A Krag Jørgensen rifle is not that expensive here in Norway. A nice one costs around 2000 nok. They are all chambered for 6.5x55 mm. Use ONLY low pressure loads for these,since they cannot handle high pressure loads. Fun quote from the German soldiers field manual: A Norwegian rifleman armed with a Krag is lethal up to 1000 meters range.

This'll get those damned O'Driscoll's.

Every video is like a history lesson. It's awesome

My Grandpa brought one back from the Philippines after WW2. I looked up the serial number and it was made in 1898 and wasn't issued during the Spanish-American war, but was issued to troops heading over to the Philippines during the insurrection. It was given to the providential government forces and used during the guerrillas against the Japanese. My Grandpa traded for it and brought it back to the states. I knicknamed it "Thumper" because it kicks hard and will bruise your shoulder after 5-6 rounds. It is heavy as well and would have been hard to carry all day and fight for hours with. However it is my favorite rifle because of the history and is still very accurate even to this day. It has a sight that you can flip up and adjust to 1600 yards.

It's official, I'm going to be at RIA finally And as planned, I'm going to lose all of my money

That tiger stripe on the butt stock looks real cool. It must have been absolute flashy when it was new and shiny!

Love my Krag's, I own several. Was lucky enough to buy guns when you could order out of magazines.

What a beauty! Whenever I see firearms of that era, I think that during that time period guns were the most advanced thing you might have owned. Way ahead of the times.

Still used in WW2 by the Danes. Great shots of these in use in the film' 9th April' about the German invasion of Denmark, worth watching realistic!

Greetings from Denmark - and thanks for an informative video - as always!! I have both the carbine and the infantry rifle - and the cool-factor is incredible with these rifles - especially considering rifles like these are cheaper than dirt - at least around here.

If you ever have the Chance could you make a Video on the Norwegian Version?

Got this in bf5 and just love the reload animation for it. Pretty cool rifle.

Ian, thanks so much for making a video on this rifle I absolutely love this gun

I always liked how the Krag-Jorgensen loads. You just pop open the side and throw your rounds in. I never loaded a Danish one though. I see it is a bit different.

Thanks for all vids so far man, i learned a lot since i found the channel a month ago and i am always looking forward to new ones even though i won't be able to purchase any of the items, because i love learning about them guns. I especially love the polish and german ww2 guns, so just keep 'em coming!

I am a simple Dane. I see Danish, I press like.

My uncle just had this rifle passed down to him from my Grandmother's side. This history lesson will help me look really smart and knowledgeable when he shows it to me. My Grandpa used the Norwegian model during the resistance when the Germans occupied Norway. Thanks for the video!

amazing wood on this rifle, just look at the flaming, I'd love to have a hunting rifle with such a stunning stock

There was a guy at my grandpa's VFW who talked about owning an old Krag in .30-40. This was back in the 80s. I had no idea there were that many of these still floating around!

The M89 was also made as a marksman rifle. It had a monstrous heavy barrel and diopter sights.

Ian, there *is* a secondary "safety" lug on the bolt, it is under the extractor. You can see it matching against the rear tower on the receiver, forward of the bolt handle ( I am pretty sure some one has mentioned this, by now ). Thank you for covering all of the Krag - Jorgensen rifles so nicely. (:

This video inadvertently explained to me why the 1903 Springfield shoots a cartridge made after the rifle. Thanks a lot you answered an old question of mine.

