1898 Carbine Question

[sdkrag]

Nice carbine! Earlier in this thread I stated I had a loose 1902C sight. The spring was missing so I ordered one. Surprise, I have an 1898 base with a 1902 elevation and bar and eye piece. Interesting.

[butlersrangers]

'sdkrag' - That combination of sight parts would not have been put together by Springfield Armory. The 1898 rifle and carbine bases were likely auctioned off as scrap. The 1898 elevation ramps were too low to reuse, with the return to the slower, 2,000 f.p.s., ammo.

Some of the bases were likely made into mixmaster sights by Bannerman & Sons, Stokes-Kirk and Sedgely.

If you have a model 1898, "C" marked carbine-sight base, they are relatively rare.

[sdkrag]

That's kinda what i figured. I got the sight years ago from a friend who was a gunsmith. It's missing the elevation spring. I automatically ordered the 1902 spring based on the eyepiece. When that didn't work I read up on sights and figured it out. Just another interesting twist in the Krag. Learn something new every day. Glad I'm not too old to learn!

[Dick Hosmer]

I've been led to believe that M1898C sights are rarer than M1896C sights. If true, that's a rather big deal. I bought a whole bunch of Krag parts about 35 years ago, and very nice 98C was in one of the coffee cans - back then I just thought it was "nice". It now sits on my early 1899 carbine 227697, very close to a specimen formerly in Bill Mook's (I sure miss his phone calls) collection.

[sdkrag]

I miss those calls too. I often think of what I could of learned from Bill. I learned a lot in the few years I knew him. dick, did you ever get the chance to visit him? His 1892 rack was amazing! I wish I had 10% of his parts stash. I'm going to order the correct spring for this base and wait for that rifle to put it on.

[Kragrifle]

I still have a photo of his pool table adorned with a bevy of yellow Krags.

[sdkrag]

I was too much in awe to think of taking pictures. Fortunately a good friend Terry Johansen sent me some great 8x11 pictures that he had taken so I do have something.Terry was a great Norwegian Krag collector. He passed several years ago. Another loss to the Krag community.