Marlin 336 Dark Update - April 2020

hey guys it's a gear tester here and welcome to an update video on my Marlin 336 dark some of you may know that I broke my arm here about three weeks ago and that's meant that I've had the discontinue testing of this particular rifle for another month or so I've got a couple pins here in my wrist I had to go in for emergency surgery and I don't want to move those or risk moving those as the recoil of the gun against my right shoulder moves through the rest of my body so I'm not I'm not doing any more shooting here for another month or so until I'm fully healed up of this gun but I have been working on it and I have been working on it and getting it ready to do some longer distance accuracy testing out to 200 yards and some things like that so there's a couple changes that I've made on it first I cut off one inch of the stalk so I shortened the stock by one inch it had a thirteen point seven five inch length of pull and now it has a twelve point seven five inch length of pull got a tape measure right here I'll show that to you guys it's probably easier if I flip it over like so measure that out we're basically at twelve point seven five is about where we're at there and I am actually really happy with that that's actually a quarter of an inch shorter than my Marlin 336 wide that I have that's marketed as a youth gun has a similar 16 inch barrel but a different different stock system here I think this stock system is more accurate or lens the rifle to be more accurate and is more sturdy interestingly enough my Ruger gun sight Scout which actually has a just an adjustable shim system is also twelve point seven five inches that's the length of pole that I'm personally comfortable with and I really like and I think it's important to have guns particularly guns that are manually operated need to fit you personally and I wish that more companies I hope Marlin is paying attention to this but I wish more companies would do this shim system that Ruger has that allows you to adjust the stock and come those components from the factory so you're not having to do a hack job on your own interestingly enough this stock seems to be made out of a pretty nice wood has a nice tight grain and is not a soft little pine stock it's actually a better quality stock some people have taken every opportunity to pooh-pooh Marlin we're just sure that this was just an absolutely terrible quality of wood hidden by this crackle paint and I that's not the case at least on mine it seems to be a good hard wood that has tight grain so there you go I wish that more companies would would have a system that would allow the guns to be easily modified to you the shooter or back again but this was a pretty easy process I have a friend that has a really nice shop and he let me use some of his tools and that made cutting down my stock very very easy I did manage as I buffed it down or I trimmed down the recoil pad because I used the same recoil pad that came on it I did manage to Nick the stock a little bit but this is going to be a working gun I can hit that with a little bit of paint I tried to be very careful with how I measured and cut this stock so I put the blue tape on first and it represented if I cut right to the blue tape that was one inch that I was taking off the stock then I used a double wrap of the green tape to minimize scratching and damage to the stock or the paint job of the stock the next problem I encountered is when I went to cut the stock I needed to make sure that the stock was leveled so that I didn't get a strange angle on the buttstock and then have to spend a lot of time trying to even that up so I had these little shims there underneath the stock and then in the back of the stock so that I would be cutting a perfectly straight line down and not damaging the stock significantly so you can see these little shims are there you know I played with it till I had it basically perfect then we made sure to lock down the saw and lock down a board on top of the stock so there'd be minimal movement when we went to cut the stock and this is kind of the moment of truth did we did we measure and organize things correctly or are we gonna have a weird angle when this is done and we did a pretty good job on making sure that we got the right cut there I did choose to even out the stock a little bit on a wheel then I made sure to measure carefully and replace the buttpad and then we ground the buttpad what I tend to do with these stocks you may have noticed on my gunsights scalp is I tend to tape the rubber butt pads on these I like that it's grippy here on the back of the butt pad but I do not like that it's grippy here on the side as you go to shoulder the gun sometimes that catches and slows you down so I use good quality electrical tape that needs to be good quality expensive electrical tape I like the 3m stuff by scotch and I tape it up the sides so it doesn't rub against my clothes and so I've done that I will do that here I left it because I wanted you guys to see my stop cut down job and then rounding off the the butt pad was not perfect okay but it was fully functional and the gun is it was it was functional for me and I can still use the gun well so I've done that the cut down and inch off the stock which is something I've been planning on doing and had done before I managed to break my arm then I mounted a Trijicon gr 24r onto this gun this is a 1 to 4 power