This is a double post from the lever gun forum but I need some info.I am not a lever gun expert. I inherited this one and wanted to have it tuned up and rechambered. I the Marlin 336 rechambered to .30-30 Improved, an action job done, and the trigger was supposed to be cleaned up to offer as light and crisp a break as possible with a requested weight of no more than 4-4.5lbs. The gun was also re-blued because it has quite a bit of surface rust and some light pitting on the receiver from where it had not been maintained before I go t it. It has taken over a year to get this thing back and I just opened it up and took a look at it.

It appears that the chamber was cut after the metal was re-blued, chamfered after bluing for certain, and there is light rust in the chamber and the top of the barrel "extension" for lack of better words. It appears to have rust leaching from the threads also.
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I have cleaned as much of it as possible from the action as possible but have concerns about long term serviceability.

It feeds ok as far as I can tell given the two cast lead dummies he provided and I just sized and loaded the empty case he sent with a Hornady FTX and it seems to feed fine as well. The cases come out scratched to hell though. It doesn't want to eject empty cases unless I run the gun hard. Two questions about these cases:
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1. In the top picture of the cases, why does the groove above the rim disappear when I resize the cases? Is the brass thin and soft or is the chamber oversized and is the cases being over-worked at the web?

2. What causes these dents just below the shoulder? They were on every case he sent.

The trigger is inconsistent. It will break with no creep about 60% of the time and about 40% of the time it has somewhere between a little and lot of creep. I primarily shoot bolt action and AR guns with good triggers. What is a realistic expectation for a lever gun trigger?

I want to gather some information here before I go back to the smith with my complaints.