American Rifleman Krag Articles - Late 1920s...and I neat DCM Letter

[rcathey]

Fellow Krag enthusiasts,

I happened across a very neat lot of old papers on eBay solely dealing with the Krag. It would appear to be the cache of info from a long gone gunsmith as it included many notecards with hand written information pertaining to Krags.

I decided I would share these documents with the folks here because they're pretty neat!

Also, I never heard of the subcaliber round described in the letter from the DCM.

Enjoy

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Information

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[rcathey]

And to keep things a bit straighter, here's a multi-page document.
I have PDFs but I couldn't figure out how to attach those.

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[Doco overboard]

I used a similar method to the article for installing banded front sites when I put a CBI barrel on a Krag. Before I soldered in place I used a piece of mono stretched tight through the rear aperture and was able to plumb it up very nicely.
Thanks for taking the time to share what you found.Attachment 94468

[rcathey]

That’s a nice tip!
Happy to share. I have a few more pages but they seem all jumbled. I’ll have to get those sorted out before sharing.
Some of his handwritten notes are interesting too.

[butlersrangers]

Attached photographs show sub-caliber devices utilized by U.S. Navy and U.S. Army for cheap practice and artillery training.

The devices used modified U.S. Krag actions and fired the ammunition mentioned in rcathey's (posted) DCM/D.O.D. letter.

The Naval device bolted to the side of a deck gun and was fired parallel to the artillery gun bore. The Army device (excavated on Bannerman's Island) screwed into the breech threads of larger artillery pieces to fire through the artillery bore.

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[rcathey]

Thanks for sharing that, BR. I was curious what the devices looked like.
Didn’t imagine it would so clearly be a case of, “well let’s just strap a Krag to it!” Haha

[browningautorifle]

screwed into the breech threads of larger artillery pieces to fire through the artillery bore.

Like a 1903A2...I should think? More or less...

[Fred G.]

Wow! That’s neat!

[butlersrangers]

A couple of years back, a Krag Collectors Association Forum member, "Marksc", had a rather mysterious Krag carbine, that had No Serial Number.

When he pictured the action, outside of its altered carbine stock, things got interesting:

No serial number, receiver not fully machined, and a small "W" on the front of the receiver ring. (The carbine stock had extra wood removed to accommodate the irregular receiver shape).

A possible rationale:
Partially shaped/proofed/unnumbered Krag action was sent from Springfield to Watervliet Arsenal for fabrication into a sub-caliber artillery device.
The surplus sub-caliber device, years later, was salvaged at Bannerman's, or another dealer, and made into a low cost Krag 'sporter'.

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[browningautorifle]

Neat, odd, one off...