Now that I am a recent US Krag owner, I've given some thought to the idea that you can't really tell the story of the US Krag without the 1893 Spanish Mauser, just as you can't really tell the story of the 1903 Springfield without a US Krag variant. To think that we fought a war that we won pretty handily and noted that the rifles that the enemy had was a significant improvement over what we carried into battle. Not only was the rifle easier and faster to load, but there was nearly a 25% ballistic advantage over the ammunition that we were using in our own rifles. I set about finding a good example that I could break out and shoot from time to time and ended up picking the below rifle up off of Gunbroker. The pictures that the previous owner took and the description provided were less than stellar, but the opening bid (which I won it for) was pretty righteous and I thought that I would take a chance with it. I was actually very pleased with what I received. It's always nice when something arrives and is in better condition than you thought.
The rifle was manufactured in Spain at the government arsenal in Oviedo in 1928 and there are no import marks. Nope, this wasn't used in the Spanish-American war, so I suppose there's the possibility of it being used in the Spanish Civil War, if it saw combat at all. There were very few, if any, changes made to the design up until this point, so it does make a nice example. All of the numbers are matching to include the stock and handguard, with the exception of the bolt. The Spanish Military frequently stored bolts separately from the rifles in the armories, so it's a rare bird if you were to get a rifle where the bolt matches everything else. I'm not sure what stained the wood on the left side of the stock, but something obviously did. The rifle is a real pleasant shooter with mild recoil and is considerably easier to load quickly than the Krag.
