put a scope on my 45-70. i've bore sited plenty of bolt actions but never a lever, how do i go about it?

Laser attached to barrel

Collimater or one of those in the bore lasers. Otherwise just start at 25 yds and track it.

figured i'd have to buy one, was hoping there might be a easy to do it without the laser. do the multi caliber lasers work well or should i buy specific to the caliber?

I'd start at 25 yards and take the time to get it right on the x at that distance. Should put you a tad high at 100 and ready to go hunting.

Roger you can get by with any cheap laser pointer taped to the barrel
Site at 25 yds and you will be close enough and on paper

I'd just set it in bags, squeeze one off at 25 or so, dial the scopes xhairs until they are on the bullet hole and go from there.

If it is a Marlin, Roger, do not, repeat, do not take a flathead screwdriver to the lever pivot screw and remove said.

Do not pull out the lever and sliding block dohickey, and then do not pull out the slide -

because you will most likely lose the ejector.

Ask me how I know...

It really is to much of a pain.

I second what Caribojack said.

Try one shot at 25 first to see if it is pointed at the moon or something. If its not too far off and within the scopes limits (without mount adjustment) you can track the scope down to the bullet strike then fire again. I can usually get close enough with this method within three shots to start shooting at 100 yards I know nearly nothing about the lasers but would probably trust them over some of the cheaper collimators.

A small mirror that will let you look down the bore with the action open will work.

Take the bolt out and bore sight it.




Travis

Do this. Just shoot it at 25 yds, multiply the correction by 4 and adjust the scope. You should be on paper at 100 yds.

I never understood why people get so worked up over bore sighting a rifle, you can accomplish the same thing with one shot.

I've never needed any gadgets to get that job done. Just starting close enough you can see where it's hitting and working from there has always worked for me.

This. Sometimes I believe folks have a tendency to overthink things.

Open the action,
Remove the screw that is the lever pivot, remove the lever out the bottom and the bolt out the rear,roll the rifle to the right and the ejector will fall out.
The first time you do it you can lay the rifle on a bath towel so you don't drop/lose the ejector.

The ejector lays in a groove inside the left side of the receiver, put it in place and the bolt captures it.

How are you liking your 45-70??

i

The Easy Button can be difficult for some folks.

just going to shoot at 25 tomorrow and go from there.

If you will center the internal scope adjustment both vertically and horizontally, you will be on a piece of typing paper at 25 yards, I promise.

I have done many Marlin disassembles with no problem. Still, a laser, collimeter, or 25 yard initial is the way to go. On the latter I would use 3 shot groups and center point of said group, then repeat at 100 for fine tune.

thanks for the video, pulled the bolt and used my neighbors door knob which is just under a 100 yds away. i bore sight all my guns on his door knob and their usually only off by a couple inches at a hundred. that was pretty simple.

i like it but haven't shot it much. the skinner peep on it was shooting 18" high at a hundred and i had it bottomed out.

What loads are you shooting?

I agree with starting at 25 yards, but to assume you'll be good enough out to 100 yards without actually shooting it out there, will lead to a miss or a bad hit. Alyways, always, always finish it up from at least 50 or 100 yards.

i was shooting winchester 405s, with leverlution 320s it was still about 8 inches high at a 100. ordered a taller front site from skinner but thought what the hell i had a vari x 3 2.5x8 so i mounted it on there today. probably better with my eye site.

I worked at a rifle range for over 10 years and we had the Bushnell arbor-mounted collimators. Those can be off. We had all our well calibrated and never had issues, but it can happen with them. I won Penguin's Pick 'em challenge a few years ago and he gave me a $50.00 gift card for Sportsman's Guide. I bought a Swift collimator, and luckily it's on center and has worked just fine.

still haven't got my reloading stuff set back up. maybe in the next couple of weeks. i ordered a couple hundred 350 gr pile drivers to load.

I was shooting Hornady 350's over 50 grs of RL-7 that ran right at 1800 fps IIRC.

I agree, never expected someone not to shoot at 100 yards. And also 50 yards, if he really wants to see where it's shooting. 45-70 has a vew different loads and some can really have a rainbow trajectory. One of the best loads (if you can find them) is the old Winchester 300 Grain Noslers. Shoot a little flatter. 405's are pretty rainbow. Buffalo Bore 430 LBT's are quicker but still rainbow, but hit like a sledge hammer.

Yer neighbor might get pizzed if he sees you aiming a rifle at his knob.

Mike

I have the Bushnell also and it is off, but I know where to set my sight on the grid with it. All of my scopes set at 2 up and 1 right gets me pretty close to bullseye at 25 yards.

