Total amount of Russian SKS manufactured?

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Robert Nicholson

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I was unable to sleep so I thought I would read the SKS registry sticky, but it had the opposite effect
and kept me awake learning new things. Primarily; How many Russian SKS were produced? (just Tula and Izhevsk)
It would seem, if I understood correctly, that only two and a half million were made. Can that be right?
 
About 2 mil. Both SKS and AK were adopted by Soviet military in the same year (1949) but AK was a better fit for Soviet tactics and easier/cheaper to produce being stamped receiver vs milled. There is couple good references in this regard on guns.ru; I think Chinese produced another 10 mil add the rest of com-block and you probable looking at 15 mil total for ALL countries.
 
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mchouvaev said:
About 2 mil. Both SKS and AK were adopted by Soviet military in the same year (1949) but AK was a better fit for Soviet tactics and easier/cheaper to produce being stamped receiver vs milled. There is couple good references in this regard on guns.ru; I think Chinese produced another 10 mil add the rest of com-block and you probable looking at 15 mil total for ALL countries.
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The AK was designed to be stamped steel. But the first mass produced variants where milled steel along with the SKS. The technology/training for mass producing stamped steel recivers wasn't realized until the introduction of the AKM in 1959. SKS production was ceased in 1956 (or 1958 depending on your information). The AK was not cheaper/easier to produce over the SKS.
 
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BeaverMeat said:
The AK was designed to be stamped steel. But the first mass produced variants where milled steel along with the SKS. The technology/training for mass producing stamped steel recivers wasn't realized until he introduction of the AKM. By that time SKS production was ceased.
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Yes; except very first mass production run (Type 1A/B) was stamped steel. Soviets encounter some production problems so they switched to milled receivers (using old Mosins machinery-probably why Mosins disappeared :( around that time) Once the manufacturing difficulties were overcome, they switched back to stamped receivers and with some other improvement to the design; resulted in a rifle Type 4A/B also known as AKM.
 
That's why the "cheaper/easier" to produce argument is null.

The AK was a "modern" design (pistol grip, removable large capacity mag) the SKS was "traditional" design (scant stock, fixed mag). That's why the AK surpassed the SKS as a front-line rifle in Russian military doctrine.
 
The Kurgan said:
2.5 to 2.6 million Russian SKS's
15+ million Chinese SKS's
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Hi there, thanks for assembling that SKS registry and all the information that it provided while you were analyzing it.
I did have the understanding that there were more than 17 million SKS produced, but I was under the misunderstanding
that most of them were Russian! Thanks to your sticky, I now know better and my desire to collect Russian SKS has greatly increased.
 
Robert Nicholson said:
Hi there, thanks for assembling that SKS registry and all the information that it provided while you were analyzing it.
I did have the understanding that there were more than 17 million SKS produced, but I was under the misunderstanding
that most of them were Russian! Thanks to your sticky, I now know better and my desire to collect Russian SKS has greatly increased.
Click to expand...

My registry has over 2200 entries, what I provided on the forum is a representative sample. What was really satisfying was tracking down an old Soviet era book that confirmed those numbers AFTER I did the calculations.
 
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