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Reader Survey >Krieghoff K-80 Custom review: a gun built around you in Ulm
- Last updated: 24/08/2026
Lloyd Pattison follows his own Krieghoff K-80 Custom from a walnut blank on the bench in Ulm to a full day on the layouts at Bywell, and explains what £14,730 plus £1,825 for the fitting actually buys.
Krieghoff’s factory is a medium-sized industrial unit on a business park on the edge of Ulm, in Baden-Württemberg, with a row of flags and the company name across the frontage. From the road it could be making almost anything. Step inside and the doubt disappears: mounted trophies line the atrium stairway that takes you up to the floor where customers are met and walked through the custom process.
Prices are RRP at the time of publication and may since have changed.
I had chosen the action and barrels months before, so they were waiting for me. After a look at the action, which is among the nicest and most unusual I have handled, we moved on to the woodwork.
Ralf, the stocker, does the fitting in the workshop, taking the initial measurements and talking through cast, drop, comb, pad and forend styles. I had arrived expecting to order a hybrid stock with a Monte Carlo comb. Having looked at me and listened to how I shoot, Ralf steered me towards a prettier, classic Sporter stock instead, which in practice meant Parcours woodwork on Super Sport barrels.
We talked about grade, figure and colour, then Ralf vanished into the back of the factory and returned with blanks in my chosen grade that he thought would suit me. One nicely figured blank was picked out and further measurements taken, both to settle the stock dimensions and to confirm the blank could carry them. My hands are large, so an extended grip was planned, and the blank had to have the wood for it.
Normally the customer is free at this stage to go and enjoy an afternoon in Ulm. Because I was filming the process for my channel, I was allowed to stay and watch it in detail.
First comes heading up, which means milling the blank so it can be mounted on a slave action, the anchor the stock is shaped around. A bandsaw and a multi-axis milling machine cut the headwork and open up the interior of the blank.
Drilling for the stock bolt is the point at which the power tools stop. Beyond the milling machine and the bandsaw for roughing out the shape – and a set of tooling if an adjustable comb is going in – everything is done by hand. The machines take the stock perhaps 80% of the way; rasp, file, chisel and spoke shave do the rest, refining the shape until it is finished.
The stock is refined to an almost perfect fit before testing.
Ralf is old school to the core. The stock measuring machine sits in the corner gathering dust. He works by eye, and watching him do it is a pleasure. Having filed the rough interior of the head to fit the slave action and bolted the blank in place, he marks the wood to find a centre, works out cast, drop, pitch and a host of other figures, and starts shaping. Watching the stock emerge over the course of a day, and the number of tools and techniques involved, was fascinating.
The grain dictates which tool is used and which way the cut runs. Sometimes the wood refuses to be cut a particular way and the stocker has to adapt as he goes; a badly judged chisel blow or draw knife cut will pull the blade somewhere you did not intend. Ralf works without forms or models, purely on skill and careful measurement.
By the following morning it is really taking shape. Comb, belly and grip are brought most of the way, with enough left to finish the grip once the customer is back, and an adjustable comb kit goes in at this stage if one has been ordered. A custom set of tooling makes the cuts, the metalwork is fitted, and every surface is then filed true and the edges chamfered by hand.
This is where the customer usually returns to work through the final details with the stocker. Between them, shooter and stocker settle the shape of the neck, palm swell and grip. With the shaping finished, Ralf sprays the stock with a little water to bring up the grain, which also raises it and gives the shooter a secure grip for what comes next.
A matching action and barrels are mated to the stock and we head for the MSZU shooting complex, because Krieghoff has no pattern boards and no tunnels. Testing is done on clays, in what I believe is the largest indoor shooting facility in Europe at 8,000m².
There is a huge store there, lanes for rifle and pistol and a shooting cinema for driven game practice, but we are bound for the clay hall. Range time is precious, so we set about every bird on the menu to see how the gun fits and feels in real use. Your mettle gets tested by more than the targets: you are shooting alongside the man who has just made your gun. After dusting a few dolly targets I settled and worked through the last points of fit with Ralf. It ends far too soon, and then the gun goes back to the factory and you fly home.
The woodwork then has to be chequered, finished, fitted and shipped to the UK distributor. Once I was reunited with the gun I took it straight to the layouts at Bywell for a proper workout.
My specification is fairly standard for a Sporting shooter: Sporter barrels, titanium hanger and titanium chokes. What is not standard is the Parcours-style woodwork, which is more graceful than the wood normally fitted to a hybrid or Trap gun.
Krieghoff offers three barrel styles, and the choice changes the character of the gun more than anything else on the order form.
The heaviest of the three, and the only one offered with the adjustable ramped “pro” rib. There is no mid rib, so the barrels are joined at the muzzle by a hanger that swaps for others of different size and weight, which lets you tune the point of impact of each barrel independently. Trap and Helice shooters set particular store by that. As a Sporting shooter I took the neutral POI for both.
