I Wanted to Love the 10mm Trapper. I Don't.

Welcome to an episode of InRangeTV. We have on the table a lever gun, and it's probably one you never would have thought you would have seen on this channel, because it is a Marlin Action. And I have said over and over again that I'm not a fan of the Marlin Action. That said, this is an interesting enough addition to the market that I felt like it was worth talking about this is the 1894 Marlin Trapper made by Ruger in 10 millimeter the internet's favorite meme round 10 millimeter which gives you higher capacity because it's a tube magazine fed gun this gives you a full capacity of 10 rounds with a only 16 inch barrel with a very short lightweight carbine which is coming in at 6.3 pounds weight matters and that when you pick it up and hold it, that's obvious. It's very handy and very lightweight. But I had reservations right off the bat. First of all, it's a Marlin. Now, Marlins can work and Marlins can be made to be very smooth, but the default standard Marlin action tends to be more clunky than the Winchester alternative. I'm a big Winchester fan. I love the speed and smoothness with which the Winchester action cycles regardless of the round it's chambered in and the Marlins just don't do that additionally while it is not common when a jam happens in the Marlin it's called it's really the infamous Marlin jam um it is a very difficult thing to clear which frequently requires taking the whole gun apart we've seen that at a number of brutality matches and i've seen it in a number of cowboy action matches. While it's working, it's working. But when it's not, it's not. But one of the things about it is the way the gun cycles and chambers the round, regardless of the round it's chambered in, it just doesn't go as smoothly. And every once in a while you'll have like a little hiccup where you have to like kind of like force it closed. If you cycle this slowly, you'll see that the feed angle is interesting and it just kind of dumps the round. And sometimes it bobbles until you close it kind of forcefully. There is no controlled feeding here. Kind of lines up with chamber. Either goes or doesn't. There it kind of bobbles and then you just... and that's typical of Marlin. That's just how it is. But it works. There it goes. And that's just how it is. The more forcefully you run it, the less likely it is to happen. Sort of. However, does that matter in terms of using the gun in the real world? Not really. Unless you're timing drag racing on the clock as as fast as possible it's not really that big a deal another reason i decided to do a review of this gun besides it being a lever action and people asking for more modern lever action rifles on the channel was that i fairly recently did a review of the Taylor and Co TC 73 the Winchester 1873 chambered in 9 millimeter Luger and that gun was an outright unmitigated disaster the Quality control was terrible, up to and including parts that were out of spec, parts that had not been properly peened, but the worst part being that it was nearly dangerously outside of headspace. And in the comments, a lot of people said, well, that's because you're trying to use a lever gun in 9mm. It has to be a rimmed cartridge. It has to be .38 Special or .38 or .45 Colt, which is rimmed now, or .44-40 or whatever. And that's not true. That's not correct. If you do it right, there's no real reason that you can't use 9mm or .45 ACP. In fact, in the Wild West shooting competition, there have been homebrew modifications of 1873 Winchesters to .45 ACP that run flawlessly and smoothly. I know you can take a Winchester or a Marlin and chamber it in a modern cartridge like .45 ACP or 10mm or 9mm, and there should be no reason it doesn't work. The reason we've seen that problem on the market is because these companies doing it either A, don't care to make a good product, or B, just don't know what they're doing. I suspect Marlin slash Ruger probably are not going to have that problem. This is going to work. That's my guess. My little testing so far has indicated as such, and we're going to do more live fire in this video. But first of all, let's take a closer look at what this gun is. it is was introduced in december of 2023 ruger has been making marlins for a while and marlin went through a bad time where marlin wasn't a good product i it is my understanding that with Ruger's manufacturing behind the Marlin name, they are now producing a high quality good product again your mileage may of course vary, this comes in at an MSRP of sixteen hundred dollars which is kind of pricey but the real market price is anywhere between twelve hundred to thirteen hundred dollars chambered in 10 millimeter, they make other variants and .357 etc, .44 magnum, I went with 10 millimeter because that's interesting and I want to really pair it with my FK Brno sidearm which is also in 10 millimeter, that goes back to the old west having your pistol and your lever gun