For some dumb reason a majority of Norwegian Krags I've encountered have sewer pipe bores. Undoubtedly a result of improper cleaning when using corrosively-primed ammo. Given the professionalism exhibited by Norwegians in their approach to such matters in general this always mystified me.
One farfetched theory I heard once was that faced with surrendering to the Germans they fired off as much ammo through as many rifles that they could, and turned them in un-cleaned so as to rust. The Germans, used to their up to date non-corrosively primed ammo (they went that route long before the rest of the world did, including us) didn't pay much attention to cleaning the surrendered weapons and so they languished and the bores rotted. Kind of off the wall, I know, but as a theory/BS story it's as good as any other.
I bought one once thinking I could whip it into shape. After about a million passes with brushes, patches, and solvent it didn't look much better than when I started. I gave up and horse traded it to a buddy who promptly gave it the old soak-in-stronger ammonia treatment. (I swore off that desperate measure long ago after almost dying. A story for another time.) What he attained finally was a squeaky clean bore pretty much devoid of rifling. Shots fired out of it clustered into a beautiful shotgun pattern-like group. I think he still has the action tucked away somewhere.
I swore if I ever stumbled upon a 6.5 Krag with a minty bore I would bend over backwards to get it. I think I'm over that now.
