SKS question...(yes, another gun thread!:)

namaarie

namaarie

Joined
Aug 23, 2004
Messages
1,499
I went to my first gun show this weekend, largely because of input from you forumites. It was really cool! I found several SKS's, all looked pretty good. Unfortunately, I had little money, so had to content myself with just looking. :(

Anyhow, I was talking with a gun dealer and he told me abolutely to stay away from the Yugoslavian models, aka the ones with the grenade launcher. He said that the gas port gets clogged really easily and the gun is absolute junk. He wasn't selling any SKS's himself, so I don't think he had a vested interest.

Is it true that the Yugos are unreliable or "junk" as this guy put it? He said that the any nationality would be infinitely better. I never heard that before and figured you guys would know.

BTW, they were running from 165-300 at the show.

Any thoughts?

Nam
 
Nam?

I did the research, and posted the first thread here, and got great information from the Cantina. I only know second-hand.

I think the guy has his opinion. Almost everyone else has a different opinion from his, although the gas port has to be clear in any manufacturer's SKS.

The pro's will be here soon.
 
Thanks, Kis. Kinda what I thought, but we'll see what the other guys who know more than me (not saying much :) ) have to say! :D

Nam
 
Russian and Romanian manufactured models are superior to the other eastern bloc renditions.
 
I've only owned Chinese SKS's, without any problems, be they the standard ten round mags or the SKS-D ( took detachable AK mags ).

I've no hands on experience with others. I believe The Yugo's do not have chromed barrels, other than that, the SKS is over-engineered to be made by cottage-type industries if need be, for the most part.

I truly believe that one made by any com-block state would function well-enough if in decent condition.
 
I don't believe Yugo SKS's are junk. If they don't have chrome lined bores the barrel will not last as long. To put this in perspective, your hunting rifle does not have a chrome lined bore, and the most accurate weapons do not.
Military weapons have chrome because they get abused and shot a lot. I would want a chrome lined bore in an SKS if I was going to blast my way through cases of ammo.


munk
 
Not junk. Less desirable from a collecting perspective...fine for shooters. Buy what you can afford and like. Never ask others' opinions because its not their money.

My $.02
 
The deal on chromed barrels is that until the last few decades, the primers that lasted longest and were most likely to go bang were the so called "corrosive" primers that left salts in the barrel that had to be dissolved by a water solution. Just oiling the barrel wouldn't deactivate these salts.

As you can imagine, during a shooting war, many poorly trained soldiers would not be especially eager to spend the time needed to clean the rifle properly. A good NCO would tell part of his team to stand guard while others cleaned their weapons, but those policed up subsequent to action might not be picked up for several days if dropped on the battlefield - and thus have bores starting to darken.
 
The original AR15 did not have a chrome lined bore. It saved money initially not to do this. The "Whizz Kids" around Kennedy told the military that if Stoner's prototype wasn't chrome lined neither should the Army's.
There was a whole bunch of problems simultaniously due to this and the powder and other factors, like stuck cases in the chamber, but the Army then started to chrome line the rifles, and retro fitted the non chrome lined rifles. American primers were not corrosive. Commie primers were corrosive. See? The commies are evil in all manisfestations.

I once left uncleaned an AK after shooting corrosive Chinese ammo. When I got around to it, my once flawless gun had little tiny pits. Bad Commies.



munk
 
Lest we be too hard on unchromed barrels, we should remember that up until WWII, many "good" service weapons from a variety of nations did not feature them; these same nations almost uniformly used corrosive primers. The technology was in place to do so, but it's obvious that many militaries didn't consider the benefits to outweigh the additional cost. We should also remember that in some cases (namely the US military) where the bores and chambers were chromed, the rest of the weapon was not, and the primers were in most cases corrosive. Plenty of these suckers still around these days.

When rates of fire went up and bore sizes went down, everyone tended to change their minds on the issue. At that point, it became cost efficient. Bores exposed to ~.22 caliber projectiles, running hot and at high rates of fire, tend not to last too long without a good lining. You varmint hunters know what I'm talking about and you guys don't even go full auto. (Usually.)

I'm pretty sure that there are enough owners of WWII-era (and earlier) weapons on here - some of which were used in combat - that can attest to this.

I don't own a Yugo so I won't comment on that. As far as corrosive ammo is concerned, I try to avoid it but things happen. I traded to a friend once back in the late nineties for a non-functional chicom SKS that had been shot exclusively with corrosive primers and not cleaned properly; while the bore was fine after a very thorough cleaning, the gas system was not operational on account of the gas piston being rusted to the cylinder. It took a 10-lb. sledge and a rather large steel punch to free it. Fast forward through several hours of cleaning and it was serviceable again. This says a lot for the SKS (and using a gas piston for operation in general - one of the reasons I will miss the M14 when it's gone) in my eyes. The combloc weapons - even prior to the Cold War - tend to be remarkably tolerant of abuse. That is, after all, one of their design criteria.
 
You know, I hadn't thought to look and see if my M1A is chrome lined...
The Commies were chrome lining long before the bore size when down, as you say, Sat. The US Army wanted AR 15's chrome lined from the beginning- when presumably there was not a lot of experience with chrome and small bores. So they had reasons not related to bore size.