This comment got a lot longer than I planned to. I hope some of you find it interesting. Personally I consider the Danish Krag Jørgensen you got there as a prototype for the later Krag Jørgensen that were developed and produced at Kongsberg Arms Factory in Norway. In this factory alone they produced more than 230 000 Krag rifles. Note: We call Krag Jørgensen "Krag" for short in Norway. Norway is literally loaded with Krag rifles and it's pretty easy to buy one in as most of the rifles produced in Norway were produced for the Norwegian military and the Norwegian marked as hunting rifles. I believe it was only a small number of rifles that were exported. Unfortunately many rifles were worn out or hidden from the Nazis in the woods and not good environment for guns, so some of them are pretty damaged by rust, but compared to it's age it's obvious that they used good quality steel. I think it's a beautiful gun that stand out from the crowd of rifles from that time period. I personally shot at least 300 000 rounds with a Krag before I was 20 years old. I rebuilt my Krag myself at the age of 16 when I could legally buy or build my own gun. Everything except the best parts which is the bolt, receiver and magazine, were replaced. The receiver was built in 1908 and the caliber was 6.5x55 Krag. The "Krag" annotation of the caliber is very important because as you said in the video, Krag had only one locking lug and could only be safe below a specific chamber pressure and in particular the pressure against the locking lug. In practice that meant that you had to keep attention to the chamber pressure, and as a rule of thumb you should not load the rounds faster than 750 meters per second (m/s). This is the pressure reference. Some loaded their rounds to 800 m/s, but then you are decreasing the safety limit, and that is a very bad idea. In this case, most likely lethal if something went wrong because you would get the bolt in your face if the locking lug broke. Every serious shooter loaded the rounds themselves. Not so much because of the money, the ammunition is actually subsidized by the Norwegian Voluntary Shooting Association and were actually cheaper than loading them yourself, but no factory made ammunition can compete with hand loaded ammunition. 750 m/s were fast enough to get a nice flat bullet trajectory, even at 300 meter. Because of the bullet's flying properties with its small diameter, length and shape made it a very precise ammunition. The longest range I've shot at in competition is 500 meters. We called the rounds for 6.5x55 Krag for "pencils" because of the shape and diameter of the bullet. If you had a led tip you could write with it, and many did when they had forgot their pencils. Many scores are written with 6.5x55 Krag cartridges. :-) I rebuilt my Krag from a Krag Carbine to a, at the time, a modern target shooting rifle and it served as my primary competition rifle when I was an active target shooter for the Norwegian Voluntary Shooting Association (Det Frivillige Skyttervesen). It is by far the smoothest bolt action rifle I ever touched in my life. I disagree with Ian that the big reason for the smooth bolts is because it only had one locking lug. I can't speak for the Danish built Krag Jørgensens, but the Norwegian built bolt and the receiver where extremely well crafted. I have never seen such a beautiful manufactured bolt and receiver, ever. I'm pretty sure that they actually polished the bolt and every surface the bolt were in contact with. The machining tolerances must have been very strict because the bolt were very tight which made the bolt operation very precise. An insider source told me once that they had to use more than 600 machinery operations on the bolt, receiver and magazine. Most of the bolt and the surfaces that came in touch with the bolt were polished.. When I rebuilt my Krag I only kept the receiver, bolt and magazine. I don't remember the English words for all the parts, but this is what I did and I followed the de-facto standard for rebuilding Krag at that time. One big problem with only having one locking lug pointing down to the right had a rather uncommon and unfortunate effect on the accuracy. If the cartridges were wet before entering the chamber, it would increase the pressure at the locking lug and make the bullets go up to the left, the opposite direction of the position of the locking lug. When the pressure increased on the locking lug at the back of the bolt would not longer rest flat against the cartridge and that in turn made the bullet go up to the left. This was not a problem when used in the military or when hunting, but when shooting at small targets at 300 meters, every millimeter matters, literally! When I rebuilded my Krag I replaced the trigger to an adjustable trigger. The sight was swapped with a Norwegian built non-optical Busk diopter, named after the man who designed and built it. Optical sights isn't allowed. The stock was replaced entirely with a stock a made by Stein Erik Bredvold. I was an early adopter of this Norwegian legend of a stock maker, mainly because I'm a trained toolmaker and had pretty good knowledge of the importance of the small but important details, like that the barrel should never be in touch with the stock because it will give an uneven heating of the barrel that way affect the precision of the rifle. The stock were laminated wood and to be honest, it puzzles that there isn't more laminated stocks out there. They have a huge advantage over whole wood stocks, especially when it comes to temperature and humidity. Bredvold is still active and every stock he made is handmade. He is now the main supplier of stocks for the national biathlon team. He has already received the King's Medal of Merit. The barrels I used in competition were Danish. Barrels were produced in almost every country in Scandinavia, but I found out, the hard way, that the Danish barrels were the best. The precision were pretty much the same, but the Danish barrels lasted much longer. Often more than 10 000 rounds! In the video Ian says that it doesn't use clips, that is not true. We call them "hurtig-ladere" - directly translated: "speed-loaders". You can see on this page they claim that they started manufacturing them in 1920, but not by Kongsberg Arms Factory.They were produced by many different manufactures with small variance in the design. The clips in combination with the magazine design made reloading extremely fast. And I really mean fast! One discipline in addition to target and field shooting is something we call "Stangskyting" - named after Colonel Georg Stang (skyting = shooting) - were goal is to hit a reactive target at a distance unknown the shooter in as many as possible in 25 seconds . In stangskyting it's actually allowed to use Heckler & Koch AG3 in semiautomatic mode. AG3 was the Norwegian army rifle until it was officially announced in 2007 that the AG3 were obsolete. It would love to watch a mud test with the AG3. I think it will fail. The AG3 were never popular among the soldiers. Just to give you some idea of Krag's loading speed: In this instruction video from the late 80's you can see "stangskyting" in practice and also how the clip worked, and how incredible fast it is. I'm, sorry that it's in Norwegian, but I think you'll get the idea: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/m6lkkspns5nFfHU.html. Here is an english Wikipedia article about stangskyting: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stangskyting There are not uncommon to manage to shoot and hit 16 rounds in 25 seconds. I have done it myself and I consider myself as an average marksman. That fast and smooth is the Krag Jørgensen receiver is legendary. Thanks for many great videos! Cheers!