The lightest of the three, with a game top rib, a solid mid rib and flush thin-wall chokes. Fitted in place of the Sporter barrels, they change the gun completely: the turret-like swing of the Super Sport gives way to something whippy and far more reactive. It suits snap shooting at fast driven birds, and the lower weight is welcome walked-up.
The newest of the three, and the middle ground. It gives a more neutral feel for shooters who find the Sporter too heavy and the Parcours too whippy.
The titanium extended chokes have a crenellated top that drops snugly into a very slick folding choke wrench, which tells you plenty about the level of over-engineering here. It is, I can tell you, exceedingly satisfying to use.
The barrels are not chrome lined, are beautifully struck off, and carry an 11x7mm tapered top rib with a tram line and centre bead. I have taken the bead off; Krieghoff supplies a grub screw that fills the hole snugly and keeps dirt out. At the other end they finish in the monobloc, where the hand-fitted ejectors sit flush with the block, so there are no skinned knuckles at cleaning time.
The tolerances between the barrels and that long, low action are so fine that putting a Krieghoff together takes a little practice at first. You also notice that the forend is stored separately in the case, which makes assembly and disassembly far more logical, and rather begs the question why every other maker has you half-build the gun before it goes away.
Inside the substantial forend iron are multiple redundant ejector springs and a very solid locking mechanism working with the forend loop. The chequering throughout is hand cut and beautifully finished.
The lock-up repays a look. That long, low action is unique to Krieghoff and depends on top-quality tool steel and those tight tolerances, with a small lump protruding into a cutout in the action floor just below the trunnions and taking up most of the action’s width. The monobloc carries a pair of flats roughly where the wings sit on a conventional action, engaged by a sliding top latch that cams open off the top lever. The design first appeared on the Remington Model 32; Krieghoff refined it after buying the patents.
Krieghoff triggers are a marvel: crisp, light, no slop, and with a distinct reset I have not felt from any other maker. The barrel selector lives with the trigger rather than the safety, and the safety itself has a button to stop it being pushed off by accident, which can be locked out entirely if you prefer no ambiguity.
The safety features a button to prevent accidental activation.
The barrel selector sits within the trigger-guard.
On to the shooting. Since the gun was built to fit me, you can safely assume the fit is close to perfect. That said, I have lost 28kg (62lb) since taking delivery, so specifying the adjustable comb turned out to be a very good decision indeed; without it I would be paying for a new stock.
In my view nothing else moves or feels quite like a Krieghoff. I shot a Perazzi for five years before coming back to the German gun, having owned an old K-80 from the mid-1990s before a trip to Italy dazzled me. Going back felt like coming home, and shooting it still makes me smile almost every time.
The feel is the thing. It is a heavy gun but slimmer in the hand than most, and that combination is unusual. The palm swell suits my hand exactly, the balance sits dead on the pin, and it swings with an authority and smoothness that is hard to convey to anyone who has not used one. I have heard K-80s called weird, ungainly and nose heavy, and there are guns that deserve all three, but specced and fitted properly this one is an extension of your will. An artist’s brush, dispensing clouds of dust when it is wielded well.
Mine has shot every clay discipline and plenty of game days. I have since added a second set of Parcours barrels and sold my game gun, which had stopped leaving the cabinet.
A handful of guns at this money can fairly be called competition workhorses. I cannot think of one that holds its value or wears its years better than a K-80. Action and barrels feel close to indestructible, and the manufacturer’s warranty runs to 10 years so long as the gun is serviced regularly.
£14,730 is the starting price for the K-80 Custom, with the custom fitting adding £1,825. The gun here was specified with Sporter barrels, a titanium hanger and titanium extended chokes on Parcours-style woodwork, and its final price is not disclosed. All figures are RRP at the time of publication.
Through Alan Rhone, the UK distributor, at [email protected]. The gun is built to your own dimensions at the factory in Ulm and shipped over once the woodwork has been chequered and finished.
Weight and rib, mostly. The Sporter is the heaviest and the only one that takes the adjustable ramped “pro” rib. The Parcours is the lightest, with a game top rib, solid mid rib and flush thin-wall chokes. The Parcours X falls between them, for shooters who find the Sporter too heavy and the Parcours too whippy.
The manufacturer’s warranty runs to 10 years, provided the gun is serviced regularly.
Competition clay shooters who want a gun cut to their own dimensions and intend to keep it. Because the muzzle hanger swaps, the point of impact of each barrel can be tuned independently, which Trap and Helice shooters value in particular. Add a second set of Parcours barrels and it becomes light and reactive enough for driven and walked-up game too.
Five high-end game guns compared: £5,915 to £19,500 – where a K-80 sits against Browning, Rizzini, Guerini, Perazzi and Beretta money.
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