Thread: Krico Model 300 .22LR modernization

I'm a sucker for weird old .22s, I can't go into a gun store without eyeballing the used section in the rack to see what's come in and last week at Rivers to Ranges this old Kreigskorte & Co. Stuttgart (Krico as most people know them) was screaming out to me.

I didn't know much about them, had never owned or shot one before but knew they were quality German made rifles so asked to have a fondle of it. I quickly noticed it had a nice dark oiled stock with checkering and a sweet little Schnabel forend, dual extractors, free floated barrel, side locking and very slick bolt and an adjustable trigger. Yeah that's a bit of me. It was on the rack as a behalf sale so I made an offer and heard back a few days later that it was all mine for $250.



The stock has a few bruises and it's missing the rear sight, not a perfect collection example by any means but that just means I won't feel bad for doing all the modifications my mind was already exploring. After doing a bit of research online it turns out that this is a second generation Model 300 and with its pressed steel trigger guard it puts it in the mid 1950s vintage.

I picked the rifle up a few days later and went straight out to the range to see how this 70 something year old rifle would perform. Well pretty good as it turned out! 5 shot groups at 50m were under half an inch without any trigger adjustment and with a pretty average old scope on it. Definitely promising enough to start planning out some modifications.





Unfortunately the rifle was having issues with ejecting spent cases, every 3rd or 4th shot and the empty case would just sit on the bolt face and I would have to flick it out of the way with my finger. A bit annoying but given its showing promising accuracy I figured I would take it back to Jeremy at RTR to see if they could help.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/53sm2ArQVfCiP1oo8

Back at the shop Jeremy took the time to pull the rifle apart for me to have a look at what was going on, from what we could see the ejector was sitting a little lower than it should and the rim of the cases sometimes just missed hitting it. Jeremy stripped it down more to see if the ejector was a separate piece that could maybe be filed or reprofiled into a better shape which is when I noticed that the ejector is in fact a two piece part with the ejecting face machined on the end of a metal dowel which could easily be adjusted with a punch and hammer from the other side, very cool and just another example of why I love old stuff that was designed properly! Jeremy carefully adjusted the height of the ejector and bench tested it successfully. Awesome service from the team at RTR, especially given it was just a low value rifle that they sold on behalf.





Future plans for it at this stage are to add a Leupold dial up scope, cut it down to more or less minimum length and build a 30-35mm over barrel suppressor that comes all the way back to the receiver, modifying the stock to be a close fit around that, adding a nice rubber butt pad and updating the worn checkering to a modern stippling look.