I have never in my 65 years found one of these for sale, neither original nor "sporterised" and have only known two guys who used them for hunting- one in the Michigan deer-woods and the other in the plains and mtns of southern Colorado. Sounds like the earlier posters have had some real fun with their rifles! It is a fine old carbine, beautifully made, accurate, and with an action as smooth as butter. He had better enjoy it, as I plan on wrestling it away from him as soon as I can. We shot at 50 yards and here's a group with the 180 grain Spitzers.Īnd here are 5 shots with the Sierra 165 grain BTHPs. We started with some Remington factory loads, and they were "okay", but not too great. We shot at 50 yards, a good range for iron sights and old eyes. I kept the pressures down with medium loads.
#Springfield 1898 sniper rifle manuals
The reloading manuals stated the Krags usually shoot heavy. I had reloaded some rounds with some 180 grain bullets and some 165 grain bullets. To remove the bolt for cleaning, you must lift the extractor…Īnd then open the bolt more to the left and pull it out of the action. The trigger guard was made when trigger guards were milled, not stamped.
The rear sight has markings to 2,000 yards, a pretty ambitious range. Ted is considering opening up the peep sight a little to make it more useful. We also noticed that it was mounted at a rather severe angle, and this made looking through it very difficult. We found the aperture sight to be too small to easily see through. It also has a flip-up aperture sight, which is a very neat idea. The rear sight has a very fine patridge type sight. It arranges the cartridges to load into the chamber from the 8 o'clock position. You can just drop them in, as it didn't seem to be a problem for this action to line them up properly. This will open the magazine and allow bullets to be inserted into the magazine. You just use your thumb to open the magazine. The loading gate for the magazine gives this rifle its distinctive look, as no other American military rifle had such a system. Ted will be looking for a replacement sight. The front sight is a blade, and, as you can see, this one has been damaged, probably by being dropped on the sight. This was thought to be an advantage to keep the soldiers from emptying their rifles by firing too fast. If flipped upwards, this will allow all rounds in the magazine to feed. It enables the soldier to single load the rifle by applying the cut-off. The lever above the trigger enables a "magazine cut-off" that was very popular with the military brass back in those days. The left side of the action is kind of rounded. The carbine has a steel butt plate, with an oiler compartment.
#Springfield 1898 sniper rifle plus
This was considered a big plus when it was adopted, but the later Mauser method of using stripper clips to load the magazine made it less of an issue. It consists of a magazine that holds 5 cartridges, but a gate can be opened to allow "topping-off" of a partially emptied magazine with loose rounds. The rifle Ted got is actually a Krag Carbine, with a barrel slightly shorter than the Krag Rifle. But it was out-classed by the Spanish Mauser in the Spanish-American War, and the War Department decided to replace it with the 1903 Springfield. Many writers have spoken of the "buttery smooth" Krag bolt action. It has a reputation of being one of the smoothest bolt actions ever built, and deservedly so. It was used in the Philippine War and a song of that time even spoke of the rifle. The military only used this rifle for about 11 years, from 1892 to 1903, giving it the dubious distinction of having the shortest life span of any US military rifle. It has a rim, but an unusual "rebated rim", as compared to other rimmed cartridges, such as this. It made just less than 2,000 fps, which was kind of hot in that day. 30-40 Krag round, which was originally a smokeless cartridge that shot a 220 grain round nose bullet over 40 grains of a smokeless powder. But in the US, it was usually shortened to just "the Krag". It was designated the Krag-Jorgensen rifle. The rifle that was selected was based on the Norwegian design by two men named Krag and Jorgensen. 30-40 Krag was adopted by the US military in 1894 as the military's first smokeless powder cartridge. It was dirty, but I cleaned it up for him and under that grime was one of the cleanest Krags I've ever seen, with a "Perfect" bore. Ted found an example at a pawn shop and got it for a very reasonable price. 30-40 Krag rifle, but never found one in great condition that wasn't priced at way more than I wanted to pay for one.īut the next best thing happened… My buddy Ted bought one that I can shoot.