Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Mausers and Military Rifles Krag redux

I just finished re-doing a Krag sporter. It's stock was a very clunky 60's vintage Bishop aftermarket stock, with the obligatory Monte Carlo cheek piece and enough wood left in the forearm to heat my house in December. I slimmed it down, re-worked the cheek piece into a flat pancake style, removed the cheesy black plastic forearm tip and replaced it with ebony, ditto the grip cap. It's still a work in process - the metal will be rust blued and the Redfield No-Drill receiver sight replaced with a new old stock Lyman 48K I've been hoarding. (Weird in that the wood was cut out for the Lyman sight but they never d/t'ed the receiver for the Lyman sight and used the Redfield instead.)

Original barrel and chamber with beautiful crisp bore. Weight is now 8 pounds even, down from 8 pounds 9 ounces. Over half pound of wood removed in the slimming process!

That's 11 coats glossy spar varnish, blocked out between coats, final coat rubbed out and waxed for a soft luster. Lost the side checkering panels on the forearm in the process, but saved the big diamond pattern on the bottom - debating whether to leave it alone or re-create the side panels. Most likely leave it alone.

That's a beaut, Gary. Nicely done! Cool that you have the 48 to put on it.

That came out beautifully,thanks for posting.

Cool old rifle.

I’d hunt with that one! Nice work.

I have an FN (yup, another one!) on the way, made the same year I put in my first appearance. Nice wood, but no checkering. Appears from pics that the stock was cut in front of the bolt for a receiver sight, then filled nicely. Since scoped guns are like mice around her, I may just fit a peep and call it good. Depends somewhat on the height of the comb. Probably have to replace that tiny factory bead with a cut-down Skinner too. Looks fragile.

Since I got real store-bought eyeglasses last Winter, irons are on the table again.

I hear ya, Pappy. I'm going in for cataract surgery in two weeks. Told the surgeon I want a lens that'll put me back in the iron sights game.

Crap. I re-weighed the thing on a digital scale and got 8 pounds 4 ounces. Don't know which scale to believe, but leaning toward the digital one. Oh well, still a significant weight loss.

Regardless of the amount of weight reduction it looks great. You did some good work there. A definite keeper.

super cool and way nice!!!!!

I had that done last month. It made a yuge 😮 difference.

Nice job on that Krag. I like that.

Not yet for me. Nothing really there as yet. Passed my driver’s eye test without specs. Just need a touch of correction at distance, but +2.50 up close.

My talents are in the appreciation of others' works and... Procrastination. Unlike the handsome O/P's rifle here, under my watch on the Bridge, I've prevented an unknown number of Bubbas, just by self restraint! I've played with delving into gunsmithing stuff. Yet ultimately, most of my rifles have avoided "Bubba harm", saved ultimately by procrastination! ; "Procrastination does pay!".

When speaking of US Krag sporters, they seem to be one of the greatest genre for 'utility sporter' potential'. That is, doing most with least! Witness all the now suspect "fake Krag Carbines". Modified rifles. Most all, my contention, "without intent to fake". Alterations now, most a century old! Sporting modifications simply logical, consistent and simple; by chance only as emulating the Carbine design. I have four such alterations in various quite similar 'flavors' plus my surely 'pro', full stock model! One of its occasional appearances, below.

The Krag, US & Norwegian, interesting animals and adding their own flavor in my rifle collecting life!
Thanks for sharing that really nice sporter iteration above!
Best!
John

Well done Gary - nice classy sporter!!

Just picked up a full length stocked Krag in .25 Krag that needs this kind of treatment (plus a little welding - seems someone wasn’t quite sure what and where they wanted to mount a receiver sight(s) and or scope?? Or they tried reducing weight by Swiss cheesing the receiver🥴😄).

PennDog

Well done Gary

A beaut!

Nice rifle, gnoahhh. I really dig a well done krag sporter.

Thanks, fellas. I love un-Bubba-ing old hack jobs.

Ted, I'm bringing it to Noxen next week to wring out some cast loads. You (and anybody else) can feel free to shoot it!

Pretty dawg gone cool! Great job!!!

Man, what you got against MC cheek pieces?

They don't work for a pre-war style sporter built with a 120 year old barreled action.😁

I have always had soft spot for the 30/40 Krag cartridge, I'm sure it is the long neck on the cartridge for the heavier 220 gaib bullets. Nice rifle...great job on the redo.

Nice job on a neat project, thanks for sharing.

The .30 US Army cartridge with 220 grain round nose bullet is probably my all time favorite rifle cartridge.