variable optic with an adjustable focus eyepiece and it's this is an awesome awesome optic you can adjust the amount of light here and I'll show a little picture of a reticle that this has this has a kind of unique reticle it's a post ok with a little triangle on it and it lends itself at 1 power I can shoot this almost as quickly as I can a red dot and because this Marlin 336 and 3030 is really a brush gun I wanted to be true to that I'm not really trying to make this a long-distance gun but the optic does increase my capability with this gun so I got the Vario variable power 1 to 4 I imagine using this Marlin 336 from 0 to 200 yards I could make an argument that you could probably stretch 3030 out to 300 yards but I wouldn't want to go much further than that so this for me personally in my usage is a is assuming that it ends up being relatively accurate will be uh you know 0 to 200 yard gun and for that I think the 1 the 4 is just perfect allows me on the 1 power to use it as a brush gun but if I get out into more open country or I want to zoom the focus up a little bit to see my target and make sure that I'm targeting the specific animal that I want I've got that and so I really really like this optic I've got it mounted on the XS big sight rail that came on my Marlin 336 dark from Marlin and I really like the fact that you can just drop an optic on this that is not the case in many 3030 rifles many lever-action rifles so the fact that it comes from the factory ready to have an optic dropped on it is amazing I purchased my Trijicon TR 24 are about a year and a half ago and for most of that time it's resided on my Ruger gun sight Scout and it's gone on many hunting trips and to the range many many times and I've really enjoyed it what I like about the Trijicon TR 24r is the fact with this one too for power it lends itself very well to shooting in thick underbrush and I view the Ruger gun sight scout and the Marlin 336 dark really as brush guns guns that are compact easy to maneuver and able to be deployed quickly for shots at moving targets at relatively close distances and so in this case the Trijicon one the four powered acupoint is a really great option for either the gun sight scout or I think particularly for the Marlin 336 dark right so we're just gonna simulate a little close shooting with the root gun sight Scout here hmm so you can see right here these are my three rounds and then some headshots so with the Trijicon one the four optic I had that on one I can just pop this up and see it's almost like a red dot and just shoot then I have the option of course at greater distance spinning up and in these snowy conditions you'd think that that that little the dot that the trigger can triangle that's there might not be easily seen even on the snow but with the screen all the way open even here as it's starting to get dark I am able to see that little glowing hovering little triangle perfectly awesome awesome package I was able to harvest a beautiful buck this fall with my Ruger gun sight scout and with the help of the Trijicon TR 24 R I've got an introduction scope mounts that I really like these are aluminum mounts okay they're these right here the Trijicon acupoint intermediate aluminum rings and they're excellent they get the scope up high enough that I was able to to zero my iron sights and I was able to mount this and pop it on and off without having to do anything to my iron sights I've noticed that some people have reviewed this gun put optics on it and they didn't get the right length of scope rings so they actually took the rear sight off I think that's stupid this gun first and foremost needs to be fast and easily handling which means you need to be able to shoot the gun with just iron sights and if you want an optic and optic as an addition but I think it's really this gun initially needs to be used iron sighted fast lightweight and quick and if you have an optic that increases some of your capabilities you should be able to put that on but not lose your your sight your rear sight these Trijicon scope rings take a one a half-inch little a wrench here so I make sure to keep that with me so that I can tighten or loosen these rings as I need and I keep this on me just in case I need to pop this off because it loses zero gets damaged and I need to go back to using my iron sights in a hunting situation I guess you could use the same setup in a personal defensive system as well it wouldn't be my first choice but it certainly would be advantageous to have something like this over and above just a pistol or a shotgun so those are some of the changes I have made to my Marlin 336 dark I look forward to doing some longer range shooting with this gun 100 yards 200 yards and sharing that with you guys here next month thank you very much for your views and your subscriptions this is the gear tester signing off [Music]

Channel: TheGearTester

Views: 37,882

Rating: 4.724731 out of 5

Keywords: Marlin, Remington, Marlin 336, Marlin 336 Dark, winchester 1984, .30-30 winchester, deer rifle, .45-70, 1895 Dark, TheGearTester, Henry Big Boy, Henry, Henry Golden Boy, lever action rifle, midwest industries, tactical lever action rifle, aimpoint, Trijicon, winchester 1892, hickok45, shot show 2020, Henry X Series, nutnfancy, InRangeTV, .22plinkster, Paul Harrell, .357 magnum

Id: YOmR9S2K33Y

Length: 11min 10sec (670 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 19 2020