I took two flavours of milsurp ammo to the range along with some of the new Canada Ammo Dominion non-corrosive H.P., made in Ukraine. Cases are lacquered steel. The bullet is a lead core hollow-point with a bi-metal (magnetic) jacket.
The Russian milsurp is copper washed cases , FMJ steel core.
The Romanian ammo is brass cases with FMJ steel core.
I wanted to see if the non-corrosive shot any better than milsurp known to be good milsurp. It costs a bit more. I think I paid $250/1,000 for it.
Testing ammo in an SKS is problematic. It does not shoot well enough to reliably differentiate between good and poor ammo. I have a number of SKS rifles and so far as I can see, they all shoot about the same. At my age (I was born before the SKS was designed) my eyes do not do well with open sights, so my “shooter” SKS rifles have a scope, peep sights and a red dot.
For this test I took an old Chinese military SKS with a scope. The scope base is bolted to the receiver, so it is solid and holds zero.
The other SKS is a new one I bought on EE. It is equipped with a Timbersmith laminated stock and a Williams peep mounted to replace the open sight. The stock is very comfortable and the peep worked perfectly. I used this shoot to zero it. It got a lot of comment on the range.
To test the capability of the ammo, I used the heavy barreled Rem 788 bolt action rifle built for the purpose of ammo testing. A 22-250 magazine feeds the 7.62x39 well. It shoots hand loads to about 0.75”
I shot off a rest on a bench at 100 yards. The aiming mark was perfectly suited to the sights and I am comfortable in saying that this is as good as these three rifles can shoot with this ammo.
Tests results:
The Dominion non-corr shot slightly better than the milsurp.
The SKS rifles shoot groups about three times bigger than the bolt rifle. One SKS tends to have wide groups. The other has tall groups. This suggests that if I tweak the bedding a bit, they might do better.
Here are the group sizes, by ammo and by rifle.
The Russian milsurp is copper washed cases , FMJ steel core.
The Romanian ammo is brass cases with FMJ steel core.
I wanted to see if the non-corrosive shot any better than milsurp known to be good milsurp. It costs a bit more. I think I paid $250/1,000 for it.
Testing ammo in an SKS is problematic. It does not shoot well enough to reliably differentiate between good and poor ammo. I have a number of SKS rifles and so far as I can see, they all shoot about the same. At my age (I was born before the SKS was designed) my eyes do not do well with open sights, so my “shooter” SKS rifles have a scope, peep sights and a red dot.
For this test I took an old Chinese military SKS with a scope. The scope base is bolted to the receiver, so it is solid and holds zero.
The other SKS is a new one I bought on EE. It is equipped with a Timbersmith laminated stock and a Williams peep mounted to replace the open sight. The stock is very comfortable and the peep worked perfectly. I used this shoot to zero it. It got a lot of comment on the range.
To test the capability of the ammo, I used the heavy barreled Rem 788 bolt action rifle built for the purpose of ammo testing. A 22-250 magazine feeds the 7.62x39 well. It shoots hand loads to about 0.75”
I shot off a rest on a bench at 100 yards. The aiming mark was perfectly suited to the sights and I am comfortable in saying that this is as good as these three rifles can shoot with this ammo.
Tests results:
The Dominion non-corr shot slightly better than the milsurp.
The SKS rifles shoot groups about three times bigger than the bolt rifle. One SKS tends to have wide groups. The other has tall groups. This suggests that if I tweak the bedding a bit, they might do better.
Here are the group sizes, by ammo and by rifle.
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