SKS accuracy

Travis Bickle said:
This is extremely true.
My only SKS is a minty Chinese military variant. The sight radius on them is relatively short and the front post is thick and crude. Notch sights in this fashion do not lend themselves to consistent aim points or precision (again not what the SKS was intended for).
I got a set of Tech Sights with a precision front post. It's the rear receiver mounted peep sight. Doubles the sight radius and the precision front post is 1/3 the thickness of the original.
A simple home trigger job to stone and polish contact surfaces and recut/shape the sear block and it drastically improves how consistently you can aim and shoot the rifle.
It does not turn into a magical sub MOA rifle. But it will make it consistent and a LOT easier to shoot. I can squeeze out very consistent 5" to 7" 10 round groups at 100m just shooting surplus Chinese bulk ammo off a bag prone.
That's as good as any other rifle I've ever owned and shot with open irons including AR15's with 20" barrels shooting quality North American ammo, Israeli Mauser shooting quality ammo etc etc

None of this is hyperbole. Just honest personal experience from many years of shooting.
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Not to be an ####### or THAT guy but 5"-7" 10 rounds groups at 100m is pretty ####ty for a modern AR using good ammo....what kind of irons are you using?

Kudos for shooting 10 round groups tho!!! BUT I find if you have to do a reload doing a grouping test, the outcome of it will never be amazing...you gotta reset everything and getting yourself and the gun/sights how you had it for the first 5 rounds will never happen!!!
 
lone ranger said:
I scoped a russian sks and got 8 inch groups at 100yards LOL
so I got 2 chinese ones I'm playing with right now.

So far I have got 5inch groups. I will transfer the scope on to the other one and see what I get. the bore is tighter on it.
Not sure what the ammo is....Dark green cases. wish me luck !

I just got some copper washed stuff...will try that.
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Are you using a good, solid mount or a cheap top cover one?!
 
Tudenom said:
I agree. It seems that loose stock fit is the #1 problem for SKS accuracy. On most rifles you can wiggle the receiver in the stock like 1/16" side to side and all that's keeping it in there is pressure from the trigger group spring. It might as well be a bullet hose at that point.

I've found that if you bed the back of the receiver and the trigger group your groups will shrink down to 4" or less, which is about the same kind of accuracy you can expect from most good condition milsurp rifles.

Riflechair has a good video on how to do this, though I like to bed the front ferrule as well to stop the action from lifting there.

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How durable/long lasting would all this work be?

It definitely did it's job and did a great job!!!

BUT

When you gotta tear it down fully to clean it, especially if you use corrosive ammo and the hot water treatment that most do for it...would it last long?

I guess the solution might be to NOT use corrosive ammo and the full tear down/hot water cleaning method...but cheap ammo is always nice!!!
 
I have a '52 tula that shoots russian surplus steel case ammo between 2 and 3 moa. And you can shift the receiver forward and back in the stock almost a cm by hand.
 
lone ranger said:
It was a bore issue. It was about as bad as this pic.

barrel-on-new-sks.jpg



this is the bore of the chinese sks I'm building

100-7182.jpg


my project-
100-7062.jpg


I find the bore on the russian sks bigger most of the time.
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Damn that first one is quite yikes!!!
 
Use a .308" diameter bullet as well. It's more discerning for muzzle measurement than a .312" round. I carry an inert .308 Win round for that.
Also, try to borrow a set of go/no go gauges.
If the .308" sits real tall and the go gauge is tight, you got a winner!
 
Bubba Yugga said:
Cut a length of stainless hose clamp to shim way at the back of the stock cavity.
That snugs the action up against the front cross bolt.
Cheap and simple. Bolshoi better.
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I find shimming tightly at the rear of the action makes it hard to get the action out of the stock for cleaning, I ended up shimming at the rear and the front cross bolt a better way. There’s space at the front to allow a taller piece of shim stock you can grab with needle nose pliers, pull out the front shim and the action has enough room to pivot out of the stock. Using front and rear shims lets you get things real tight and groups really improve.

If you just shim at the rear the shim is pushed down flush once the trigger group is installed making it and the action hard to remove, if you only shoot non corrosive ammo it’s not as big of an issue.
 
hannibal.black98 said:
Not to be an ####### or THAT guy but 5"-7" 10 rounds groups at 100m is pretty ####ty for a modern AR using good ammo....what kind of irons are you using?

