Ultimate Marlin brush gun: The Model 62 Levermatic
For a brief time in the 1960s, Marlin recast its vintage cowboy action rifle line into something a little more responsive and, using state of the art chamberings, was on the cutting edge of lever gun technology. Sadly, it wasn’t to last.
The Levermatic family
Marlin firearms engineering guru Tom Robinson was issued patent number 2,823,480 Feb 18, 1956 for the Levermatic receiver, a system that he developed several years before from the Kessler Arms Company’s “Lever-Matic” shotgun. What was neat about the design was that it used a 25-degree stroke (as opposed to a 90-degree) stroke of the lever to cycle the action. This meant that just moving the lever downwards about two inches would open the breech, remove a spent shell casing from the barrel, and load a fresh round from the magazine. This pattern, a lever action that worked faster than a turn bolt and nearly as fast as a semi-auto, was dubbed the Levermatic by Marlin and soon the ads started flying.
It was first introduced in the Model 56 rifle and continued in production over the nearly two decades as both the 56 and the 57 (with a tubular magazine).
Besides the action, the guns all shared a solid top receiver with side ejection so that center to the bore top-mounted optics could be fitted. As such, each rifle shipped drilled and tapped for Lyman and other receiver sights as well as a Weaver Tip-Off Mount. One-piece Monte Carlo-style black walnut stocks, gold triggers, finger safeties, and Micro-Groove barrels (a concept that Robinson had also invented) came standard. The Micro-Groove used 16 shallow grooves instead of the standard 6 deep grooves seen in Ballard type rifling and was advertised as reducing bullet distortion with picking up an increase in accuracy.
The thing is these guns were all rimfire, being offered in .22S, .22L, .22LR, and .22WMR. What the gun needed to be really effective was a nice shooting centerfire chambering.
Enter the hard hitting…Model 62
The 62 came in .30 Carbine and the very spicy .256 Win Mag among others. A short throw lever, 7-pound overall weight and detachable magazines in 1963…what more could you ask for?
How much would you value one of these in good overall condition for Marlin Model 62? Thank you.
probably $600 … collector item now
There were only 16,000 of the model 62 made and the majority of them where chambered in the 30 cal. The 256 is rare in comparison. Not sure on value but have seen 1,100 on one some time ago.