"Krag-Jørgensen" would in Danish be pronounced [ˈkʁɑːwˈjørənsən], for any who might be interested. :-) If you don't like IPA, the G at the end of "Krag" is not a hard one, but soft. Kind of like the W in the beginning of an English word.

Always loved this rifle so to how unique it is when compared to other bolt actions.

Albeit only slightly relevant if you guys want to see a good Danish war movie, 'April 9' is very good for telling Denmark's story in World War Two

Love your videos! Thank you

That's a very interesting one. Lots of very clever ideas going on with that bolt.

I have an 1894 model 6.5x55 Krag - made under German Occupation - It still has the Wehrmacht stamps and ALL the plate #'s match - which is absolutely amazing...

That is a clever little thing. You always keep me watching

Just for info: The markings shown at 1:39 reads "Geværfabriken Kjøbenhavn 1903" which translates into "Rifle Factory Copenhagen 1903".

FINALLY! I have been waiting years for this to be made.

Another excellent video.

Too bad certain folk in Washington DC cant seem to plug into these videos. Very informative and fun you all. I am personally not a gun collector or anything, yet I do have the foresight to recognize the importance of firearms... Keep up the great work!

A beautiful and cool, well engineered rifle.

Had to rewatch this today as i got to fire my krag to day for the first time

I've seen alot of mechanisms in rifles and pistols but i just love how elegant everything is in this rifle. Ive wanted a krag for years but 30-40 is definitely a reloaders cartridge and i don't have a reloading setup yet. Luckily as much as I love the feel of the original military setup I'm more interested in mechanics so sporterized is fine by me as long as it still shoots. One day I will own a 30-40 krag!

It is nice to get a closer look at the follower mechanism.

Huh. This one takes me back. Years ago I got ahold of a sporterized dane Krag for practically pennies on the dollar in 8x58R. CH4D was the only game in town for dies, brass was a big headache to make, and I ended up unloading it on a trade. The fire bluing on the extractor and straw on other miscellaneous parts was exceptional. I wish I hung onto it. Truly beautiful craftsmanship. Gorgeous rifles. The only gripe I had with mine is that for the effort it would have taken to make it go bang, I could have very well been well on my way with my U.S. Krag which is a delight.

My grandfather bought a Krag that was surplus. Now it is mine and I love it. I wish the magazine was used on more modern weapons.

