Cartridge: 22 Short long or long rifle

Magazine: 27 short, 21 Long, 19 Long Rifle

One day I went into the local gun store searching for any rifles they might have that would be perfect for some gunsmithing practice. I was looking for anything from checking jobs to full out rebuilds. As my eyes scanned the racks I really didn’t see anything that I liked so I asked the owner if they had anything in that might need some work. When I mentioned I was looking for some checkering practice he went into the back room and brought out a very beaten up side by side with exposed hammers as I was looking the side by side over he went in the back and pulled out this Marlin 57 exclaiming “it has a plain stock on and it would be good for checkering”. I looked it over and he told me it had one problem they couldn’t get it to eject. He then gave me the rifle and a box of shells to look it over for myself and see what was wrong. I couldn’t get it to eject but as I took the brass out I noticed it was badly scratched at the top where the firing pin was striking. At the point I noticed the scratched cases I figured it could be that repeated dry firing had raised a bur on the rim of the chamber or it just might be really dirty if I was lucky a cleaning would fix it. I returned from the range and proceeded to talk the price down and got what I consider to be an excellent deal on the rifle.

Upon returning home I decided to give the rifle a thorough cleaning in case it was possible to get better results by just doing that, as sometime the problems are caused by poor maintenance. The cleaning was a long one seeing that the rifle had not been cleaned in quite a while. In the end the cleaning made no difference I was still stuck with the rifle failing to eject a clean rifle but it still wouldn’t eject. So the only answer was to swage the barrel.

Because of the action being a short throw lever action I could not get a good enough angle on the chamber to use the swaging tool so I had to take the rifle a part. I dropped the bolt assembly and trigger assembly out of the receiver and then I removed the magazine tube from the rifle so I could to safely hammer the receiver off the barrel. Holding the barrel in place is only one cross pin which proved difficult to remove. After removing the pin I clamped the barrel in a padded vice and then made a witness mark on the barrel, to help me reinstall the barrel. I then took a piece of micarta and a no mar hammer and tapped the receiver off very carefully since the receiver itself is made form aluminum. It turns out the barrel and receiver is lined up with splines which made it easier to realign the barrel.  I got the barrel apart and oiled the swaged then swaged the barrel after swaging  I then reassembled the rifle.

Today I finally got to take the rifle to the range and give it a go to see if the ejector worked. Much to my pleasure the rifle ejects flawlessly I ran a hundred rounds through it and not one jammed.

Here is a look at some of the groupings at 25 yards with iron sights.