how long do these famous name older barrels hold up?

PNW Skipper wrote on Nov 25^th, 2024 at 12:35am:


Likely no Ball parts on your Ballard as Ball Ballards used parts that don't interchange with Marlin Ballard receivers. The company just before Marlin was Brown Mfg., and many Brown parts interchange with Marlin. The first year Marlin built Ballard rifles they used up a lot of Brown parts in making rifles.
But I don't see anything on your Ballard that is Brown either? Receiver is definitely Marlin, and that lever isn't Brown or Ball, it's a JM Marlin lever found from late 1875-1881. Later they changed to the S lever after 1881.

Green_Frog wrote on Nov 25^th, 2024 at 7:29pm:


The ring levers on single triggers were only used during the JM Marlin years. If you ever see a single trigger Ballard marked JM Marlin with an S lever it's been swapped on the rifle since the S levers were Marlin Firearms Co. items.

art_ruggiero  - The first range day with my new-to-me Marlin Ballard No. 3 rifle was a pleasant surprise. The weather was not conducive to great shooting. The temperature was 38F, with winds blowing consistently 13-19 MPH from 9 o’clock to 3 0’clock. The high gust during the session was 33 MPH. A single surveyor’s tape was hung at the target and wind was judged by sight and sound intensity to attempt to minimize cross wind effect. 
Once on paper at 25 yards, I zeroed at 50 yards with some older Wolf Match Extra. The Eric Johnson barrel produced better groups than expected, given the weather, so I decided to feed it some RWS R50sc ammo to see what it would do with it. Results, determined with Ballistic-X software, are tabulated and illustrated below. All groups were five shot groups. However, the first shot in the first group, immediately after shifting ammo, was an obvious flyer and was excluded from tabulation.
Group Number      Group Size      Group Height       Mean Radius
1                      0.204”              0.182”               0.098”
2                      0.425”              0.288”               0.153”
3                      0.552”              0.238”               0.151”
4                      0.330”              0.273”               0.147”
Average              0.378”              0.245”               0.137”

All targets were shot with a front rest and rear bag. Shots were released holding center of the bull, attempting to squeeze off shots in relative lulls. Sights were adjusted between targets to bring POI closer to POA. I am pleased with how well this rifle shot in challenging wind. Clearly group sizes were dominated by the crosswind, with deviation from the average in their sizes more than twice that of group heights. The much tighter range of vertical dispersion gives promise that this old war horse will challenge in vintage smallbore matches!

All Ballard #3 breech blocks I've seen had no firing pin retaining screws, and required splitting the blocks to remove a firing pin. 
Only the early #3 versions had the flat top receivers as they also had heavy barrels. But later Marlin changed to lighter barrels and eventually to concave top receivers to make it easier to see the small sights on the lower flats of the light barrels. 
The JM Marlin marked receivers went from 1875-1881, but a few got assembled much later for whatever reason? Guessing parts were found behind a bench, or somewhere and then put together. I recently purchased a JM Marlin marked #3 that is one of these oddities. It has the early flat top receiver, and JM Marlin stamp, but it has the later lightweight barrel. It also has a hard rubber shotgun buttplate instead of the typical crescent, and it's got British proofmarks. But the serial number on every part puts it well towards the end of production! How a JM Marlin stamped receiver got lost in the factory for likely more than a decade, and then found and assembled is puzzling. But Bill Brophy told me decades ago that he found Ballard barrels in corners around the factory when they moved the factory in 1969! He said many of them were the lightweight .22 barrels for the #3.

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