I found a J C Higgins 35 Remington lever action rifle. It has been drilled and taped for a scope, but does not have micro-groove rifling, a cross bolt safety, or a forearm band. The serial number is S1984. It looks like a RC model Marlin. It is in very good condition and is now hidden in my truck. I'm waiting on my wife to leave the house. Can anyone give me any information on the rifle?

S = 1959.
http://www.marlinowners.com/board/viewtopic.php?t=495

I've got a 1964 Sears Microgroove with a forend cap. I really don't think there's any other differences between the RC and the contract rifles. Mine even has a walnut stock. It probably have a very short throat so a lot of cast bullets won't chamber.

There are advantages to bachelorhood.

Bye
Jack

I will admit that a 35 Marlin is my favorite rifle, so finding a 35 Sears "Marlin" with regular rifling and forend caps made my day. The action is very smooth and the blueing is excellent. The stock has a few handling marks and the butt plate is not original. But that is OK because I will replace it with a limb saver recoil pad anyway.

Thanks for the information.
Taylor

I'm waiting on my wife to leave the house.

Excellent! ;) More reason to collect Marlins... Kind of like owning dogs of one color, as long as they are in motion you never know how many you own!

If I shoot a 200 grain gas check BTB, what's the best speed to shoot?

The 200 grain BTB won't chamber in my rifle. MikeG uses a lighter bullet. It might be the 180 grain WLN+P.
http://www.beartoothbullets.com/bulletselect/index.htm

Bye
Jack

Yep. You probably made out like a bandit with that Marlin :D

Use the Beartooth 180gr. "+P" HANDGUN bullet. It's not listed under rifles, don't know why. Buy it sized 0.359" (that's as big as Marshall's mould will drop them), and load as much Varget as you can get in the case. Remington brass will be thinnest, FYI. You'll probably end up with a little over 40 grains.

May or may not be able to seat to the crimp groove. Seat so that the bullet nose is just imprinted by the rifling when the lever shuts. Then use the Lee Factory Crimp die to crimp the snot out of it.

Ought to be able to crank that bullet up to between 2200 and 2300fps depending on barrel length and how much powder your brass will hold.

Here's a picture from my last trip to the range with the .35. There's ten bullets that went through this target; 4 Beartooth, 3 Remington, 3 Federal. I think the Beartooth loads were right at 1.1" at 100 yards.

The only 200gr. bullet I'm aware of that really works well in the .35 is the RCBS 200gr. FNGC mould.

The reason I ask is because there was a post comparing 45-70 cast bullet penetation to 458 mag and 458 lott (I think). Anyway, the slower 45-70 penetated much better. I was wondering if the same thing applied to the lighter 358 cast bullets and I was wondering what speed most hunters shot their 35 Marlins. I intend to shot cast bullets in this rifle.

Well, the problem with the .35 Rem is you don't have a lot of leeway to use heavy bullets. 200gr. is about it and that's with one bullet design that I"m aware of.

You can run the RCBS bullet to about 2,000fps, or the Beartooth 180 to about 2300fps.... take your pick.

The Beartooth 180s will stay inside of a deer if you shoot it end to end. I don't know if the 200gr. RCBS would exit.... it might; certainly, you'd expect it to go a bit further.

I'm shooting a home cast boolit of my own design out of my 336D and 336SC, the TLC359-180-RF. In coming up with this design, I took the short throat of the Marlin chambers and the short neck of the 35 Rem case into consideration. I just don't see how anybody can get any performance with a 200-grain cast boolit in a Marlin chambered in 35 Rem. The short throat of the Marlin requires that the boolit be seated deep and that robs this small capacity case of powder. My experience with my two rifles is that I will be working with a cartridge OAL of 2.35" when using the typical round flat nose of a cast boolit.

I shot my boolit with Hodgdon's Benchmark, BL-C(2), H322, H335, H4198, H4895, and Varget. The best out of the short barrel of the 336D (18.5") was with 38.3 grains of H335 for 2174 FPS.

At some point in a discussion of cast boolit performance alloy has to be mentioned as the pressure generated by the charge of powder will effect the accuracy and the alloy of the boolit will effect it's response on impacting the animal. There tends to be two groups of thought concerning non-big bore boolits. Soft (low BHN) so you get some expansion (less penetration) but this will also mean that your alloy cannot withstand a lot of pressure in the chamber. Boolits with a higher BHN are driven at a high velocity to kill with the wound channel generated by their meplat (nose diameter).

I've attached a couple of pictures so that you can see the boolit and see the wound channel a 180-grain boolit can generate. I don't know if you are familiar with feral hogs but they have a tough "shield" covering both shoulders running aft to the ribs. It is an excellent "test medium" as it equates to the hide of critters 7 or 8 times their size. The hog was shot at 53-yards with the boolit and load mentioned above. This is the exit hole the .256" boolit cut. I would expect the exit wound on a elk or moose to look the same when shot at a similar distance.