The stocks for the original Russian-made SKS tend to be of two types of material: very hard wood, or laminated very hard wood.
The hardwood stocks are entirely satisfactory for rough usage, as is just about anything made in Russia. What North Americans don't like about them is that they aren't pretty. They do the JOB just fine, it's just that Russian Birch and woods of that sort don't have the prettier grain of fine English or French Walnut. But there is nothing wrong with them.
The LAMINATED stocks are an idea that the Russians got from the Germans. In the 1930s, a German firm called TEGO came up with a new type of rifle-stock, making use of bits of wood which normally could not be used, in conjunction with their patented process which made use of a very new technology: phenolic resins.
Phenolic resins were just about the first modern, mouldable plastics. The hand-guard of many Kar-43 rifles is made of the stuff, as are the grips of the P-38, MG-42, MG-34 and others and, believe it or not, almost the entire frame of the MP-38 and MP-40. For small parts, they used sawdust mixed with the phenolic, pumped the stuff into a mould and heated it almost to flash-point. Then the mould was brought out of the furnace and a great amount of PRESSURE was applied, very rapidly. The results were in the form of plastic handguards, grips and so forth. We used the same process for making radio cabinets, instrument knobs and things like that, but we called it Bakelite.
But TEGO went farther. Stocks had been laminated before, of course, gluing thin strips of wood together. Plywood is made the same way, just with the grain of the thin laminates crossing against each other, which is why the stuff is so rigid. But TEGO did it a little differently. With their process, laminates of about an eighth of an inch were used, all with the grain of the wood in the SAME direction. The wood itself was kiln-dried stuff and this process could be done a couple of days after the wood was cut: really reduced the 3 to 7 years that a Lee-Enfield stock took to cure.
So they would assemble a big baulk of wood, using laminations with the grain all running parallel, a layer of phenolic resin (which they called Tegofilm) between the layers. When the baulk was about 8 inches thick, it went into the big oven and was heated all the way through, which took hours. During this period, the phenolic resin was perfusing itself INTO the surface thicknesses of the wood but it still was liquid. When finally the entire block was at the correct temperature, it was brought out of the oven and hurried over to a massive press, which, in one motion, squished the 8-inch-thick baulk of timber down to about 2-1/2 inches. The eighth-inch (3mm) laminations now were about ONE mm thick, the phenolic resin had set up absolutely SOLID and they now had a block of timber, made from material which normally was garbage, from which 8 rifle stocks could be cut. With alternating or mixed layers of lighter and darker wood, these could be quite pretty, and these were the stocks used on so VERY many Kar-98k rifles and Gew/Kar-43s during World War Two. As a bonus, the laminated stocks were almost totally free from shrink AND warp, they were immensely hard and tough and they could take just about ANY abuse you can think of. The single drawback was that they were heavy.
This is the process that the Soviets copied and used on a LOT of original SKS rifles. Very seriously, I don't see how you can get a much BETTER stock than the one that actually comes ON an SKS from the factory.
MY advice is to leave your SKS exactly the way it came from the factory. They were designed for hard service, not to look pretty or 'cool', and they were very-nearly perfect just as they were made.
Of course, it's just not POSSIBLE than one can be anything LIKE as wonderful as a Lee-Enfield or a ROSS but, if you agree not to tell anyone, I'll let you in on a secret. (I just got an SKS myself.... and it's staying exactly the way it was when Tovarishch Khrushchev had it made.)
