doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion Classic & Custom Single Barreled Sporting Rifles @ doublegunshop.com Sporterizing the Krag

The mounts on the C.C. Johnson rifle look they are a work of art. Thanks for posting the picture. Terry H.

A nice conversion, thanks for sharing. Is it a repeater?

[quote=Michael Petrov]A nice conversion, thanks for sharing. Is it a repeater?

I wish, but sadly no, it is a single shot.

John

A Krag repeater for either Lovell wildcat would be a thing of wonder. There is a .22 Hornet repeater down South somewhere, it was offered to me a few years ago and had been written up in American Rifleman before WWII. The conversion was accomplished by putting a Savage 23D magazine in sideways. Clever and ugly. Repeaters have been made for most cartridges with .30-40 and .30-30 head sizes. Sedgely tried .250-3000, the lug cracked but the magazine worked. I had a Sedgely .25 Remington for a while but the bore was rough so it went. There may have been other calibre repeaters I haven't encountered or read about. A Sedgely catalog would probably list them.

mhbenenson said: "...you would think that anyone who could do such a neat job could have managed the inletting..."

That era's gun cranks included some very very frugal men. I wouldn't be surprised if the cost diffence between a fullstock and a halfstock blank caused the design.

Yeti, I think you are spot on in your assessment that the types of conversions discussed in this thread were economy motivated above all else. WJW (AKA Bill W.) graciously scanned and forwarded a 1938 article from American Rifleman, by T.B Gresham, related to sporterizing readily available surplus rifles of the day. The very first picture in the article illustrated the method that was most assuredly used to graft the sporter butt stock to the Krag fore stock we have been discussing. It shows the stock, cut off 4" to the rear of the tang, with three inches of the remaining grip area turned down to a 1 1/4" dowel in a lathe. At this point it is apparently ready for joining a block of walnut for shaping into a butt stock. The article even referenced earlier articles that discussed filling in the finger grooves of Springfield and Krags for a cleaner appearance. There is discussion comparing the economical value of doing this conversion, compared to fitting a semi inletted/shaped stock, and I think this supports Yeti's comment above. I love the old articles, like Gresham's, and books like James Howe's 1941 "Modern Gunsmith", which take the reader back to the days firearms were made out of steel and men were too. Thanks Bill W. for sending me the article. Terry H.

Lets see some pics of your sporters! I have found a gun that has been hacked on a bit but all the metal is in good shape. I need some ideas to see what I want to have done to the new project! Best-JB