Marlin’s classic stock-tubed Models 88/98
If you have been around Marlin rifles for a minute, you are used to tubular under-barrel mags, detachable box mags, and even single-shots. However a short-lived series of rimfire plinkers you may not be aware of also exist that load completely differently.
In the years after World War II, Marlin was looking to expand their offerings with some new blood. A popular rifle of the time was the Browning Semi-Auto 22 or SA-22 (also made by Remington as the 24/241). This rifle, designed by that genius John Moses Browning himself in 1914 for FN Herstal in Belgium, was a humble little rimfire autoloader that was fed through an integral tube magazine which held 11 .22 LR or 16 .22 Short rounds. The tube, in a departure from standard 22s of is day, instead of being mounted under the barrel was instead inserted through the butt plate of the rifle until it advanced into the back of the action.
Of course, Browning wasn’t the first to come up with this idea, that honor goes to Mr. Christopher Spencer’s Civil War-era repeating rifle which held 7 rounds of .56-56 Spencer rimfire in a removable buttstock tube.
Borrowing from Spencer and Browning, Marlin did them one better in 1947.
You put the magazine tube in WHERE?