Love this vid. I have the identical rifle, only it’s marked Haerens Tojhus, and dated 1915. This vid was more informative than anything else I’ve found on the web yet. I’d love any info on how I might measure headspace on this crazy thing so I can know it’s safe to shoot. Buffalo Arms makes some 8x58RD ammo, for two different headspace values, depending on your rifle. I’m nearly done cleaning mine up and verifying function of everything. Mines not nearly as clean, but I think it’ll do just fine, as it’s not excessively worn or pitted. Keep up the great vids!

Danish Krags had 2 locking lugs. You can see the second lug under the extractor. It bears against the receiver bridge when the bolt handle is down. In the American version,that lug does not touch the rear of the receiver. There is a slight clearance.

Its a work of art really

I have fired the Danish Krags, The guy who owned it held the rifle side ways when dropping in the rounds, I guess that is to prevent dropping em, he did it in a smooth motion, I believe you can top of the mag without opening the bolt and still keep a round in the chamber, which other designs couldn't as it would eject the round so you would have to take hold or re insert it. Very nice rifle, hope I can own one, one day, rather hard to get license here in Denmark tho :(

Great videa as usual.:D

I have always liked the Krag, the first rifles I ever worked on as a gunsmith were some old 30-40 Krag rifles that were the former property of our local American Legion Post and were damaged in a fire. My partner on the PD Picked up 2 of them with partially burned stocks, just around the barrel ends, I cut off and sporterized the ends of the stocks, and gave them a good cleaning. They had been Chromed at some time down the line as they were used in the salutes to the fallen at graveside for many many years. They turned out well, and while I advised my partner on the PD not to fire them because of exposure to the heat of the fire, he said a simple screw that, if the wood was good around the receiver, then the gun was good to go. Must have been as he used them for years hunting deer with great success. Oh, in the TV Series Hogan's Heroes, many time old Schultz is shown holding a Krag Rifle, any idea if this is an error by the producers (since many of the firearms on that show are not German at all!) or did the guards receive captured rifles from, say Denmark to use leaving the K98's for the fighting soldiers?

This is really cool!

Watching again. It is so cool of a rifle.

this brings a tear of joy to my danish eyes :.)

I just posted a comment yesterday or the day before on another Forgotten Weapons video asking if Ian had done a video on a Krag-Jorgensen. I've thought these were the coolest guns since I read an article in Guns & Ammo Magazine on them some 25 or better years ago. I think they were testing the accuracy at long ranges.

Interesting bolt removal drill. Not sure if the American Krag is like that, as i have yet to fire mine :) (1898 full length rifle). Great rifles. Nice to see the differences in the Danish one. Great videos as always. Thank you

Wow as dane am quite surprised to see the upload - Ik now it abt krag Jørgensen but thog was a norwegian - but produced in Copenahgen Denmark - what a nice gun - thnaks for the nice opload. interestign very

I want the one John Banner carried in nearly every episode of Hogan's Heroes- that's got to be the most famous Krag of all.

Dr Nansen had a custom Krag with scope mounted later , it was a Danish Krag and in .45-90 Wcf, that was well liked by him, sadly it was later stolen .

I like sound of that bolt, very crisp

Hello Ian, my dad has one old Krag jorgensen with out the safety switch, sorry for my english and i'm a Big fan of you'r Channel🇩🇰

this rifle is a masterpiece by itself

my uncle has a few of this pattern gun, one of them is (According to him) the rifle a relative used in world war one, i shot one of them, very fun and an interesting gun to load and shoot

That's a beautiful rifle!

That is quite a bit different than my 1896 Springfield Krag

In a fairly recent BBC version of Hamlet (Prince of Denmark) staring David Tennant and Patrick Stewart, the Danish guards (this was set around 1890 or so) were armed with these rifles.

Ian, have you ever bidden on something you've shown on the program? If you have, did you win?

Had to come check this video out after watching the movie "9 April".

I don't know much about guns, but this one is a beauty.

At 7:38 the words on the top: Geværfabriken Kjøbenhavn means Rifle-factory Copenhagen.

It's true that there were different versions of the Krag-Jørgensen rifle, but it is actually a Norwegian design and invention...

