I have a 1902 rifle with a 1901 rear sight (my favorite of the bunch) but the lever/switch lock on the front of my rear sight is frozen.  If you imagine looking down from the top and the front sight is at 12 o'clock my lever lock is stuck at about 11 o'clock and hasn't ever moved since I've had the rifle.  I did wick some kroil to it but I don't know which way to encourage it to move. 

I'm assuming it's a lever lock with a cam surface underneath but I could be wrong about that!  I was shooting today and I needed to move it 4 moa (1 scribe notch) but it's immobile.

thanks in advance.

hopefully you can still remove the site. I would take the screws and put a drop of your favorate solvent on them and let them soak for a while and remove the sight. the soak the sight is solvent and then start working on it very carfully. you may need to add some heat to help, BUT if you dont know what you are doing your sight will be damaged and then be worthless for shooting and only good for parts. i hope this will help you out.

Short Round:  Taking your 1901 sight off of your barrel and soaking it in some Hoppe's #9 or Kerosene should loosen up old dried grease, grime, and rust.  Using your clock face reference, pushing the lever toward 12 o'clock locks the sight to the base.  Pushing the lever toward 9 o'clock, releases the cam pressure and allows the sight to pivot on the base and front sight screw.

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Got it.  Thanks gents.  I don't know why they don't have a krag manual online at the DoD site.   :-/

Oh heck that didn't take long.  I hit it with kroil more than once in the last few weeks so it should be moveable.  I thought it was the cam just over done. 

I gave it a light tap with a small nylon mallet and it moved easier than I figured.  Before this I was afraid to give it a love tap as I didn't know which direction was loose.  I had bad visions of busting it off if I hit it tighter that it's already too tight situation.

Lefty loosey, righty tighty.  Why should this be different.  At least it's something I can remember now!

Much obliged gents!

you are more than welcome and the rifle has been totally dropped from the military as them having a manuel in the system would be almost impossible to have but tell them and maybe they will put on there for historic reasions.

Top Dean wrote on Jun 9^th, 2012 at 3:30am:

you are more than welcome and the rifle has been totally dropped from the military as them having a manuel in the system would be almost impossible to have but tell them and maybe they will put on there for historic reasions.

[grin]  I was joking that it'd still be in the system let alone online.  Sorry, I'm not the funniest person in the room even when I'm the only one in it.  [/grin]

It's funny about them old manuals that are obsolete.  In WWII the army drug out it's old pack mule manuals from decades previous, (post civil war era maybe).  IIRC I read that in an article where they did something along the same lines for mules in Afghanistan.

Somewhere the army has a manual on the Krag.

Anyways today was a good day.  I got my sight unstuck and I shot 54 rounds of cast bullets through my krag.  She likes 314299's sized down to .312 over about 16-17 grains of Sr4759. 

Hopefully a smaller copy of the 1901 sight with lever in released position.

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nice clear pics, I only get that kind of clarity on every 100th photo.

Not that it would help with your 1901 sight (I much prefer the 1902 myself)... I have a PDF of the US Army document (manual) on the 1892 Krags, titled "Description and Rules for the Management of the US Magazine Rifle and Carbine, Caliber .30."  It's a pretty interesting read, and a good portion of it applies to all models of the Krag.  I will happily share if someone tells me how to upload it to this site... or if you provide me your email address, I'll send it to you!

Paul

Wow Paul, I'd be very interested in a copy of that.  I'll PM you my email address.

Thank you so very much!