chambered the same cartridge, that's just a neat thing, again as I said 10 millimeter gives you 10 plus 1 rounds in the gun, 11 rounds on board that's pretty cool, it's nice short lightweight It is threaded for suppressors, which we're not going to deal with in this video, but maybe we will in the future But right off the bat. I have some problems The first and most significant problem which you may see by what you're witnessing here on the table is this large loop lever Before even handling the gun or deciding to purchase it for review I kind of held back and didn't want to bother because you cannot get this gun without this large loop lever large loop levers are a meme, they are not useful unless you're in the Arctic with very thick gloves and that is the only one reason that there's value to that, it is a meme based on Hollywood in which people spin cock the gun or it looks cool, the large loop lever effectively deprecates and harms the function speed and action of the gun every time, there is no functional benefit besides rare circumstances with thick gloves. So much so that as your hand travels down to hit the loop, it actually hurts your knuckles to cycle the gun. That isn't how it's supposed to go. A lever gun should be able to run, be run smoothly without wasting time, inertia, and causing damage to your hand every time you smash into that arm of the loop to bring it back and forth. Therefore, before I even started the review, I realized I wasn't going to want to use it that way and I 3D printed, I made an STL and 3D printed an insert that goes into the large loop and then leather wrapped it for some cushioning and that I can't even start to tell you how much that improved the handling of this gun dry fire instantly I'm going to publish this STL file to my Patreon's as a little perk if you happen to have an 1894 Trapper with this horrific large loop lever you can just 3D print it and it snaps right in you don't even need to add this leather wrap but if you want to add the leather wrap that just makes it better but I can tell you right off the bat my review would be negative if I wasn't able to mitigate this large loop lever I looked and there were third parties that were at one point making traditional standard loops for the 1894 Trapper series couldn't find any that were ever meant for the 10 millimeter because it's such a current and modern addition to the market but also they stopped making them so a small loop lever for the 1894 Trapper with the pistol grip appears to be unobtainium so you either deal with the fact that you have a gun's handling damaged for the fact that it looks cool or you do something to fix it and I decided to fix it by printing a 3D printed part and then leather wrapping it it literally changed the gun it was night and day the gun comes with really excellent iron sights these are Skinner sights a really good wide front post that has some white paint on it and a rear Skinner large aperture sight that you can adjust for both windage and elevation so these Skinner sights are fully adjustable if you loosen the screws slightly this is your windage and then you can loosen the set screw on the side here and then this can be raised or lowered for elevation as well as you can put different aperture peeps in if you wish and if if you want, there are two screws you can take the Skinner sight off And if you buy a third party aftermarket Picatinny rail, you can of course put any sort of optic you want on the gun. They do provide a little accessory with the gun that clips on and allows you to cock it from the side. This won't be an issue for me because I'm going to put it on this way. I'm just using a red dot, so I don't even need one third of what this is providing. It does come with connections, or I should say little inserts for slings. You have to purchase the sling and the sling swivels Separately the gun does not come with that. So it's capable. It doesn't have it The loading gate works fine. It's not great. Not as good as one of my tuned Winchesters It's absolutely not as nice as a Miroku But you can certainly put the cartridges in and you won't have any issues with it Unlike that horrific TC 73 that I couldn't even get the full capacity in without jamming the gun So once again the idea that you can't put a modern cartridge and a lever action is wrong because here's ten millimeter and you can get all ten rounds in this no problem. A gun has two styles of safeties there's a cross bolt this is on safe meaning that if the hammer were to drop it's a hammer block and it will not fire if you push it across red means dead to fire there's also a hammer safety where you can put it at half cock just like that traditionally however for unloading and loading pretty wise to have that on and that is a good feature because if anything happens by accident it certainly isn't going to go off well I i think this is the most meh review i could really ever give overall it mostly works the marlin