A $39 Austrian Steyr 8x56 becomes useful ................... in 30-40 Krag :-)
................I suppose most of us can remember when the M95 Austrian 8x56R straight pulls were plentiful starting out at around $39. In any event I had an 01 FFL at the time and other then a 'Parts Gun' that's about what they cost. Brass was all Berdan primed and corrosive as all heck (just had to look at a few bores, and you KNEW) However they were fun, and some of the better ones were actually accurate enough to fool with. I converted some of the original brass to use shotshell primers, but with most any load, they'd pierce.
Still, ammo was the problem so my first effort was to find something commonly available that was at least CLOSE enough to use. That turned out to be the 30-40 Krag. Other then the actual gunsmithing to the donor carbine, getting the Krag brass and the Steyr clips to work was fairly simple.
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Step one was to get a gunsmith to screw on a barrel, then chamber it for the 30-40 Krag.
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Once that was done, you could engine turn the bolt for a bit of flair. Also add an improved rear sight.
http://www.fototime.com/3F99F55C9811736/standard.jpg
Then a forend tip was added, AND I got to try my hand at checkering for the first try. Came out okay, but a bit coarse.
http://www.fototime.com/3087EED46CD026B/standard.jpg
A front sight base was made up from a piece of scrap low carbon steel, and silver soldered to the barrel.
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Finally the mods required to have the original clips perform with the new cartridge were performed. They were narrowed both at the top to have the rounds present correctly to the chamber. Plus the vertical lips of the clips also had to be bent inward together enough to retain the slimmer Krag round.
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Finally, the bottom inside of each clip had to be bent inward enough to keep the slimmer case bodies from escaping out the bottom. That idiotic PINK (for God's sake) printing says: "The top cartridge is at almost the same feed angle. To keep the smaller OD 30-40 cases from rattling, a small bend upwards and to the inside is made. It's just barely visible here on the outside. The white square is around the inward bent portion.
................Buckshot