what would you build on this action????... 6.5x55???... 7x757???...ideas???....

Krags are notorious for only one locking lug and steels from the 1800s. Good but not great. 40K CUP was pushing it. AND it is a rimmed cartridge. .303 Brit is an almost identical case, but modern ammo a bit warm. Original 7x57 or rolling block loads should be o.k. You can find 7x57 rimmed if you look hard enough. Mike Bellm/ bellmtcs.com has a line of semi wildcats, .444 Marlin case necked to 7mm, .30, or ??? and reloaded with a 444 shell holder and the .308 family dies. I would not work these at pressures for modern actions. I am lead to believe that the .30/30 is possible. Again, modern loads "warm to hot" for this action. The .30/30 rim family in the black powder pressures would be a great option. .32/40 was the target cartridge for a long time. .38/55 was close. There was, I have read, a .28/30. Factory ammo for these should not overwork your machinery. .25/35 maybe a bit warm.

You can have the action and bolt "magnafluxed" or "crack checked" at any auto parts machine shot that does blocks. There are several methods. Magnaflux is one.

Nice piece of history, but I would not "push it." Luck.

quote:

Originally posted by SDH:

i understand....

There are old tales of the locking lug breaking off of the bolt....or so I thought until I found a Krag bolt in box of stuff at a gun show with the lug broken off.

Well, if it's an American Krag Jorgensen, the .30-40 is probably your best bet. It's a great cartridge as SDH attests. A .405 Winchester is also possible without too much alteration of the feeding, but the .405 has relatively limited use.

If you like the 6.5 X 55 (as I do), find a Norwegian Krag -- that's the original caliber in those. The steel and treatment is supposed to be better in the Norway Krags. The bolt guide on the Norway Krags (unlike the American Krag) contacts the recever and acts as a sort of secondary lug.

About the single lug cracking on American Krags, on one of the Krag forums a few years ago, one of the correspondents shared the results of his experiments where he cut off the single lug and fired the rifle (presumably tied to a tire). This meant relying on the bolt guide and the bolt handle alone to contain the pressure resulting from firing. All was well, no ruptured case.

Believe it or not, new aresenal bolts are available from a guy in Pennsylvania wha advertises in Shotgun News.

6.5 x 57 rimmed is also a nice case if you want to go lighter.

I have Krags in .30-40, .30-30, .25-35, and .38-55 with unaltered locking lugs. Also in .405 WCF and .35 WCF with the bolt altered so the bolt guide bears on the rear of the receiver and acts as a second locking lug. The single lug will not take much pressure, Sedgely tried making rifles in .250-3000 in the 1930s and found the lugs cracked. I would say that .303 British is too hot, ditto the various Euro rimmed 57mm length loads. .22HP Savage and .219 Zipper might be OK.

Vigillinus,
In the Sedgley .25-35 I have, the cartridge feeding mechanism has been non-trivially altered to feed this shorter cartidge reliably.
Is it also so with your non .30-40 rifles ?

Is there a gunsmith around who knows how to do this alteration today?

Kurtv, in Krags for the shorter cartrdiges, the magazines are altered in more or less Sedgely style. Curiously, in my .25-35 Griffin & Howe, the work is much sloppier than in the Sedgely .25-35.

When those actions first became available a common conversion was the 25 Krag.That's a 30-40 Krag just necked down to .25. The pressure limits however limit it to 250 Savage equivalent.
Never work on a Krag until you have mag particle tested the bolt for cracks in the lugs !! I wonder how many of the cracked ones were caused by design factors, metallurgy problems , or loading hot .