Kudos for shooting 10 round groups tho!!! BUT I find if you have to do a reload doing a grouping test, the outcome of it will never be amazing...you gotta reset everything and getting yourself and the gun/sights how you had it for the first 5 rounds will never happen!!!
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I've had several over the years. My best shooting AR was one I built using a Norinco 20" Pencil barrel with 1:9 twist I mounted into an LM A1 type upper receiver with a Surplus Colt guts kit (bolt/BCG/Buffer etc)
Sights were standard A1 rear and front gas block except with a precision fine point front post installed vice the thick standard one.
I was using 62gr Federal XM ammo and it would print consistent 5 to 7" groups with 10 rounds. That's prone and shooting off a range bag. I would pull the occasional smaller group but those are flukes. I take a rifles accuracy in many groups over longer periods.

Agree on the reload and changing position between 5 round groups with the SKS. Such is the joy of living in Kanada though comrade.

5" to 7" consistent groups at 100m with a rack grade semi auto and bulk ammo is actually great accuracy. That's my opinion. But I'm also basing that off of reading 10 years of posts on here with guys saying "I can shoot 2 MOA groups with irons at 100 meters using an SKS/AR/CZ858/Tavor all day" Except in the many years I've been shooting around many many other shooters, I've never seen anyone do this. Ever. Not even a one off fluke 5 shot group.

Again that's just me and the channels I walk in and not jerking my ego off or telling big fish tales on the internet lol
 
Travis Bickle said:
I've had several over the years. My best shooting AR was one I built using a Norinco 20" Pencil barrel with 1:9 twist I mounted into an LM A1 type upper receiver with a Surplus Colt guts kit (bolt/BCG/Buffer etc)
Sights were standard A1 rear and front gas block except with a precision fine point front post installed vice the thick standard one.
I was using 62gr Federal XM ammo and it would print consistent 5 to 7" groups with 10 rounds. That's prone and shooting off a range bag. I would pull the occasional smaller group but those are flukes. I take a rifles accuracy in many groups over longer periods.

Agree on the reload and changing position between 5 round groups with the SKS. Such is the joy of living in Kanada though comrade.

5" to 7" consistent groups at 100m with a rack grade semi auto and bulk ammo is actually great accuracy. That's my opinion. But I'm also basing that off of reading 10 years of posts on here with guys saying "I can shoot 2 MOA groups with irons at 100 meters using an SKS/AR/CZ858/Tavor all day" Except in the many years I've been shooting around many many other shooters, I've never seen anyone do this. Ever. Not even a one off fluke 5 shot group.

Again that's just me and the channels I walk in and not jerking my ego off or telling big fish tales on the internet lol
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Me neither.

And I hear you guys on reloads.

When I shot high power competitions (informally at the EOHC) with my Garand there was a mandatory reload on 10 shot strings. You could see 2 distinct groupings. Consistency is hard.

5" 10 shot groups from a bag is rocking man. I mean if you were sticking with 3? Could say you shot lots of 2 inchers maybe...leave out the "not every time" part.
 
Butcherbill said:
I find shimming tightly at the rear of the action makes it hard to get the action out of the stock for cleaning, I ended up shimming at the rear and the front cross bolt a better way. There’s space at the front to allow a taller piece of shim stock you can grab with needle nose pliers, pull out the front shim and the action has enough room to pivot out of the stock. Using front and rear shims lets you get things real tight and groups really improve.

If you just shim at the rear the shim is pushed down flush once the trigger group is installed making it and the action hard to remove, if you only shoot non corrosive ammo it’s not as big of an issue.
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For disassembly, I hold it upside down and bump the front sight on the bench. Pops right open.
For reassembly, hold muzzle up while squeezing receiver into stock and bump the butt on the bench. Pops right in.
 
Bubba Yugga said:
For disassembly, I hold it upside down and bump the front sight on the bench. Pops right open.
For reassembly, hold muzzle up while squeezing receiver into stock and bump the butt on the bench. Pops right in.
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Doesn’t work so well when you shim it as tight as possible, which was what I was after. An easy to remove front shim solves that, remove it with needle nose pliers and no need to bang or pry anything apart.

How much of a difference did you see in groups size after you shimmer? Mine went from 5-6” groups down to 3 1/4”-3 3/4” depending on ammo, pretty noticeable difference. The others I shimmed were about the same.
 
There's no harm in bonking the front sight guard on a wooden bench. It's strong like Belarus Tractor.
If going from "clatter" to "no clatter", then 40 -50 percent improvement in groups is typical.
At that point, recrowning can make a noticeable gain if the bore is bright and tight enough.
Interestingly, I found 83 vintage chinese copperwash to be quite accurate.
 
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