Krag-Jorgensen M1898 Gallery Practice Rifle

About the Krag-Jorgensen M1898 Gallery Practice Rifle

The Krag-Jorgensen M1898 Gallery Practice Rifle is a bolt-action single-shot training rifle produced by Springfield Armory in 1906 and 1907. Built by rebarreling standard .30-40 Model 1898 Krag service rifles to the low-cost, low-recoil .22 Short rimfire cartridge, it let soldiers practice marksmanship on indoor gallery ranges while retaining the exact size, weight, sights and manual of arms of the issue rifle. The .22 barrels are marked 'CAL. .22', and the bolt uses an auxiliary rimfire extractor with an offset firing pin to fire the rimmed cartridge. Only about 850 were made, making it one of the rarest Krag variants.

As the U.S. Army transitioned from the Krag to the M1903 Springfield, hundreds of surplus Model 1898 Krags found a second life on indoor gallery ranges. Rebored to the cheap .22 Short, they gave recruits the feel of the full-size service rifle at a fraction of the cost and noise, a training concept the Army would repeat for decades with dedicated .22 trainers.

Krag-Jorgensen M1898 Gallery Practice Rifle specifications

Externally identical to a standard Model 1898 apart from the 'CAL. .22' barrel marking. The five-shot side-loading magazine was retained on the receiver but the rifle was fed one rimfire round at a time, effectively a single-shot. Production ended after the U.S. Army standardized on the M1903 Springfield.