When I did my Marlin I was just gonna pull the bolt and do it the old fashioned, tried and true way. But I hadn't used my el-cheapo BSA collimator in a while so I gave it a whirl just to check it and it was still right on. I've lost track of how many times I've used it and its always been on the money for me. Of course; now that I've praised it then it will probably fall apart next time it gets used.

To reiterate/expand on a previously posted point: IF you know the rifle
/load is accurate, and IF you don't screw up the shot somehow, this works fine. But me being me, I prefer taking 3 shot groups, finding the center-point of each group, and adjusting the scope hairs using that center-point mark at both 25 and 100 yards. And sometimes at other ranges, especially longer ones. I concur that 50 yards is good check for a "rainbow" gun. A point in case below.

I once used a Win 1200 smoothbore with single front bead on a moose hunt, that being all I had available at a remotefish-counting site. I had it and 00Buck for bear medicine, but didn't deem that suitable for a moose. I bought out the little Bush store's (15 miles downstream) stock of slugs on a produce run- all 10 rounds of them. Used a 10-15 foot high, 6-8 inch diameter flood-washed spruce bole with root-wad for a target. Stood that thing up on it's root-wad, fired one round each at 25,50,75,100, 150 yards, nailing the trunk each time.

IIRC (from 1981) there was about 5 feet elevation difference from 25 to 150, with anything out to 75 yards being minute-of-moose/hold on hair. But I was confident I could kill any moose out to 150 yards with the right shot presentation, as I now knew the elevation holds.

Took the other 5 slugs hunting the next day, using one to down a running yearling (15 mo) old fork-horn at about 35 yards. (just swing thru from behind!!! ) I'd been scouting him, a 50 inch, and one about 65 for several weeks - he just happened to be the first one along, and big enough to feed the wife and I for a year. Heckuva lot easier to handle too.

That shotgun is under my bed here right now, and I may even have one or more of those original slugs in the home stash on the Kenai, along with several other better/worse shotguns...

I don't have any close neighbors but I'm gonna have to get me a brass door knob to hang on the fence....grin

Dang it Roger I've got one of those in a thutty-thutty and a mount on the shop wall. Should drag it out! All I need is a scope and most likely have a suitable one of those..Serial # says it is a 1960 model.

Looks awfully far back, but maybe it's the camera angle.

camera angle Gene, i got about 6 inches of eye relief.

Yeah-I don't even know how to calibrate those things. One of the guys tht worked at the range knew how to do it, and all the ones we had out there right on after he checked them out.

Roger,

Modern day lever guns are worthless hunks of schit. Sell that fugking thing and use a decent rifle the rest of your life.

It's not old. It's not modern. It's just.... worthless.



Travis

going to kill a nilgia with it first, maybe a big buck next week. but might take the 270 for that.

I doubt the bullets will bounce off.
You've got me thinking of dragging mine out too.

that rem adl 270 with a cheap simmons scope has killed a lot of animals from nilgia on down.

if i have a shot at a big buck on out there i'd rather have it that the 45-70. my 300 rum is to heavy to carry as we're going to have to do some walking on the place we're going to hunt next week.

Count me in the shoot it at 5,10, 50,100 yards group adjusting as necessary!

No fuss no muss.

Mike

Camera fore-shorting. Check it against where the thumb joint is, and where the cheek should be on the comb....unless you like a thumb up your nose on firing.....

better pic

Getting some good mileage out of this photo. Right target- 20 yards first shot low. Second shot bulls eye, slightly right.

Move back to 60, verify right is slightly exaggerated. Move left to just one click off bullseye. Not a big deal if you start close.

Is this "gun porn"? Or just hot in CC?

was in the 70s yesterday, this morning is our first cold day 40 this morning, fixing to head to the ranch.

Good luck. I'd go ahead and get a bore sighter. I fooled around sighting in several rifles about a month ago and I should have got the bore sighter out and just used it immediately. It would have helped if I'd remembered I owned a bore sighter though.

I've owned a bunch of 45-70's and it is a sweet cartridge. I would much rather have it in a bit heavier gun. A friend of mine had one just like that and I had to have one so I got one of them little light Marlins. This was back in the early nineties probably. I'd been shooting handloads in heavier guns from cases from 405 grain Remington loads. I stuck a couple of Winchester or Federal "Express" loads in the thing and two days later had to go to the Chiropractor. Sounds like you've got plenty of eye relief, but you will need it.

I don't always own a 45-70, but when I don't, I own a 45-75.

