Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors inside a marbles tang sight.

I picked up (fleabay) a marbles tang knowing that it might not be right as the screw on the side was buggered and the seller couldnt get it up.

I found in a old marbles catalog you could buy a repair kit if your spring went bad and I found the patented drawing so I could get an idea what i was in for inside and went in.

Im sorry, I only have my cell phone for pics.

here is what I found.

stripped down the sight has a sleeve that is pressed in to the base and is keyed to the base on the screw head side.The sleeve does not move in the sight. It acts as the axle for the moving part of the sight. It also has a extended lip on both sides that work with a pin in the "spring caps" (ill show them in a minute).



i didnt get a photo of the spring but it looks like the one in this auction.
marble spring auction

what holds the spring are two parts I will call spring caps. they are both the same but one has a threaded I.D. and one has a hole large enough for the screw to go through. The each have a pin that moves between the raised lips of the steel axle like bushing. These pins and lips along with the O.D. of the spring cap control how far the sight springs up.

you can see the pin at 12:00 and the hole that the end of the spring goes into at about 4:00


my sight was not working because the steel sleeve on this side was buggered and had burrs that caused the spring cap to bind when you tried to put the sight up. a little file work and it works just fine.


As a side, if your sight doesnt come up far enough, file work on stop (9:00 position) of the steel sleeve on this side would let your sight come up more.


lastly are the two outside caps. they kind of act like bearings for the back side of the spring caps. the one on the screw head side is a through hole, the one on the other side is a nut that acts as a lock nut up against the spring cap.


To take the sight apart, first you need to take off the outside cap/locknut on this side of the sight. then you can unscrew the screw from the spring cap with a screwdriver.


to put it back together I put the spring into the hole of the right side springcap and slid that with the outside cap onto the screw.

put that into the sight. make sure the stop pin in the screw cap is between the stops of the bushing in the base.

start the spring cap on the left side on the threads of the screw. make sure the spring end is in the hole of the spring cap.

Then i tightened the screw until it starts to bind on the sight. I flipped the sight all the way back and grabbed the spring cap with a pliers and turned it counter clockwise until it catches on the sight stem. then I tapped it to the right a little, tightened the screw and it drew right into place.

I had to try a couple of times to get the screw set to the right place so that I could put on the lock nut without having the sight get to tight to move.


sorry about the crappy photos. Ill take it back apart when I have my camera and get better pics of the process, I was just so dam excited...that it works.

Thanks for the insight Gary, no pun intended. That sure is a heavy duty spring.

congrats... this would be good material for the sticky "misc good info"

maybe with better pics, Bring a video camera to the fest and we can make a how to video.

Gary maybe you can start your own repair service. Let's see "Grogel's Marbles Tang Sight tune up service).

I went thru the same trial-error process you described. Bought it at a show, knowing it needed help. Luckily everything was there, just assembled wrong. It took a few PBRs to figure out, but works sweet now. I like it as much as my lymans.
Jerry

Gary, you are the first I know that has tackled the Marble's tang sight...thanks. I'll moved it to the sticky when I get to my other computer.

Gary
Great Job. I sent Ya 8 of them to be tuned up. Should arrive today.
Steve

You're a better than I am, Gunga Din, for wanting to explore the inner workings of a Marbles sight. Glad you were successful! (Any parts left over when you were done?)

Thanks Gary, this will be useful info to have.

I can remember very well taking apart the old Marble's tang sight that was on my 94 Winchester as a 16 year old kid. I spent several frustrating hours trying to get the damned thing back togeter and finally gave up. It's still sitting on my display shelf 35 years later. Maybe I'll find a rainy day when I can apply your lessons and get the thing back up and running (although the old 94 has long since been replaced with several 99s).

Rod

I know a guy in the UP who repairs Marbles sights. He has a supplier for the stems, too.

Brian

Get em in the mail Steve!!

Rod, So what made you take it apart in the first place?

As long as we are on the subject of frustrations with Marble sights, maybe someone can give me advice on mine.

The rifle came with a Marble tang sight, but no stem. Bass Pro said they would send me a stem, which they did, but it was for a Lyman sight. I then ordered a stem from Mike in the UP, and I cannot get the body open far enough to get the stem in. Then bought another stem, which the dealer said had been on a sight that he had parted out, so it should go in just fine. Still will not fit. The stem is round, with a small enlarged threaded section on two sides. The hole and slots on the sight body do not appear to be large enough to allow the stem to enter. What am I doing wrong?

First off, they do fit snug, be sure you have the stem facing the correct direction when you push the stem in. Some may go in either way and as I recall the threads should align north and south as it sits on rifle. Stems are not always interchangeable from year to year and Lymans do not go into Marbles and vice versa. Possible you don't have a Marbles stem. Tom

Gary--

What made me take it apart? I was 16, it was 15 miles to town, and I had nothing to do. This is how you learn things. In this case I learned not to take apart a Marble's sight.

Rod

docost99, I have 4 Marbles that need work. How do I get a hold of the guy you know in the UP who repairs them? I also have a couple of Lymans that could use some help.

As a kid I took a pocket watch apart one time to clean it, using my great-grandfather's watchmaking tools. Thank God my grandfather actually knew how to use those tools and got it back running again, but not without a little cussing and more than a few threats to my well-being if I ever did it again. I inherited those tools decades ago but never caught the urge to try my hand at watch repair, for some reason.

I rebuilt three or four of these in recent years and was able to get the sights cheap because of it. They are a bugger the first couple times, but once you figure out the process it gets easier. Nice thread, wish I would have thought to take photos or better yet video the last time my friend and I worked on these. We got two at the Collectors show in Denver for $35 a piece in parts. They are on my 30-30 and 303 respectively.

Well, we have one of these that had a problem. And, after having three grown men follow these instructions they were not able to get this sight back together. I couldn't stand it anymore - so 'I', the woman of the group, took over the reassembly process. I gave them four days of struggling to figure it out. After truly 'reading the instructions' I was able to reassemble this in less than 15 minutes. The true key is knowing that you have the spring anchored at the 4 o'clock position relative to the 12 o'clock pin position on each of the hubs. Had to share this with you though, I'm proud as punch to have been able to get this done expeditiously after watching these guys working on it for so long!!

Nobody likes a showoff.