Background
As we continue to look into military surplus rifles we couldn’t pass up this jewel, another impressive carbine from the former Soviet Union. While not a communist, I find cold war Soviet design to be extremely interesting. Today’s rifle was designed towards the end of the second World War, and thus incorporates a great deal of features valued in the last centuries warfare. I am of course talking about the SKS Carbine. While originally from the Soviets, today’s example comes to us from China. The Norinco SKS was manufactured and imported to the US by the same company.
As a kid from the 80’s, I grew up seeing guns like the SKS and AK-47 on television and other media. So as a gun nut it was only a matter of time before I got my hands on both of them. The SKS has a long and distinguished service record with more countries and too many wars to mention. While initially designed and fielded by the Soviets, it was later downgraded in favor of the select-fire detachable box magazine-fed AK.
Ever the communists, the Soviets licensed and supplied countless copies of the SKS to whomever needed a simple and inexpensive carbine. Something everybody was after during the Cold War.
A great many examples of those rifle eventually made it to American gun shops, and today’s example is exactly that. The affordable surplus rifles have long been a hit with American shooting enthusiasts, but does the 80-year-old SKS still have a place in our market?
Continue Reading Here
I bought my Norinco SKS from a girlfriend of mine who’s ex husband was a federal inmate at one time. He had amassed quite a collection of firearms and I, along with a friend bought just about every gun she had. For a ridiculously low price, she had 2 original Norinco SKS’ and another tactical SKS with a polymer type stalk. I paid her $100 for one of the original Norinco SKS’. I’m not 100% about this, but this particular SKS had Chinese characters embossed on the barrel and I was told the ones that have those Chinese characters were manufactured specifically for the Chinese military now whether that is true or not I have no idea. I had a friend of mine take it, clean it up real well for me, and he replaced the wooden stock with a polymer type stock. I really like the wood better but I didn’t make a fuss about it as he also turned it into basically a semi-automatic AK-47. He replaced the magazine and instead of a stripper clip it took a 30 round “duck bill clip” or just bill clip. I wasn’t too sure about the legality of that but it was not fully automatic. Which brings me to my next point about the SKS. The SKS is quite the dangerous weapon and I say this because of it’s floating firing pin. If anyone is not familiar with a floating firing pin I would not recommend buying an SKS from Norinco. You can take a chance and not clean it if you want but you’re also going to take a chance on it going berserk on you, causing a chain fire or “slam fire”. I’ve seen this phenomenon and believe me it’s NO MYTH!!
CLEAN YOUR SKS AFTER EACH USE!! I don’t care if you’ve only fired 1 round through it PLEASE CLEAN IT!! If you’re not familiar with this phenomenon, there are plenty of YouTube videos that demonstrate a slam fire and believe me you do not want to experience one… EVER!!
HENCE THIS IS THE REASON WHY I SOLD MINE.