bobble i don't know what else to call it that is intrinsic to all marlin actions not just this one i've seen this a lot seems to be a little worse on this one now i've said earlier in the video that there shouldn't be a problem chambering these guns in modern cartridges 10 millimeter being shorter than a traditional let's say 357 rimmed cartridge i don't know if the marlin issue is exacerbated by the length of the cartridge, because 10mm is rather short, or it's just the nature of this particular one. That said, shorter cartridges like that are not a problem, as long as you've got the gun tuned in Winchester Actions. I have a modified carrier in my 1860 Henry that shoots these .45 Cowboy Specials, which are the same length as .45 ACP, and that gun runs flawlessly, smooth as butter, competitive capable. This, like I said, it works. It'll cycle fine, and then the next time it'll, and you got to mess with a little bit and then it cycles fine. Again, very Marlin. That would not stop me from buying the gun, but it's something you should be aware of. The things that would stop me from buying this gun is simply this, this large loop lever. I know I talked about it earlier, but if I hadn't been able to mitigate this with my printed insert and my leather wrap, I would say, do not buy. This is a gun not worth bothering with. These large loop levers and the meme in the industry this is not the only manufacturer doing this are actively harming the lever gun functionality with that i hate it it sucks it has no value unless you're using gloves in Antarctica or Alaska and it's just there to look cool it absolutely harms the function of the gun maybe maybe the gun would cycle better if it was slow because i had to like actually deal with that large loop lever it doesn't matter this is stupid um if you and there are no, that at least I'm aware of, third-party replacement loops for this gun at this time. So unless you're willing to print an insert or do something to mitigate this large loop, I would say do not buy. Now, here are the good points. It is threaded for a suppressor. That's cool. The iron sights that it comes with, these Skinner sights, are absolutely fantastic. And it was zeroed out of the box. I didn't have to do anything. If you want to use a different sighting system, screws come off put on a rail put anything you want on this magnified optic red dot that's cool the gun is extremely short it is extremely light at six pounds it is very handy carrying this around in the field would be a non-event be very easy to carry around and having a sling on it makes it even more so so the weight of the gun absolutely awesome the sights excellent the ability to change the sights even better 10 millimeter is a capable round you're essentially getting 357 like performance out of a semi-automatic cartridge that you could then share with your pistol if you happen to have a 10 millimeter pistol that's all cool the gun looks cool i think it has a great aesthetic the wood's nice the fit and finish is good too nothing about this feels or looks particularly cheap it it's nicely manufactured but this stainless satin finish is supposed to be environmentally resistant and here it's monsoon season here in Arizona so the humidity is up a bit there's already rust on the bottom of my receiver i don't know what that would be like in Alaska but i'm surprised to see that happening here it's not been that long but i've been dealing with this gun for that to happen so again my review is meh i don't know what to say i wouldn't say don't buy it but i also don't want to say buy it um real mixed bag real mixed bag real mixed bag but the reason we're able to do these sort of legitimately honest very blunt very brutal very truthful reviews is because we're completely supported by viewers like you via patreon.com slash in range tv marlin ruger did not send me this rifle none of the ammunition i fired in this was sent to me by any sponsors we have no sponsors no overlords we don't deal with youtube's algorithm we make the content we want to make that we think is worth making we don't care about the algorithm we care about doing good work for people that value this sort of work the only challenge is making sure people see it so if you like this please consider sharing it with people that you might that would find it interesting if you know someone that's interested in lever guns you're interested in 10 millimeter interested in the Marlin Trapper or a conversation site a Reddit thread please share the video because you need to be our organic algorithm for us and if you really like what we're doing every dollar counts patreon.com slash in range tv early access to brutality events access to our discord and some exclusive videos that i'm going to put up on patreon like one about how this 3d printed part works and if you want to the stl file etc which will be on patreon specifically regardless thank you for watching the video stay tuned for more