Need advice for buying SKS
- Thread starter ColinD
- Start date
I agree with everything this person says, and buy from the EE as they won't be easy to hide a bad one. An all blued, matching one, is what you want to buy.
THIS ^^^ or even Mosin M44’s ect.
Try to stay away from a refurb as sometimes the stocks are not fitted to the exact spec and the receiver wiggles.
Base on your goal I would recommend looking for a Russian SKS that has a blued finish, preferably without UN export/import marks. Both of these indicate an earlier import (before 2014-ish) where the general condition of the rifle is nicer. Some of the lower quality late import has bbq paint to cover the rifle and the bolt (i.e. bolt is painted black) to hide any small imperfections.
Number matching is not critical, most early import should have all except mag matching in serial anyway. Referb mark is OK as it also means the armoury has validated it's fit for service at that point. Wood vs Laminate is not critical but I would give small preference to laminate. Chrome lined barrel (1951+) is absolutely critical if you want to retain sanity when cleaning the rifle. The above condition should land you with $400~500 SKS. Don't pay for any extra "collector" feature the seller brags about, they are either myth or you don't care about them.
I would not worry about corrosive ammo, they don't harm your rifle. Shoot what you can get your hands on and always clean after.
MosinMan13
CGN Regular
- Location
- Thornbury Ontario
So I’ve have 5 SKS rifles in the past 5 years, 3 Soviet in wood stocks, one Soviet in a synthetic stock and a Chinese in a wood stock.
I’ve had fully matching, miss matched, matching but rusty, mismatched and pitted, and refurbished. I have never had a single misfire or malfunction, and generally I got the same decent level of accuracy out of all of them. If you buy from a member with a good rating, or a store with a good reputation, buy it cheap, and don’t worry about the rest you’ll be fine.
These things will be around and working long after all the ammo is gone. They’re stout.
I’ve had fully matching, miss matched, matching but rusty, mismatched and pitted, and refurbished. I have never had a single misfire or malfunction, and generally I got the same decent level of accuracy out of all of them. If you buy from a member with a good rating, or a store with a good reputation, buy it cheap, and don’t worry about the rest you’ll be fine.
These things will be around and working long after all the ammo is gone. They’re stout.
So I ended up buying two Russian Tula’s. One is a refurbished that I’ll be getting this Saturday, and the other is a mint non-refurb that has been lost in the mail now for two weeks, likely stolen.
Says it’s been expected to be delivered everyday since Monday. There hasn’t been an update on the tracking since it was first accepted at the original post office.
Wow, a llot of info there some good some useless, you need to research! Read the sks stickies at top of this page, lots of knowledgeable people on here have done a lot of research on sks. Curtton being one of them! If you find an unissued, non refurb I will pay big dollars as they are like hens teeth. I have never seen one, they at least have gone through one of the refurb plants! There are acfewcrifles that would possibly be considered BBQ painted but most that they are alluding to are parkerized, I have seen about 3 different types not including the aforesaid BBQ, the parkerizing is non glare and similar to the stuff they use on our military rifles/shotguns/ hunting rifles these days! It doesn't really matter which you use unless you think the glare of a blued rifle would spook whatever you are hunting! Matching is nice, hard to find matching mag as the importer didn't specify that when they etched the import symbols on the rifle they were to put the same mag. Back on the rifle, they are around and if you are using it as a collector then it may matter.
Laminate stocks are supposed to be stronger, I like the look of most birch/standard stocks but have both! If you hold the barrel with one hand and the stock with the other, try to move it forward and backward, if it moves, ( pretty normal) it makes the rifle a bit less accurate, you can get YouTube videos on how to fix this, not a big deal! Cleancthe rifle when you get it, more YouTube videos on this too, most important is the bolt make sure it is cleaned very well and the firing pin rattles when shook back and forth. Some earlier rifles had spring loaded firing pins and you wouldn't hear the rattle but need cleaning too! Make sure the bore and chamber is cleaned well too before firing could be some Cosmo in there if it hasn't been cleaned before! I cannot confirm but many knowledgeable sks folk, say that the early non chromed bores are a bit more accurate than chromed but the bore doesn't last as long! The chrome lined are supposedly a bit less accurate, not sure why, but last a very long time, if cared for! Remember to completely disassemble the rifle and clean it very well, youvwill have a more enjoyable experience and learn about your surplus rifle!
Have fun!
Laminate stocks are supposed to be stronger, I like the look of most birch/standard stocks but have both! If you hold the barrel with one hand and the stock with the other, try to move it forward and backward, if it moves, ( pretty normal) it makes the rifle a bit less accurate, you can get YouTube videos on how to fix this, not a big deal! Cleancthe rifle when you get it, more YouTube videos on this too, most important is the bolt make sure it is cleaned very well and the firing pin rattles when shook back and forth. Some earlier rifles had spring loaded firing pins and you wouldn't hear the rattle but need cleaning too! Make sure the bore and chamber is cleaned well too before firing could be some Cosmo in there if it hasn't been cleaned before! I cannot confirm but many knowledgeable sks folk, say that the early non chromed bores are a bit more accurate than chromed but the bore doesn't last as long! The chrome lined are supposedly a bit less accurate, not sure why, but last a very long time, if cared for! Remember to completely disassemble the rifle and clean it very well, youvwill have a more enjoyable experience and learn about your surplus rifle!
Have fun!
The reasoning i have heard is that the non chrome lined were machined to spec and that is the diameter of the inside of the barrel. Great for accuracy when new, but with lots of corrosive ammo it wears more and can lead to a loss of accuracy.
The chrome lined had to be machined oversized to take the thickness of the chrome plating into account, but the chrome plating wasn't as sophisticated as it could be and varied, so it could vary from lots of extra chrome making it super tight to barely any chrome making it super sloppy, with most landing somewhere in between. The upside is the chrome is more durable and doesn't wear as much, so the potential lifespan is longer.
Of course that's all just people now assuming things that we don't know about rifles made before many of us were born and it all depends how it was treated over the last 70 years, how carefully it was put together, and realistically it's never going to be a precision rifle anyway.
Nope, you are right, we don't know how much each one was shot and or if the barrel was replaced during refurb, which would be a good thing for longevity! The fella that can get the most out of an sks that I have seen is this guy!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1c7ZTcNTC5s
This is my understanding as well. In practise the accuracy of the rifle is not good enough for that to matter anyway. I found proper stock shimming and ammo quality is the top 2 thing that makes an accuracy sks. Plus the non chrome lined barrel takes way more patches to clean.
