When Krags were rearsenaled, did they really care if a rifle would get put back into the stock it returned with from the field? How about the date cartouche? Seems to me they would redo the rifles in batches, rework wood and metal in separate places and assemble all with a “if the stock fits” mentality?

We will probably never know for certain but it would seem inefficient to do one gun at a time, giving a bit of credibility to the "batch/missmatch" theory

I’m mulling over the irony that some seemingly unrestored Krag’s with mismatched stocks are actually more ‘original’ than many with matching ones.