I have always been intrigued by the looks of some of the chrome plated Krag parade rifles I see for sale. But most of them are poorly plated and frequently have large areas corroded or have pieces of the chrome flaking off. Then the piece looks terrible and is hard to repair.  But, I recently found this M1898 Krag rifle for sale which is nickel plated and was done quite well. The bright shine of this rifle is beautiful and contrasts well with the nice stock color. This could also be considered a school rifle.

There are obviously problems. The hand guard has a stable crack, the front sight blade is missing, the rear sight is a M1892 sight, some of the screws are missing or wrong and the sling is incorrect. But, for $400, I have filled a hole in my collection with a handsome parade Krag rifle that displays well. The bore was actually improperly plated as well. I don't plan on shooting this one.

The barrel has been cut to 24 1/2 inches, the stock is 41 1/2 inches and the front sight base has been beautifully re-dovetailed into the cut barrel. The front of the stock has a filler piece in the lightening hole properly done similar to a school rifle.

It was difficult to get good pictures that weren't full of glare because of the bright shine.

So, I thought I'd share this interesting Krag. It's not original military but it is a nice rifle.

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More pics...

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"Fraternal Organization Parade Rifle" or "Color Guard Rifle" is what I would call it.

IMHO - It blurs things to casually call this nickel plated Krag a "School Rifle".
(Although, it could have been 'spiffyed up' for an educational establishment's Marching Band/Color Guard).

I prefer to narrowly use the term, "School Rifle", for the official armory/arsenal 'altered carbines adapted for sling and bayonet'.

Yes, the "school rifle" designation has a narrower meaning but I was simply referring to the way the barrel and stock was cut down and the front sight re-fixed and the lightening hole was filled. Very similar if not the same thing overall. The barrel is not turned down for a bayonet. It has been shortened, like school rifles were, for smaller/shorter people to handle.

Don't miss the main point. It's a beautiful looking Krag alteration which attracted me to it for display purposes! Much nicer than any chrome plated parade rifle I've seen.

Keeping it as a wall hanger is appropriate.
There is such a thing as hydrogen embrittlement, not sure if it would be an issue with case hardened Krags.
On heat treated parts I have had plated, the plater did a special treatment to prevent embrittlement within an hour of plating.
If you were ever to rob parts of this plated Krag with the idea of stripping off the plating, I would only do it to non-stressed parts.

Is that more likely to happen on chrome plated metal or nickel plated? I see no signs of any metal fatigue or brittling on this rifle. I have seen it on chrome plated rifles. You can see the change in the surface of the metal when there has been heat induced changes.

I doubt this has been affected to the point of being unsafe to shoot from the chamber pressure perspective. I mainly don't like that the interior dimensions of the bore probably were changed by allowing the plating to infiltrate the bore. I'm not sure how a bullet would be affected in travel down a tighter and smoother bore. Not my area of specialty.

I should run some inert rounds through the magazine and into the chamber to see how the feeding works.

Yes, a wall hanger display Krag it is!

Whig wrote on Dec 5^th, 2019 at 7:50pm:

Is that more likely to happen on chrome plated metal or nickel plated?

Not sure which is worse, also not sure if it is an issue with case hardened steel with a very soft core. In hard steels I am not sure if you see any indications before the catastrophic failure. The few times I had a heat treated part plated I made the plater very aware of it and had no issues.
Forgot to say yours was nicely done, did not see any glaring peeling, not even minor stuff.

Thirty years ago we made heat treated screws for open hole logging of oil wells. A customer brought up the issue of H2S cracking in the steel, I called a metalurgist at Carpenter and he told me to temper the screws at 1100F degrees. I did that before assembling the screws and no customer complained afterwards.
A 30 minute internet and Wikipedia research would make you more of an expert on the subject than me.

Nice looking Krag Drill/Parade rifle Whig!

I always seemed to like the look of nickle plating as opposed to chrome.

Below are pics of my 1898 Krag chromer rifle:

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The Bad

Here's the chrome flaking that you had mentioned earlier.

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Thanks for sharing those chromer pics local boy. That's one of the better chrome jobs I've seen on a Krag. You can definitely see how some of the chrome has started to suffer in some areas, though.

Looks like you're missing your front sight blade also.

That white sling is great! It really compliments your shiny Krag!

Here we have yet another example of the many iterations of the Krag bayonet.

I was looking for a chromed bayonet and happened to come across this one on eBay.

Thought it was a fake but after doing some research I discovered otherwise.

These bayonets were used at the West Point Academy and used bolts/nuts to secure the grips.

The use of bolts and nuts enabled the ease of grip removal when the bayonets were re-chromed.

These were used as dress bayonets by cadets prior to its replacement in the summer of 1963.

Bayonets like this one will come up for sale on eBay or Gun Broker every so often. 

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I need one of those shiny toys to dress my nickel plated Krag parade rifle!

Your's is so shiny it is hard not to get the glare in the picture!