Krag Collectors Association Forum

I'm a sucker for restoring half-assed 'altered' U.S. Military rifles into a respectable approximation of their original appearance.

This has become a losing proposition with U.S. Krag rifles and carbines. Krag parts have just become too expensive and hard to find, especially wood.

My last two projects have been, a Remington U.S. Rifle Model of 1917, (finished in September), and a Remington Model 1903A3, (finished today).

The model 1917 had been made into a deer rifle by chopping down the military stock, tossing the hand-guards, and grinding of the front-sight ears.
The 03A3 had its military wood replaced with an ugly commercial stock.
In addition to military wood, both rifles needed barrel-bands, butt-plates, and issue front-sights.
Fortunately, the barrels were still full-length, rear-sights were original, and no new holes had been drilled into the receivers.

The rifles now look good and should be fine shooters, with 'mint' bores.
The replacement wood was expensive and a challenge to find.

(The Springfield Model 1903 rifle, at the 'top' of the photos, was done about 12 years ago and performs well.
My boys want these rifles, someday, because I restored them).

Very nice and exceptional work as always BR!

Thanks MooseNugget, aka HomeBoy!

The 'tinkering' is good fun. Sometimes, finding 'correct' parts is like hunting.

When a project is finished, I feel pretty bonded to the firearm.

I learn a few things in the process and get to enjoy and shoot the result.

There is a tremendous amount of satisfaction restoring military surplus firearms. Not all of my restorations have resulted in excellent shooters but it sure is an added bonus when the restored firearm shoots well!

Those are nice looking rescues. It is really hard to find military rifle stocks. It took me several years to find a ww2 mauser stock. When I would see one on ebay or marketplace they were out of reach price wise. I finally found one at a moving sale near me. With all the fajen and bishop sporter stocks sold you would think there would be lots of military stocks laying around in rafters and garages. I guess most of them went into the pot belly wood stove after the rifle was sporterized.