I'm thinking about picking one up (hell, maybe a 3-pack lol) but was just wondering if this type of sks had the removable box magazine? Too many kinds of sks' out there, hard to keep track.
As said earlier, the only SKS that came with a removable (Detachable) mag were the Chinese "built for consumer" market in the eighties. There were several versions of it, but the odd one shows up for sale here and there. There are only 3 common SKS rifles that you would find in Canada, Russian, Chinese, and Consumer Chinese. Other examples of SKS rifles such as Yugoslavian, Bulgarian, Albanian, ect, ect, are out there, but much more rare to be seen up for sale.
The Type 56 Chinese military sks were (are) very good rifles, new and unissued. Marstar had a boatload of them and were popular for the last several years but I think their supply has dwindled. The Chinese SKS were built using the same machines as the Russians. When Russia discontinued production of the SKS45, all machines, factories, and some employees were dropped on a train and sold to China, where the first sks56 were built. The Chinese used a different type of wood, and changed the machining of a few parts, and probably improved the quality of the rifle, if the not the manufacturing process.
In the Eighties, China had began to produce consumer rifles with the
exact same equipment that the Russian and Chinese military had used to produce their rifles. This was done under the "Norinco" factory name, and it has stuck since, even though previous rifles were not Norinco.
THe name Norinco is a group of factories who makes firearm parts and rifles. Other names of factories you might hear would be Jianshee or Factory26. In China, private firearm ownership is prohibited by law thus lies the security of only producing single parts in a factory. Parts only were shipped via train to secret locations for assembly. This method of parts production prevented anyone from taking home the "chevy in the lunch box" so to speak. Only the military (government) knew where the assembled rifles were kept. This continues today in China.
The quality of the consumer market rifles is said to be inferior, but oddly I have one and have been shooting it since the early eighties with thousands of rounds through it, and it is every bit a stand up rifle as the military version. I have several of each.
One last point, and perhaps my opinion is that an SKS rifle is infallible in its original configuration. Aftermarket removable mags, stocks, and scopes are the only source of malfunction on these rifles. In 35 years, I've had almost no repairs on my work bench for a stock sks rifle. I do however have boxes of crap, parts, and pieces of failed modifications over the years that I've removed to make them operational. Leave it alone, and keep it clean.