Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Does 30-40 Kragg safely fire in a .303 Brit?

Slightly off topic, but havent guys rebarreled Siamese Mausers to 30-40 Krag?

Yep, and .45-70, and .348, and.....just about any large-ish rimmed cartridge that's of a length to fit in the magazine. The big attraction for them in that regard was their slanted magazine box which was designed for fat rimmed cartridges.

You might enjoy this:

Mine has been sporterized, so it didn't bother me to install a Lyman aperture sight on the receiver.
The original rear sight had already been changed out.
I was hoping for a 200 yd rifle, but doesn't group at 100, I have tried a variety of off the shelf ammo.

I would like to try some 160 g round nose loads, but need to buy a set of dies.

The reciever is in nice shape, I want to say its stamped 1913, 3 digit serial number.

Yes, I happen to have one.

Nothing wrong with 160 gr in the Krag Jorgensen, but if you can get the S&B 156 gr, they're cheaper too, and they work very well with a variety of powders. I suspect the profile of the S&B acts as a bore riding nose. The bore diameter of my 1894 KJ is .257...yours may vary.

My only 30-40 Krag and 303 British rifles are Winchester 95 carbines. The 303 probably walked across the Canadian border from the eastern townships of Quebec into either northern NH or VT by some woodsman who worked for the Brown Company in Berlin, NH, and sold it when he needed beer or brothel money.

The nicest Krag that I ever owned was a Mannlicher-stocked rifle that Vermont 'smith Wilbur Hauck put together. Sadly, I had to sell it to pay the bills back in 1983 when my first marriage failed and my ex-wifes's goodbye gift was to cash advance our joint credit card account to the tune of $5K at 21%.

My only Krag is a sporterized Norwegian, #921xx, don't remember what year it was made and never knew what its original configuration was, as I bought it this way.

3 more rifles that I must not need, as I haven't shot any of them within recent memory.

JOC's first deer died via a sporterized 30-40 Krag that he'd bought from a hobo for $1.50.

You can read about it on pages 96 thru 98 of The Hunting Rifle.

Back to the OP. The 30-40 Kraig had a service life of less than 7 years before it was replaced by the 1903 Springfield, later to become the 03-A3. They were sold off cheap and a lot of folks bought them as a deer rifle, shot it and put it away dirty without cleaning it. Corrosive powder ate the bore, and there aren't too many on the market with good bores.

The 303 case is 2.222 oal is 3.075 bullet dia .312 Mpa 365.00
30-40 case is 2.314 oal is 3.089 Bullet dia .308 Mpa 325.00

Yea, it might chamber, but the .312 bullet in a .308 bore will cause pressure issues. The higher operating pressure of the 303 compound the pressure issue.

Can you fire a 303 Brit in a 30-40 Kraig? Probably. Is it dangerous? I might be bold, and I might be brave, but you're first!

Haven't read the thread yet, but I would point out that it would have been better to start it on Sunday, which is the traditional day for sermons.

I would look for a better bad idea.

H. M. Pope – Last of the Great Gunsmiths by Lucian Cary

Harry Pope has always taken the same attitude toward more important matters, he was asked, after he became famous, to select the barrels for an American rifle team going abroad to shoot a rifle match. The conditions called for military rifles and at the time the military rifle of the United States was the Krag-Jorgensen, The Krag was made at Springfield Armory which was then, as now, a first rate shop. However Springfield was having trouble in keeping the interior of the Krag barrels to specifications. The theory was, as it still is, that a bullet with a hard metal jacket should have the same diameter as the groove diameter of the barrel in which it was shot. The standard diameter of the Krag bullet was .308, and so was the standard groove diameter of the Krag barrel. However, Krag barrels were coming off the machines bigger than .308, sometimes as big as .315, and the bigger barrels were not accurate. Pope went to Springfield Armory with a pocket full of buckshot, a machinist’s hammer, a hardwood punch and a micrometer caliper. The superintendent greeted him with courtesy and asked him what he wanted. Pope replied that he wanted a bench with a vise, a cleaning rod, and a rack of new Krag barrels, so the superintendent showed him to a bench and had a man wheel in a rack of barrels. Pope put a barrel in the vise and laid his hat upside down under the breech end. He tapped the buckshot into the muzzle with his wooden plug, so it filled the barrel to the bottom of the grooves, he then pushed his lead slug through the bore with a cleaning rod, caught it in his hat so that it wouldn’t be mutilated, and measured it with his micrometer caliper. “What are you doing?” the superintendent asked. “Measuring the groove diameter of the barrel.” Pope replied. “But you can’t do it that way.” “Why Not?” “Because the lead expands when it comes out the end of the barrel.” “Well now,” Pope replied, “I’ve never heard of that. Have you got a gauge with a hole in it of known size?” The superintendent found a gauge with a .300 hole in it, and both Pope and the superintendent checked it, and then Pope drove one of his buckshot through the hole in the gauge and then handed it to the superintendent. The lead slug hadn’t expanded after going through the hole, it measured .300. Since the superintendent was an honest man, he admitted that Pope was right and he was wrong. When Pope had finished his job of selecting twenty Krag barrels, two for each member of the team, with the groove diameter of .308. The superintendent showed Pope the elaborate and expensive gauge that Springfield Armory had been using to measure the inside of the Krag barrels, and Pope showed him why the gauge was so inaccurate that it couldn’t be relied upon to tell the difference between a barrel with a groove diameter of .308 and one of .315.



