Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters WTH is a 25 Krag?

Apparently, Great Grandad was a Rifle Loony:





I've never even heard of this. As with any Wildcat, the question begs, "why?"

FC

It was America's first wildcat by some accounts. 30/40 Krag necked down. Not much sense in it today, but as you can imagine, in it's day it had a place.

Look up Adolph Otto Niedner, He did that plus a bunch of others. 25 Krag was invented 1907

Isn't Neidner credited with the 25-06?

25 Neidner in ~1920 but some say that Springfield Armory played with the 25.06 during WW1 then sold off everything which is where he got the tooling. Also credited with building the first 257 Roberts rifle for Ned Roberts.

my second sporterized Krag wants to be a 35 Krag. i already have done my Win m94 in 35/30-30.

http://35caliber.com/8.html

A very useful wildcat even today, if you're playing with a single shot rifle which would be problematic to chamber for a rimless round. Ballistics not unlike a .257 Roberts.

Yep!

A good friend (and real rifle loony) who passed away a couple years ago liked falling-block single-shots so much that he did more than one in Krag-based wildcats--even if they were Rugers that handle rimless cases well. One was a .375 Krag that I restocked for him--but he also had a .25 Krag.

I recall reading an article about the 25 Krag years ago. Was it "RIFLE", or "HANDLOADER", or some other gun periodical?

It's the 25/303 Brit's cousin.

bpas105;
Top of the morning, I hope wherever this finds you, it finds you well.

Among the long list of "rifles I shoulda/coulda but didn't" was a very much worked over Lee Enfield in .25-.303.

Someone had removed the rear socket so it was a one piece stock, which was one of the most attractive fiddle back maple chunks of lumber one could ask to see. I'll note too that I worked in the cabinet business for 27 odd years so I've looked at honest train car loads of maple, but once more I digress.

The barrel had a nice "normal" aftermarket taper, the action was smoothed up, decent bluing job and the loading charger was either removed or cleaned up so it didn't look so clunky.

It was a wonderful rifle, albeit a tad heavy and still had a modified LE trigger which was just okay, but I passed.

As I recall, buddy was selling off all the firearms from an estate and I'd already picked up all I needed and then some.

Anyways, thanks for twigging a memory from long, long ago on this frosty morning.

All the best.

Dwayne

It was one of those pubs. Have it around here somewhere. If memory serves me correctly it was built on a Siamese Mauser action and his loads were quite adventurous.

Back around 1920, give or take, A.O.Niedner initially made his .25 Krag wildcat a bit differently, requiring no sizing or seating dies. He cut the chamber extremely tightly so that a case neck expanded not at all upon discharge. The protocol was to then take the fired case and ream the neck slightly to a depth of maybe 1/4" and of a diameter to snugly hold a special jacketed bullet he swaged that sported a base band a couple/few thousandths over groove diameter (with a bore riding nose section). To load the ammunition one de and re-capped the fired case, dumped in the powder charge, then thumb seated the special bullet until it stopped on the little ledge created by the neck reamer. Done. Accounts of accuracy were glowing. The bullet couldn't help but be started straight into the rifling.

The obvious downside to the thing was horrendous chamber pressure could be induced if one strayed outside of the recommended powder charge. Remember, the case neck can't expand upon discharge because of the extremely tight chamber. That and the Royal PIA involved in prepping the brass initially, and making the bullets.

Thanks for your recollections, Dwayne. To be honest, I wasn't aware of the 25/303 until I found one in a box lot from a recent auction, and added it to my collection. Apparently, it was popular in Australia after the war, and used on mid-sized critters. 303 Brits were easy to come by, but they wanted something less than .30 caliber to shoot. A 1-pc fiddle backed maple stock would dress a Lee-Enfield up quite a bit.

When I was kid I somehow got hooked up with an Australian pen pal who turned out to be a budding gun nut like me. We swapped interesting cartridges through the mail and I remember him sending me a handful of .25/303's once. Thought they looked pretty cool! I doubt it was legal to do even back in the mid-60's.....