Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian, I am here today at the Rock Island Auction
Company taking a look at some of the guns that they are selling
in their upcoming February of 2016 Regional Auction.
And the one I have here today is something that
I ... have always thought just looks really cool,
it's a neat looking gun.
This is a pattern of 1889 Danish Krag-Jørgensen rifle.
Now we're familiar with the Krag-Jørgensen here in the United States
because the US military actually adopted it back in the 1890s.
An interesting occurrence of the US military adopting a rifle that
wasn't invented here, wasn't invented anywhere close to here in fact.
These were the product of a Captain Ole Krag, he later became Colonel,
and a man named Erik Jørgensen in Norway.
Now the American version of the Krag is very similar to the Norwegian version of the Krag.
Norway also adopted this as its standard military rifle around this period.
The Danish version is a bit different.
For one thing, the Danish version has this big barrel sleeve, or barrel jacket, on it.
That is an idea taken from the 1888 German Commission Rifle.
And the idea of a sleeve or a barrel jacket like that,
is to actually increase accuracy of the rifle by effectively free-floating it
so that the stock is not actually in contact with the barrel.
It's an interesting idea. The Germans, well, pretty much everyone,
realised eventually that this was unnecessary and extravagantly costly.
The Germans ended up ditching the sleeves when they went to the Gewehr 98 from the 88.
The Turks, for example, had a bunch of Gewehr 88s, and when they refurbished them
they got rid of the barrel jackets to reduce weight.
The Danes, however, used these barrel jackets on their infantry Krags.
Now ... like I said, this is the pattern of 1889,
this is the first military Krag pattern adopted in the world.
The Norwegian and the American versions would come afterwards.
It's chambered for the 8x58 rimmed cartridge,
which is this interesting obsolete Scandinavian cartridge.
It was used in the Krag, so it was also used in rolling block rifles.
... If you're interested in shooting these today, it's
very important to recognise that the cartridge as used in the Krag
is different than those used in the rolling blocks.
The rolling block rifles are not nearly as strong as the Krag,
and the ammunition that became standard in these is dangerous to use in a rolling block.
This originally was a round-nosed black-powder cartridge in 1889.
It was updated to smokeless powder shortly thereafter, after smokeless was invented.
And it was updated again in 1908.
Now like pretty much every military in the world,
the Danes started off with a large round-nosed bullet.
And then people started realising that pointed bullets, called spitzers,
were much more ballistically effective, ballistically efficient,
they made for better projectiles.
So, around this time period pretty much everyone
converted their round-nosed projectiles to pointed.
In the United States that was the change from .30-03 to .30-06.
In Denmark in 1908 they adopted a pointed version of this cartridge.
It used a 198 grain 8mm bullet, and it was travelling at 2,460 feet per second.
So definitely a respectable full-power rifle cartridge.
In 1910 there was a program to update and modify all of the rifles.
And one of the things they were doing was replacing the sights
to a new rear sight that was calibrated for this new spitzer ammunition.
They also added a manual safety to the rifles,
which is something we'll take a look at up close in just a minute.
Originally the only safety mechanism on these 1889 Krags was a half-cock notch on the hammer.
Like that.
And they decided later on that ... they would like to have a manual safety as well.
Now what's most interesting about the Krag from a mechanical point of view is its magazine.
It is a magazine where you don't use a clip, an en bloc clip or a stripper clip, of any kind.
You simply open the magazine door, drop cartridges in,
and then close the magazine door, and they just kind of work themselves out in there.
Now the American and the Norwegian versions have a door that opens downward.
The Danish has a door that opens forward, so a little bit different.
Downward is probably better, it's a little less likely to spill cartridges when you're reloading.
But I think at this point why don't I bring the camera back here,
let's take a little bit of a closer look at the safety and the magazine,
and how to take the bolt out of these.
Alright, let's take a closer look at a couple of the features here.
The magazine has this handy knob handle on it, ... there's a little spring-loaded catch right here.
And pop it open, and you can see the follower right here.
When you open the magazine fully
this little piece right here cams the follower all the way up into the door, so it's out of your way.
You drop cartridges in here, it can hold up to five.
And this is a rimmed cartridge, so you just kind of plop five in there,
and when you close the magazine door the follower comes out,
loads the rounds up, and you lock the magazine shut like that.
Now this is the ... manual safety that I mentioned was added in the 1910 retrofit.
There are probably some 1889 pattern rifles out there without this safety,
but it is very rare to find them.
So to engage it, you simply push the button in, and rotate it up.
It locks the trigger, and it also locks the bolt.
You can see it pushing down on the bolt there.
So to ... release it you simply push in and pull back, very simple.
Now Krags of all manner, the Danes, the Norwegians, and the American ones,
are all renowned for having very smooth bolts.
And a big reason for that is that they only have one locking lug.
In fact the bolt handle doesn't really act as a safety lug here either.
You can see there's a gap between it and the receiver.
The locking is all done by this little guy right up here at the front.
Now to take the bolt out is also a bit different than most other rifles.
What you do is actually grab here. This is the extractor.
And we're going to lift the extractor up
and pivot it over the top of the receiver.
We then pull this back, and rotate it off like this.
So the extractor ... just pivots right here.
So that's how it comes off.
You can see we have just the one locking lug on the front, right there.
Other than that, a pretty typical, standard bolt.
This looks like a locking lug, but this is actually open
back here. It does help to cam the bolt shut, but that's it.
So to put the bolt back in, we want to have the extractor lifted up.
You want the bolt lug vertical, so that it can fit right there.
Push it in, and just by itself when you rotate the bolt closed,
the extractor snaps into place.
There you go, there is the working end of a Danish Krag–Jørgensen.
In total 135,000 of these rifles were made.
And they did make a number of different variations, including cavalry carbines,
artillery carbines, and infantry rifles like this one.
Thanks for watching guys. If you think this is as cool of a rifle as I do,
you have an opportunity to purchase it coming up here.
Of course, like everything at the auction house it is coming up for sale.
So if you take a look at the ... link in the description text below,
that will take you to Rock Island's catalogue page on it.
This is actually part of a batch of rifles,
so if you want this one, you get to buy a couple of other rifles with it.
And take a look at that link and you can see what the other rifles are.
Thanks for watching.