The attack on the pile

[Culpeper]

Grabbed hold of one of the krags in "The Pile" today. 420xxx rifle with a 1903 stock. oh yea she's a pretty girl. Then I reached for the muzzle gauge. The krag swallowed the gauge faster than Aunt Martha can choke down a whole chicken at the church social. The only thing left to do is see how it shoots some day.

>:(

[reincarnated]

What is equally important is the diameter of the bore & grooves at the breech. If the inside is uniform, you can deal with oversize. There are a lot of good .30-.31-.32 bullets out there. Slug the bore from both ends.

[Culpeper]

Sounds like a good idea. Will get on it and see how it turns out. I figure they counter bored the it for a reason but, gee whiz, I have a garand and a couple of other rifles like that. Sheesh. Sometimes a guy can't get a break. However, I have a 1917 that is one shootin' sonofab!tch that has a counter bored barrel that I would not trade for anything.

[Culpeper]

Just checked. .312. Not very strong rifling. Will see how it shoots on the 16th.

So who is a good krag man for spinning on a new barrel and front sight just in case it is a dog? A private meassage will work if you guys want to keep the name private.

[Ned Butts]

CMP comes to mind first

[psteinmayer]

+1 on that... Go with the CMP. Don't know if you'd get it done in time for Perry... but give em a call and see what they say.

As for Aunt Martha... give her a bucket of water to wash that chicken down, and stand by in case she needs the Heimlich!

Hey by the way... When you figurin on heading this a way? There's a Michigan Antique Arms Collector's show on Apr 23/24, and ALWAYS lots of nice Krags and such to be found there!

[Culpeper]

My only goal for the year is to get the 1895 back for a shot at Camp Perry. The rest of the Krags, enfields (ours and theirs), errant Springfields, berthiers, swiss, and Winchesters are running second best to that goal. I should have a couple of shooters in the bunch of Krags I have in the pile.

Picked up a couple of more boxes of Winchester and Remington in Gettysburg a few days ago.

:)

[Mark_Daiute]

your rifle will probably shoot cast better than jacket. Been there, got the T-shirt!

[reincarnated]

I wrote earlier that there are good (+ some less good) jacketed bullets in .30 and .31 caliber. Once you start down that route, you need to find safe ways to keep both bullets and loaded cartridges separate, for your own safety. I have Hornady and Sierra .311 bullets, and once they are out of the box, they are hard to tell from the smaller diameter bullets.

Another source is salvaged bullets from 7.62x54R military cartridges. I pulled bullets from a few hundred steel cased rounds bought cheap. Bullet diameters ranged from .308 to .316, with numbers distributed in a bell-shaped curve. Most of the bullets were .310 or .311, but there were plenty of .312s. If you try that route, you can also salvage the powder. And in today's world you can then sell somebody the primed cases.

When I first found the fat .315 & .316 bullets, I looked for loaded samples. Those I found would not chamber in the 2 rifles I had on hand. Pity the poor soldier.

[Culpeper]

I think I could just use good book keeping and labelling for inventory control. Plus having limited amounts would lend itself to safety very well. Perhaps forty cartridges or less of a given load during development. I have plenty of thirty caliber ammo cans that can be assigned to any given serial number and not have to worry about creating orphan components. Everything else stays in its original box just like primers and powder.

Of course I could just cast my own when the Sierras run out. I have one hundred and eighty-five pounds of Rotometals Lino laying around looking for something to do.