i have a late model (1903) Krag that was dirty as all heck. it took me 5 or 6 days to make the bore bare steel. i had cupronickel shavings, black gunk, brass shavings, black gunk, brass spirals, black gunk, bluish-green patches, black gunk and black gunk. i measured the lead slug at .3085". i know i have good one. it shoots (.311") 165gr Ranch Dog with H4198 that goes 1926fps. i have killed 12 - 13 deer with the Krag. i've seen a '96 Krag that has a .3135" bore.

most of the Springfield Armory Krag's barrel are clean. but i've seen the Krag with a sewer pipe barrel.

100 yard target/bench with a Redfield 102K aperture sight. every one them are (173gr actually) 165gr Ranch Dog



[img]https://i.imgur.com/eqVnKIw.jpg?2[/img]

7 - 10 are a group, 1 - 6 are sighters.



my great grandfather bought the Krag for $2. Great grandfather, grandfather, dad, uncle (RIP guys) had the Krag. it was given to me by my grandfather. my oldest son will have it next.

No doubt, there are good Kraigs out there. They are butter smooth interesting rifles but, (OP) would you shoot a 303 Brit out of a 30-40 Kraig? Military FMJs are not hand loads. I repeat myself, "I may be brave...." It may work once or multiple times, but you're asking for trouble.

Back to the OP, he asked about firing a 30-40 Krag in a 303 British.
It's not a good idea, but it's not what you posted.

ooops!You're right, my bad. In that case, I believe the answer would be NO! The 30-40 is a longer cartridge.

Is Krag brass thicker than 303 brass,rim?

303 British ammunition and 7.7X58MM ammunition look similar to each other also

The most "interesting" thing I've seen in this thread (at least so far) is how many people can't spell Krag--the common name for the round, even though the U.S. military didn't call it that.

Krag comes from the primary designer of the Krag- Jorgensen action--Ole Herman Johannes Krag, who was in charge of the Norwegian military armory in Kongsberg, not far from Oslo. His main assistant was Erik Jorgensen.

Ole's last name was spelled Krag--not Kragg or Kraig, or another I have seen more than occasionally on the Internet, Craig....

Thanks John for verbalizing my pet peeve #57!

Yeah, the Army labeled it after the model years (1892, 1896, 1898, 1899). Note that the Navy didn't use the Krag. They went in an entirely different direction but that would take us too far into the weeds here.

Cartridge was known as .30 Army, and it was civilian makers who named it .30-40 after caliber and powder charge (smokeless in this case, not blackpowder) as was customary at that time. Most if not all headstamps of the era said .30 Army on them though (except government ammo which was headstamped only with initials of the arsenal where it was made and the month&year).

The .30-06 was called .30 Government early on in its lifetime, to differentiate from the .30 Army. (Small historical trivia: for a really short time when the .30 Gov't came out, in some circles it was called the ".30-45" denoting a step up in powder charge over the .30-40. You'll sometimes see the .30-45 referenced in writings from the earliest years of the century, and some loading tools were so marked also.)

Like this Ideal (predecessor of Lyman) de/re-capping tool:



You can see the stamp that shows what it was intended for, .30-45 (It doesn't work for the .30-40):



I actually used it this evening to de-cap 100 .30-06 cases.

The government's answer to the same tool. Made by Frankford Arsenal in 1909, works a treat for '06, .30-40, and .45. (Issued to military units for the purpose of reloading spent cases to create reduced load practice ammo.):

And AKA .30 US.