Barrel swap

[madsenshooter]

Over the past couple days I got the barrel off the parkerized Krag, I had ringed the neck of the chamber shooting cast with a filler called Puf-Lon. Besides that, after the parkerizing wore out of the inside of the barrel, I discovered some pitting from where the guy didn't get the parkerizing solution neutralized inside. The barrel had the square shank, no rounded edge, so it was either original to the 1895 made rifle, or replaced before 1899.

The donor barrel came out of a late 1898 receiver. In addition to the P proof stamp, there is a 5 pointed star that has a little circle of unstamped material in the center, below the P. Though Mallory and others say the star-gauged barrels weren't marked, I find this hard to believe. If they weren't permanently marked in some way, guys would have been selling service grade barrels along with the star-gauged measurement cards! The chamber on this late made barrel is a tad tighter than the old barrel thanks to changes made circa 1899, and I've slugged the bore several times. I come up with .299/.308 at both ends. The crown on this barrel is in better shape that the old one too. Someone had cut a little angle on the inside edge of the crown of the old one. I could rock a bullet put point down in the muzzle back and forth a little in it, not so the new one.

I thought about parkerizing the replacement barrel, but the bluing is in good shape, why wreck it? Surprisingly, at the end of the change, no bubba bumps were to be found on either of the receivers or barrels.

[mhb]

Sounds like...

your new barrel should be a good one. If you do decied to have it parkerized, please make sure whoever does it knows enough to plug the bore tightly at both ends before dunking it - the bore should NEVER be parkerized.

mhb - Mike

[madsenshooter]

I recall reading that, and guys saying the heat will expand the air and force the plugs out anyway. Don't know why this one was parked internally, but some of the other parts weren't taken off and parked individually either (beautiful blue under the sight). I think a Veteran's organization in the Carolinas had a lot of them to do, and the guy doing it wanted to hurry up and be done with the job. I've seen several they sold. Most of the exposed barrel is brown, so it doesn't stick out real bad, unlike the unparkerized 92 sideplate I have on it. That I can fix! Oh, I have seen a couple other barrels with this odd star stamp, one on ebay not long ago. Of course with the way the condition of Krag barrels go, that star might not mean anything anymore, the one on ebay was in poor shape.

[PhillipM]

Though Mallory and others say the star-gauged barrels weren't marked, I find this hard to believe. If they weren't permanently marked in some way, guys would have been selling service grade barrels along with the star-gauged measurement cards!

I don't know about Krags, but early star gauged 03 barrels did not have the "squashed turtle" on the muzzle but did have the card number stamped under the handguard.

[mhb]

The originally parkerized U.S. government barrels...

were carefully plugged to prevent the solution from etching the bore surface - they made millions of barrels that way, and thereby demonstrated that it can be done successfully. The fact that they did it that way (taking care to protect the bore) indicates that they believed it was necessary - and I think so, too.

mhb - Mike