Down here in Texas we all customarily walk around the house buck nekkid. Saves quite a lot on air conditioning and electric bills.

Anyways, I rarely get to contribute anything to this sort of thread but, here's my own stock of newfangled rifles, all from the PF (post-flint) era...



Up top is an early-production Pedersoli Tryon Rifle w/slow twist .53 cal. chrome-lined barrel. IIRC with that back-action lock it fits in the late 1840's early 1850's era.

The .30-30 70's era Marlin I think was sold as a "Cowboy Carbine" back then, and after the Lyman peep and front blade grew fuzzy (turns out they do that on older rifles, go figure) I had a scout scope (remember those?) and tip-off mount installed.



Without the scope the irons are just tall enough to be usable over the rail.

Birdwatcher

Been there done that.

The trick is to always do this in the bathroom, where there ain't many places for a flyaway ejector spring to hide

But anyways, if this happens what you do is take the ejector spring out of your OTHER Marlin while you are waiting for a new spring to arrive (.30-30 and .357 Magnum at least use the exact same spring).

Of course to do this may necessitate buying another Marlin if ya ain't already got another one.

My .357 Marlin is one of the more recent versions with that %#*& useless lawyer button (AKA safety) through the receiver. Mine wears a little rubber o-ring to hold it in the "off" position. I forget now where I got that o-ring, but they were all the rage right after that stupid safety button first came out.

Birdwatcher

If that's the standard 20" carbine length barrel, it was the 336T model IIRC. T stood for "Texan".

Put a dot (magic marker will do) on the center of a 8x11 sheet of paper. Mount said paper on something that is not of value and will hold the paper in a manner that it will not move. Step back 25 yards/paces, look thru scope at dot and fire.

If bullet passes thru bore, and hits paper, it is bore sighted. If it doesnt hit paper, reduce distance to paper and try again.

PS- Now is a good time to adjust scope so that bullet hits approximately on the dot when you fire the rifle.
The next step is to make the distance between you and the target longer, 100yds is a popular distance, and fire rifle/continuing to adjust scope until projectile hits paper where you want it to.

You can thank me later for all my help.

Indeed you are correct Sir, thanks.

Browsing around, that carbine is older than I thought....

The gold trigger appears in '58, continues until '82....
http://www.marlinowners.com/forum/1894/81818-last-year-gold-trigger.html

The "Texan" was produced from '51 to '84.
They had saddle rings from '65 to '72 (no saddle ring on mine).
The trigger lever was switched to square in 1970.
http://www.marlinowners.com/forum/336/45356-marlin-s-texans.html

Ergo, mine was produced somewhere in the '58 to '65 time frame.

Off a rest it will put plain ol' 170 grain Remington Core-Lokts into 2 1/2 inches at 100 all day long

Picked it up for $200 at a gun show maybe ten years back, one of the better deals I ever made.

Only change I'd make is I wish that comb were just a tad higher now that it wears a scope. Been thinking about adding a lace-on comb for that reason.

Birdwatcher

Excellent....

Yup. I did my 336 with 4 sheets of 8.5x11 paper at 25 yards with a black spot in the middle. If you're further off than that at 25 yards, it's time for the Burris rings with the offset inserts to adjust before messing with the internal scope adjustment.

For those new to adjusting scopes: Most scopes adjust via "clicks". Each click equals a 1/4" of movement at 100 yards. There fore, each click equals 1/8" at 50 yards, and 1/16th" at 25 yards. Keep this in mind when adjusting your scope at 25 yards. If you're 4 inches off to the right at 25 yards, you'll have to move 64 clicks to the left to come onto center. It seems like a lot, but that's how it works.

Saw two decent bucks this morning right as I got in the blind. Didn't have time to get a shot off.

first shot today at a 100yds was 3 inches high and 2 inches left.. i took the two inches left out and good to go.

Birdie,

Take a look at this product:

Beartooth Stock Raising Kit

http://www.amazon.com/Beartooth-Stock-Comb-Raising-Kit/dp/B002L9JQ4E,

I have it on a couple of my rifles and am pleased with the results.

Thanks, got one inbound even as I write.

Whoever owned my little Marlin fifty years ago took good care of it and invested some attention to get it right. The blank in the original rear sight notch is well done, and the front sight blade appears to be taller than the original with a small brass insert for visibility. Its plainly had a trigger job at some point too. 'Spect I'll be passing it on in turn to my son or a nephew one of these years.

I sold the Marlin to Roger as I found myself shooting my Browning M71 Carbine more. Love this piece.