Man, I remember when my buddy inherited a bunch of guns without instructions or manuals. Before the internet they were the original puzzle boxes. "How do you think you get the bolt outta this thing?" "Dunno, can you make this bit move without forcing it?"

Someone can show me their $7000.00 custom sporting rifle, and I'm yawning, But show me ANY vintage milliary arm (particularly if it's manually operated), And I go "ga ga"!!! I've been fortuate to work the bolt of a US Krag, and even at 100 years old, probably the "slickest" bolt on a military rifle!

That wood looks like tiger stripe maple?I've always found the Krag to be interesting.I've read that it had the shortest inventory life of any service rifle in the US arsenal.

Beautiful

I love the patina on those old guns

I was hoping you'd take a look at a Krag, I always wondered how the magazine worked. Thanks!

I love that loading mechanism

grew up with this rifle and a mauser 1998 , hanging on the wall .they are very simular

It's interesting that this thing still has the profile of an old flintlock musket.

I have a bayonet for the rifle, serial number puts the date to 1899. Very cool to see the matching rifle to my bayonet.

We can own these rifles in the UK - without licence now, No ammo allowed though if without license.

The Krag Rifles are very cool.

I got excited and thought it was a Swiss Vetterli from the thumbnail. Krags are cool too, though.

The long cam on the bolt locks too

It seems to me that the Krag has two locking surfaces, the forward lug and the rib on the bolt, which bears against the rear receiver ring, after the manner of the Winchester Hotchkiss, Kropatchek, Lee-Enfield, and various others.

Clint from Thunder Ranch (TFB Channel) sent me here. Clint claims it’s the “coolest rifle” in terms of technological leaps.

Has anyone got a cross section picture of how the bullets go from the trap door up into the bolt area? Was there a spring?

This is a very cool rifle

Damn that's an awesome rifle. I'll put that on my "Some day I'll own one" list.

In Denmark we used this gun up til the late 40ties. A cool gun.

Just got mine lastnight and my Norwegian krag as well and 2 us krags

by far the most satisfying rifle to watch being shot and loaded.

Barrel jackets trapped moisture and promoted rust! America experimented with a stripper clip for its krag so but it had already been decided to manufacture 03 Springfields, just a little earlier who knows maybe not 30/06!

If you don't cant the rifle to the left when opening the magazine door, the rounds that were in the magazine will now be on the ground. And you must also be careful that the rim of each cartridge is to the rear of the one in front of it, otherwise they will bind and not feed properly into the bolt-way.

The circular brass sign on the side of the butt means 7. Regiment, rifle no. This is one of the old original infantry regments which can be dated back to 1678. It has served in almost all wars waged by the Danish Army ever since. It was even "rented out" to the British Army 1689-1707. The "Jyske Fodregiment" was disbanded in 1991 at the "end" of the cold war.

Im frome Norway soe of course i love this design.

I don’t see much of a big deal that the US adopted a Scandinavian weapon. We’ve done it before already. During the civil war, the first Ironclad to use a turreted gun in combat, the USS Monitor, was designed by a Swedish American fellow named John Ericsson.

Even the wood is gorgeous, it looks like flamed mahogany, which is really rare !!.

once i was in a gun shop checking out some antique rifles. i picked up a Krag. opened the loading port that quickly snapped back biting my hand in the flesh of the base of the thumb. I had quite the time freeing nyself while not letting everyone else know what happened LOL. I despised Krags ever since.

AUDIO FIXED!! yay

I've been trying to find an original loading gate ball for one of these for a couple years now. Impossible to find I'm thinking. Shawn Braman

I am looking at a danish krag from 1899 to buy and reload ammunition for it. would i have to use a round nose and or black powder for it?

Ian, thanks for the review of another nice old gun. I see that the rear sight has an auxiliary aiming notch offset quite a bit to the right, is this to suit (compensate for drift) for very long range volley-fire tactics?

From the looks of it on my computer screen, that stock appears to have a really nice grain pattern. Is that typical of these guns? Or did this one just luck out?