Reverend Kaywoodie, it's one of what I call my Holy .30 Caliber Trinity - .30 Gov't, .30 Army, and .30 WCF (.30-06, .30-40, .30-30). The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!

Brother gnoahhh, I couldn’t agree more!!!!

I have always been curios as very little has been written on the 30/40 Krag cartridge in the latter 1890's at the .30 U. S. Army being a more powerful alternative to the predominately carried 30-30 lever action at the time.

I think the 30/40 krag has the coolest looking rim!

Wonder why it wasn’t wildcatted more?

Beautiful job on yours Gary

Well done.

I gotta get your help on mine sometime.

A .25 Krag might be fun! 🙂

Totally off topic, but if they weren’t so expensive and well, rare, I think a 6mm Lee Navy would be just down right fun!!! I mean of an affordable and shooting quality one could be had. You know? They other Winchester 1895.

Ok. Back on subject.

Thanks, John. Let's make it happen!

In that brief time when the .30-40 was king of the .30 caliber hill, astute gunners did rate it as more desirable than the smaller .30's. It's just that A) Krags weren't available to the general public, and wouldn't be until well after the adoption of the '03 Springfield, and B) the few commercial guns that shot it were heavy and somewhat clumsy compared to the '94 Winchester and M1899 Savage and their "lesser" chamberings (sorry Bre'r Kaywoodie, I respect your fascination with the M95 Winchester!). The only alternative was the Winchester M1885 High Wall in .30-40 and it wasn't a lightweight gun either with its #2 or #3 weight 28-30" barrel, and by then single shots for hunting use were becoming obsolete overnight anyway.

Be still my beating heart when you mention a .25 Krag! Ballistic twin to the .257 Roberts, especially in a hell-for-stout High Wall.

A 6mm Lee-Navy straight-pull is on my short list. I know where there's a minty original Navy-issue one, with bayonet, whose owner thinks I should own it - if we can reach an accord.

Very nicely done Gary! I'm sure you will be launching wheel weights, perhaps Lyman 311284's, out of that one but, what about those of you who don't cast? What bullets do you use?

Thanks, Joe. Yeah, good old Lyman/Ideal 311284 is my go-to favorite in a Krag, but there are others too. A long nosed old NEI Walt Melander-era 220 grainer is right up there also. I've hunted with soft (10-12bhn) 311284's and they kill ok, but I've always wanted a hollow point version for that work. Thinking hard about sending one my three molds of that persuasion out to be hollowpointed.

When I shoot jacketed in .30-40 I'm predisposed to either Sierra or Hornady 180 grain RN's. Can't tell much difference in accuracy. One thing I have encountered in Krags over the years is they tend to favor RN's over spitzers, at least in my experience. Having the correct magazine cutoffs installed is pretty important in regard to feeding - there are subtle differences in them as the Krag went through its design changes.

gnoahh, I had my old bubba'ed Krag out this morning shooting Lee 170FNs over 18 gr of 2400. It's a downright fun load and accurate as well. It shoots about the same with 180 gr RCBS FPs. I shot Hornady 220 RNs in it until I ran out of them. Now it's a dedicated cast bullet rifle. I have one of the Redfield peeps that replaces the magazine cutoff, so I can somewhat hit with it. Barrel sights totally defeat my eyes nowadays.

Your Krag is a beauty! It will be a hit at any gathering you take it to. Care to share any cast loads with us?

Nice job on the Krag! I did something similar with a [bleep] stocked "sporter" I got cheap. It had a monte carlo so high I couldn't get my fat face down far enough to see the sights! I need to get a barrel band to add another screw up front and get rid of the cheesy white line under the forend tip.

Krags are an enduring icon. They may truly be antiques, but definitely retain a large degree of utility in the modern world. "Once a weapon, always a weapon."

With 220 grain cast bullets (and 180's for that matter), I've enjoyed the sweet spot engendered by 16-18 grains 4759 (yeah I have a lot of that discontinued powder on the shelf), and similar charge weights of 2400,4227, and RL-7. Jacketed 180's I only mess with IMR4831 for the little I shoot jacketed stuff in a Krag. 46 grains does it for me with excellent accuracy and safe pressure. If I were to pursue the jacketed stuff in the future I would definitely include 4350 in the mix - lots of load data out there.

