Kropatschek m/1886/89

About the Kropatschek m/1886/89

The Kropatschek m/1886/89 is the modernized pattern of Portugal's Austrian-built bolt-action service rifle, chambered for the 8x60mmR Portuguese (8mm Guedes) cartridge and issued as the Espingarda de Infantaria 8 mm m/1886/89. Like the original m/1886, it pairs a turning-bolt action with a Kropatschek tubular magazine running through the forestock, holding eight rounds fed by a rear pivoting cartridge lifter, with a magazine cutoff that let the soldier keep the tube in reserve and load single cartridges. The 1889 update added a clip-on wooden handguard extending from the front of the rear sight to the middle barrel band — requiring four slots cut into the forestock — and revised rear-sight graduations extended to 2,200 metres to suit the heavier ballistics of later smokeless loadings. Built by Österreichische Waffenfabriks-Gesellschaft (OEWG) at Steyr in Austria, this pattern served Portuguese infantry and colonial forces and remained in second-line and colonial hands for decades.

The 1889 update to Portugal's Kropatschek was a small but telling detail of the transition age: a bolted-on wooden handguard so the firing hand would not be scorched by a barrel heated in sustained volley fire, and a rear sight re-graduated all the way to 2,200 metres in anticipation of the flatter-shooting smokeless cartridges that were about to make the whole tube-magazine concept obsolete.

Kropatschek m/1886/89 specifications

The m/1886/89 is often described as the colonial-service pattern of the Portuguese Kropatschek. Its defining features versus the base m/1886 are the added clip-on handguard (with four forestock slots) and the extended rear-sight leaf graduated to roughly 2,200 metres for smokeless ammunition adopted around 1896. Overall dimensions and the OEWG Steyr production run (about 49,000 infantry rifles, 4,800 short rifles and 4,000 carbines, 1885-1894) are shared with the base rifle.