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I'm not privy to Warren Greatbach's work. From everything I've read to date, there appear to be just under 2,000 numbered Stevens-Pope barrels of all calibers. The numbers on the surviving .22 rimfire Krag barrels that I know about just doubled: 832, 893, and now 900 and 903. That's a spread of 71.
Given that these were made early in the Stevens-Pope period, and that if you were going to make them, it would be most efficient to make a batch, they were probably numbered sequentially. How many were made?
They were used by the National Guard units in 3 states and DC, and in sufficient numbers that they were used as intended, improved the marksmanship of all 4 organizations, and attracted the attention and ire of the Army bigshots, it was more than a few.
In "The Springfield 1903 Rifle", Brophy tells us that the State of Pennsylvania ordered 110 Stevens-Pope barrels for their Krags. If Pennsylvania ordered 110, how many did the other National Guard organizations order?
In "The Krag Rifle Story", p. 188, Mallory & Olsen show a photo of the bottom of a Stevens-Pope barrel with serial number 1441. In the caption, they wrote "High serial number indicates that many more .22 Krag barrels were made by Stevens than by Springfield."
In "The Krag Rifle", Brophy tells us that Springfield made 841 complete .22 rimfire Krag rifles or barreled actions.
Al that leads me to believe that the Stevens-Pope .22 rimfire Krag barrels were numbered sequentially, but that the numbering now stretches to (1441-832) more than 609. Were they a separate series? Were they more than 1/3 of all the Stevens-Pope barrels made? Why are there so few survivors?
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Stevens-Pope .22 rimfire Krag barrels (Read 6678 times)
