I’ve always felt the ideal ‘ranch gun'*** would be a carbine (lightweight and handy), in a pistol cartridge (plenty of close-up power, without the deafening clang of a bottleneck round, and with minimally-blinding muzzle-flash if used at night). For rapid handling a semiauto or levergun seemed to be the obvious choices, and although I’m a fan of detachable box magazines for hunting, the higher capacity ones you might want for a pack of coyotes in the goat pen did not tend to be found in anything other than 9mm and .45 ACP. The 9mm long guns I’ve used never seemed to feed well, and that round wouldn’t be my first choice if the gun were pressed into duty for home protection. The Marlin Camp Rifle seemed to be a good choice for the .45 ACP, but the higher capacity magazines stick out rather awkwardly. (I still like the idea, though - if maybe I could adapt it to use a Para-Ordnance wide-body magazine...).
So that left me looking at my leverguns, to see which one would make a natural ‘ranch’ gun for when the .22LR isn’t enough. If I lived in bear country, I’d want the .45-70 or .444 level of power, but I’d be just as deaf and blind as if I used a .308. So that left .45 Colt, .44 Mag, .357 Mag, and .32-20. Potential need to use factory ammunition ruled out the first and last, and in choosing between the .44 Mag and .357 Mag it boiled down to what one I had a ‘spare’ of. Since the youngest (so far) hunter in the family decided she didn’t need to use a .357 any more because she didn’t mind the recoil of a .44, I commandeered the family 1894css, and started my project.
[ ***Note - I was unsure where to put the 'apology for creating a non-traditional levergun' disclaimer, but I figured that since I used a blasphemous stainless steel
gun, that the anti-electonic-gizmo guys wouldn't read the post anyway... 
] Since half the time we have feral animals or coyotes or whatever eating our livestock, it is dusk or dark, it seemed prudent to use sights capable of reasonable use during those conditions. Real 'night sights' might be nice, but are incredibly expensive, heavy, and not useful or practical in the daytime, whereas the EoTech Holosight is very useful in all light conditions. Add a laser and a flashlight, and you're good to go check the stock when they're frenzying about something out in the woods. Note that if you simply remove the light, this setup is actually legal hunting gear in many places; it wouldn't be my choice of deer setups sight-wise, but it would do the job. More likely the bullets will be aimed at coyotes and whatever comes to eat our chickens.
Here’s the raw materials:
- A Bushnell/EoTech Holosight
An XS Scout Rail for 1894s
A Williams WGRS for the 336's and (supposedly) 1894's
A NcStar pistol laser
A chunk of ½" electric PVC conduit
Low 1" scope rings
A "Duracell 'Daylite' TrueBeam" 4-watt
LED Flashlight (it even adjusts for 'spot' or 'flood' 
)
Scraps of plastic tubing and a thin plastic notebook binder
A couple 8x32 flat head allen screws and nuts for them
A dremel tool with assorted bits and tips
Some coarse aluminum grit sandpaper
A regular drill and a countersinking bit
Screwdrivers and Hex wrenches, etc.
(optional) Colorful language for when things don't fit
There will be a gap under the front of the rail, and this is normal (the instructions don’t really spell this out).
Now, any rear sight could be used for ‘backup’ purposes (if the EoTech and laser are both kaput I’m probably kaput too), including my favorite Williams FP, but I wanted to use this extra WGRS I had, and it is supposed to fit all the Marlins. Well, it does, but it sticks out quite a bit - unless you mount it backwards! I’ll probably file/Dremel off the overhang that still exists. If I planned on using the aperture, I couldn’t lower the sight down very far, but I couldn’t do that anyway with the rail on, and I usually just ‘ghost ring’ my peep sights anyway.
Here’s the rail, WGRS, EoTech, and pistol laser as mounted. The pistol laser is flat enough that it isn’t visible through the EoTech at all, although I could have used other fairly large generic lasers without problems. The NcStar’s big problem (and it IS a big one, sort of) is that the threaded stud pulls through when you tighten the mounting screw, that is if the screw doesn’t pull through the plastic first. There really need to be two screws vs. one anyway, so I plan to just replace the existing one with a screw and nut, and have drilled out another hole for a second one.
Now, for the light mount. As you can see in the “raw materials” picture above, I had a nice little light-clamp, which would have worked for the AA-Maglight I was going to mount on it, but the much brighter 4-watt LED light I found had a wider lens and wouldn’t clear the magazine tube with that mount. I almost just mounted a section of scope-base rail on the forend, but didn’t want it behind the sling, didn’t want to mount the sling to the light, and had mixed feelings about mounting in on the side of the forend. I considered moving the sling swivel to the side of the band, but in the end decided to go with the magazine-mount.
A piece of plastic electric conduit was at least less obnoxious than the white PVC used for water, and I cut it quickly with a hacksaw, drilled holes to match the mount (which was a close fit to the radius, but some work with sandpaper wrapped around the conduit finished the shaping of the aluminum rail), and countersank those holes from the inside of the tube, then ground and polished the screws to match the interior contours of the tubing. I used a thin sheet of fairly tough plastic (from a three-ring plastic notebook cover) to wrap the magazine tube and hopefully minimize any scratch-and-dent effects.
Here's the mount, half-way through the shaping and smoothing process:
Here’s the finished light mount (took some partial disassembly and parts-jockeying to get it on):
Now, I still plan to refinish the stock (unsure why, since it is a ‘chore’ gun), but here’s the project so far:
(...maybe if the wood under that 'varnish' is nasty, I'll just paint it black - it might at least look 'different'...
)
The sight picture is really hard to show, but here’s a couple of shots:
Now, once I get it sighted-in, goat-eating coyotes, chicken-eating possums and other night-varmints beware...!
)
opportunity for a new to you toy!.. Classic walnut stock...Auto loading, pistol caliber, (surplus flash hiders are available) aperture sights, 15 round mag doesn't hang way down.. and there's a handy flash light attachment point hanging under the barrel too...
