The pictures posted by Dr. Drew above coincide with my Smith gun observations; which is that the gunworks stamped chamber lengths only on guns special ORDERED with other than standard length chambers were marked with a chamber length; and the Long Range/Wildfowl models. And based on those observations, I would tend to agree with Tom Martin that the factory chamber length on the subject gun is 2 9/16"; perhaps the owner of this gun will have them measured and post results here? As to altering those short chamber lengths; doing so would not give me heartburn provided the work was properly performed. But regardless of manufacture period (Hunter Arms/Marlin/etc), the company always maintained a service/repair department and regularly offered chamber lengthening services on barrel sets sent to them for modification; and other period companies offered the same services. The first that comes to mind is Savage, as apparently every Fox gun sent to Savage for repair got the chambers modified whether the customer made that request or not; which was OK I suppose, but why Savage decided to place that chamber stamp length on the sides of the barrels I'll never know!).
