butlersrangers wrote on Oct 6
th, 2011 at 2:35am:
MadFarmers: Like yourself, I own Mallory's, Bropy's, and Poyer's books. I enjoy all three (along with ordnance manuals and KCA Forum contributions). I find that they complement each other. IMHO, Poyer's Book supplies lots of useful photographs and parts details. It helps me more fully enjoy the evolution, construction and functioning of the U.S. Krag. I don't believe there is any one perfect source of information. I have been a student of firearms and shooting for 57 years. I still learn something new every day. For an Arms Enthusiast without a Krag Library, the Poyer Book has a lot of useful information, is inexpensive, readily available and quite portable. I would encourage any arms collector to build their library, build their knowledge base, and have a healthy skepticism and curiosity.
I'll be very honest in my appraisals of the books. Mallory and Brophy, when they don't know something, state exactly that. Whereas .... makes it up. Given a choice between incomplete versus wrong information I think the first bit is ok whereas the latter is unfortunate.
Poyer's '03 book has been panned to death. Because there are enough people with more complete knowledge of '03s. His Krag and trapdoor books didn't receive the same level of scrutiny. Frankly the errors that riddle them aren't the part that I find surprising - it's the fact that repeated editions do not correct that which I find astonishing. All of which leads me to believe that people, who know better, have purchased them but never bothered to read them. I'm not talking about the deep errors - I'm talking about the patently obvious.
So, with respect, I'll stick with "no book" instead of Poyer's.
I'm glad to hear you have the other two. They're both, in their own ways, very good.