....with the bolt recess scalloped.     Does this make any sense?   Has anyone ever seen/heard of this?

While not very common, it is a known variation. I also have one, and I have seen others.

Nothing strange about it.  The 1898 carbines were already in progress when a change was made to drop the saddle ring and increase the commonality between the rifles and carbines.  1896 carbines were given "1899ish" stocks during rebuild - as were the 1898 carbines.

Whereas the 1898c and 1899c share the same receiver, and thus stock, the 1896 carbines have a different bolt well - requiring a slightly modified stock to include the scallop.

Not "rare" and not "valuable" as people prefer 1896 carbines in the earlier saddle ring stock.

Thanks Joe!  I appreciate your knowledge and input.   Interesting stuff....no pressure but...waiting for that 4 letter word of a project (B%$K)              roy

Changing the carbine stock length made it identical to that of the rifle, up to the lower band, saving some stocking machine setups, and also allowing the salvaging of rifle blanks which developed/exposed a front-end flaw in the manufacturing process. Such arms are not uncommon, and clearly genuine, though, AFAIK, the manufacturing authority paperwork has yet to be discovered. If anyone can dig it out, Joe will.

Dick Hosmer wrote on Mar 9^th, 2012 at 3:08pm:

Such arms are not uncommon, and clearly genuine, though, AFAIK, the manufacturing authority paperwork has yet to be discovered. If anyone can dig it out, Joe will.

I'm pretty sure I already have.  The problem is they didn't work that way.  Springfield was charged with making the repair parts and didn't need a specific document to alter/update the design.  So there won't be any document for updating the stocks to the new design - there will only be a report of the stocks fabricated.  With year and quantity of course.

1580 were made in FY1899.  Those are them.  They're for the 1896 carbines.  After that they're just lumped into carbine stocks.  They weren't always big on models like we are.  They're just "magazine carbines." 

I bought a carbine with one of those stocks specifically to get an example for the book.

I have a couple in long stocks, they are a natural part of the Krag progression.