After 70 years, a Danish Krag returns to life

I got this 1892 M89 Danish Krag about 18 months ago in memory of my Danish Grandfather (avatar) who served in the Danish Army from 1929-1933. I presume this rifle was a WWII bring back from the ETO as it was duffel cut. The Germans disarmed the Danes in the spring of '41 almost a year after their invasion (my mother was born on May 5, 1940, two weeks after the Germans rolled in and grew up under occupation). The confiscated arms were brought back to Germany and reissued to prison guards and rear area troops. I repaired the cut and it sat on my wall since then as I kept searching for ammo for it. I finally got some 8x58r commercial reloads just before the first big snowstorm hit last week. So after 70 years of silence, this 123 year old rifle got to speak again.

With light snow starting and 29 degrees, I thought I'd better try to get a range trip in before the next 1-2 feet of snow coming today through Tuesday make the range impassible. It almost was; only one person had used the 100 yard range last week and I did my cartoon walking impression navigating shin-to-knee deep snow to mount the target. Took about 10 rounds to find out where to aim to hit; turned out that a little under the target got me the most hits at the end. I used the kicked snow to try to found out where the bullets were going; my 7x binoculars can barely read the black at 100 yards. For whatever reason, some of the last shots started key-holing. Very slick action and almost no recoil. These commercial reloads must be on the light side unless American Krags have a similar feel, but I've never shot an American Krag; this was my first ever Krag shoot.

T

Perhaps the lands are on the weak side and when the barrel started to heat from firing, it expanded...thus the keyhole...I've had it happen before. Maybe they're undersize...maybe too long... Not much info about the ammo to go on here.

Possibly; the barrel is dark, worn, and pitted.

T

That gives you a couple of things to look at. My 30-40 Krag is very mild to shoot as well. I'm loading a lead gas check bullet right now but had loaded jackets before. Both do OK because the barrel is good. My carbine on the other hand needs an oversize bullet, about a .311 or so to work at all. If you were loading you could fiddle around and probably come up OK with yours. Probably quite good actually...

This is what happens when I leave paper around my office...

T

Well, we've seen him before...could be worse, you could be finding rabbit raisins under your pillow...

You might find some jacket fouling locked into the bore now. Could be it built up enough to squeeze those last bullets down enough that they weren't contacting the bore. I've done that with lead bullets in one of my US Krags that had a rough throat. I noticed the rounds were getting harder to chamber and pulled a large wad of lead out of the throat with a brush. The throat got polished with a stainless steel brush and it doesn't grab the bullet anymore.

Now I see lead bullets in your other post. Forget jacket fouling, lead sticking in the rough parts of the barrel, likely more in the throat than elsewhere.