The old rule of thumb "back in the day" was 2000fps with a 220, and 2400fps with a 180, using medium burn rate powders. When the .30-40 was becoming long in the tooth at the turn of the century after only around 10 years of service (if you think technology is advancing at a fast pace today it was very similar back then too), Army Ordnance upped the 220 grain service velocity to 2200 fps in an effort to keep the Krag competitive with everybody else. Reports started coming in from the field about locking lugs cracking under the added strain, so they nixed that idea and went back to 2000 fps and life was good again. Modern handloaders would be wise, IMO, to heed that lesson learned the hard way by the ancients. Don't worry, the Krag at that level of performance will still kill anything that needs killing just as well now as it has proven over 130 years of use.

"Don't worry, the Krag at that level of performance will still kill anything that needs killing just as well now as it has proven over 130 years of use."


👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍

Amen!!!

Wasn't it Elmer Keith who once opined that, "The old Krag hits hard" ?

Yeah, him and every other salty old woods runner back in the day!

I have a Krag rifle and a carbine. They shoot fairly well - three shot groups. I have a couple molds close in the 170 to 180 grain range.
Now I gotta get them out again and see what I can do with them. They are not collector grade. Bubba did him self proud on one.

Sorry! Please forgive!!! But I just gotta post it again. The old .30 Army ctg. does do the job!

I dunno, Kaywoodie, that critter doesn't look dead enough. Coulda, shoulda, woulda used a magnum of some sort with at least a 50mm exotic scope and $5 apiece cartridges to make it deader. Or not....

I love those old sporterized Krags.

Well done.

Been looking for a krag that is bubba'ed but still has a good barrel. Seems most I see the barrels are plain wore out. But yours is looking great Gnoahhh..mb

Bob, the solution might be to snag a Krag with a good action and crap barrel and then re-barrel with a new Criterion barrel from the CMP (or direct from Criterion, a division of Krieger). They aren't expensive, as such things go, and shoot great - at least the handful of Criterion barrels I have on U.S. milsurps do. Since I haven't had a need to go that route recently I can't speak to current availability, but I would certainly explore that avenue if contemplating another project.

Several years ago my old boss who retired called me and said he was moving to Virginia and was I interested in buying this. So I did. Minty bore. Piled it with all the other Krag sporters in the safe!

Additional Krag porn



I just love these old things.

Things of beauty and a joy forever!

😍😍😍

Oh man.

Those are awesome.

If you die or need money think of Flave please.

Ok. 😉

Now that top rifle in the pic is a thing of beauty!

When I was a kid, long before I could drive, I still had the Jones for a good deer rifle. I was at the grocery store, (rode my bicycle to the store for Mom), and saw, on the bulletin board of the small town store, an ad for two (2) Krag carbines, at prices I couldn't afford. I had to shuttle them off in the back of my mind, because I knew, even with help, I couldn't afford one, let alone two.
I also missed a real Lee Enfield jungle carbine that ended up going for $8 at the farm auction, a little later.
I'm probably better off not getting them, as that was a rabbit hole I couldn't have crawled out of. Missouri farmers had eclectic tastes, even back then.

They all are.

Krags , Oh My,

My first sporter was a krag. Bought several out of racks at the LGS. $ 40.00 / each.

I sported up one and shot it quite a bit. One does that when not a lot of options.

It too was heavy but shot well. In the '60's .

This thread has got me going ...have to shoot it.

Lovely rifles on the pics.

The top rifle has a Sedgley like appearance, I've owned several Sedgley Springfields but never seen a Krag. On occasion Sedgley would do rifles other than Springfields, I owned an 1895 Winchester SRC that Sedgley had customized including machining a Lyman 48 receiver sight to fit..

It wasn’t a Sedgley. But it was a nice rifle. I gave that rifle to a friend several years back. But I still have the other remaining three in those two pics.

I had a Sedgley Krag back in another lifetime. It was a strange duck - they removed the box magazine and jerry-rigged the magazine to function without it, making it a three shooter (one up the spout and two in the magazine) and it fed smoothly. Cartridges fed into the magazine from topside. The forearm wood blended smoothly right over where the box had been. A very graceful rifle that I wish I still had, but it went away in the "great gun sell-off back then to finance a real estate purchase".

I had to believe it was built by Sedgley, what with all the Sedgely markings. I suppose a skilled craftsman could've altered the action at a later date, and crafted a new stock, but I doubt it.

Sedgley Krags.

https://www.doublegunshop.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=348555

Thanks for the nostalgic link. M.Petrov and I had a couple pleasant phone conversations regarding Krag sporters instigated by that old thread.

The real expert on the subject passed away a few years ago - Mark Benenson. (He was here on the Fire occasionally under the name "Vigillinous"[sp]). That man had an incredible collection of jaw-dropping Krag sporters.

Thanks for link! I enjoyed it!!!