I bought a Marlin 94 out of a sunken chartered fishing boat in Miami, the owner kept it aboard for sharks and the like. It aint pretty as it sat under Biscayne Bay for a while until the boat got raised, but for $60 cash it's one of my better investments. I love the darn gun, no safety on it and deadly accurate with the right loads, two favorites are lots of H110 with lyman 358156 cast SWC and other even better load is LBT 180 grain WFNGC over H110, but have a problem with that load...one is that it is too long to work through action and jams the gun up. I have a Williams receiver sight that required quite a bit of metal removal from the bottom to allow it to go down enough to get on target at 100 yards.
As far as functioning, it's 100 percent...until you get the round too long and then it's 100 percent jam.
I had thoughts about getting a winchester and having it reamed to 357 max as the action is long enough to make that conversion, but less money available than ideas. Also thought about converting Marlin 44 to 357 bain & davis, but again, mucho trabajo, poco dinero...
regards,
Graycg