the mouth of the magazine tube jamming the cartridge lifter. Getting the overly long round out of the gun will involve disassembling the magazine tube, or backing the offending cartridge out the loading port. Either way an enormous pain.

Feeding blunt rounds like wadcutters can be eased considerably by a bit of stoning of the chamber mouth. It doesn't take much, just break the sharp edge and knock down any burrs so they don't grab the nose of the bullet. I've found this also helps feeding of semi-wadcutters and flat-nosed bullets like the LBTs.

Finally, the .38 Special and .357 mag are the world's greatest arguments for reloading. The brass is cheap and, at least in .38 Special, lasts forever. With 7000 grains in a pound of powder you can get 2300+ rounds out of a single can of Bullseye using 3 grains per pop. The Marlins I've got all love cast bullets and they're cheap too. Best of all, it gives you something to do when it's too dark to shoot!

I feed my 1894C a steady diet of whatever commercial .357 158-gr JSP happens to be cheapest (American Eagle, S&B, Remington, you name it) and never have problems with it. I also have shot some .38 FMJ round-nose (the manual doesn't warn against it or anything) with no problems--did the Marlin rep say whyFMJ RN was a problem?

I don't think the Marlin rep had a problem with FMJ in .38 -- not powerful enough to start a chain detonation -- but was warning about FMJ in 357. Too hard a point that could start one. I guess the regular lead round nose has enough "give" to cushion the recoil.