Now I have to go look and see if MIA is chrome lined. I don't think it is.

edit: it appears to be. I don't know what that means, exactly. It is an early Springfield Armory; the stock has the select fire indent filled in, the metal fold over shoulder brace, and is marked 101 Springfield assembled some from military parts. I always hoped mine was one of these.

munk
 
M1A should be chrome lined. (IIRC.) I know that the M14 is, and the M1A's were originally constructed with (mostly) M14 parts; these days, it's anyone's guess where the parts are from.

About the combloc weapons: it's iffy. My memory of the pistols is failing me - too many years, too many beers, as they say. I know that the Mosin-Nagants are not chrome lined. I'm not sure if the original SKS's were and I'm not inclined to hit the books right now to find out. The AK's were - whether this was from the start or not is for others to answer, as I'm by no means well-read in the field - but Kalashnikov, by his writings and interviews, was concerned first and foremost with reliability and I'd expect that a chrome lining was one of his design criteria. (His firearm was also the first Russian rifle engineered from the ground up - and expected - to shoot frequently in a fully automatic mode. I'm specifically excluding pistol-caliber submachineguns and the SVT's from this statement; SMG's are apples to oranges and the SVT's, by all accounts, did not work well in a fully automatic mode.)

I oversimplified the issue and for that, I apologize. Many of the armies of the world, c. WWII, used long guns around .30 caliber. Most of them were bolt actions. Very, very few had the capability for select fire. The ones that did were primarily machineguns and featured either water jackets or very heavy (and not very portable) barrels; in these cases, an unjacketed barrel will work. (The ones that did not - like the BAR - had other provisions for extending barrel life. Browning specified a 20 round magazine for a reason.) It will wear out more quickly than what is expected but hey, they're replaceable. For shoulder-fired weapons with barrels that're difficult to replace it's a different story. When weapons started appearing that were expected to sustain very high rates of fire, chrome linings appeared. The caliber drop merely drove the issue home for those that hadn't already jumped on the wagon.

Again, IIRC, the Garands (amongst others) had chromed bores. It's been a while since I've hit the books and honestly, I haven't kept up on my reading in this area. I seem to recall the American weapons having chrome linings from very early on. If this is the case, they had plenty of experience in the area. (If I'm wrong here, then I'm simply talking out my @ss and should be duly reprimanded for such.)

In the civilian firearm market, things can become trickier. Sometimes for a given model, some pieces have chrome and some don't. I don't know if this was the case for the M1A and won't make a guess.

Just for the record, I'm a big fan of chrome lined barrels. No one but dedicated match shooters will notice a difference in accuracy; all shooters will notice a difference in durability and ease of maintenance. If you saw some of the things that we do to our bores, Munk, you'd cringe. They just keep on plugging along. Chrome lining (or something similar, ala Glock's Tennifer process) is one of my criteria for purchasing a firearm in most cases. I'm a believer.

Edit: those who know say that the best M1A's were the ones assembled with government parts.
 
If you can, get russian model. Better steel, better machining. I shot this one in the army and we have lots of them here, since its only semiauto you can buy legally.
Dont worry about cosmetics, russians look not that good, but they are expected to shoot in any conditions.
 
namaarie,

I don't believe I've heard that about the Yugos, but I suppose it's possible, if not likely. I think I've owned 1 Russian, and 3 or 4 Chinese SKS rifles so far. The Yugos I looked over I would've picked up for the price.

You may want to pose your question at www.TheHighRoad.org, in the rifle forum. Lots of friendly folks who'll be happy to give their input.

I recently heard that Windex works well as a quick initial cleaner of corrosive salts. Anyone?

John
 
The only thing I have heard about them was that they were one of the better ones. I have a Russian one that stopped firing but I think it was dirt in the trigger group that I managed to wash out.

I've known folks with the Chinese ones that liked them a lot. My local place has the Yugo ones for 138 and really for that price if you only got a year out of them they'd be worth it.
 
munk said:
. American primers were not corrosive. Commie primers were corrosive. See? The commies are evil in all manisfestations.
Click to expand...

either my sarcasm meter is broken or you just haven't been around guns much, but US manf. ammos are not free from corrosive primers until the last few decades.
 
Thanks for your rudeness when information would have been fine, but I thought US primers were free of corrosive agents in the 1960's, the time zone I referred to. If I am mistaken, I'm sorry.



munk
 
FROM SPEER NUMBER 11, PUBLISHED IN 1987

PAGE 25
"MODERN, NON-MERCURIC NON CORROSIVE PRIMERS USE LEAD STYPHANATE
AS A PRIMARY INITIATOR. THIS, OR OTHER MODERN PRIMER COMPONENTS, HAVE NO HARMFUL EFFECTS ON GUN BORES OR CARTRIDGE CASES. VIRTUALLY ALL COMMERCIAL AMMUNITION HAS BEEN ASSEMBLED WITH LEAD STYPHANATE FOR ABOUT HALF A CENTURY."

That's pre WWll.



munk
 
From Metallic Cartridge Reloading by Edward Matunas (former engineer at Lyman) 1983 DBI books

Page 46

" in years gone by primers used a mercuric compound to accomplish primary ignition. The first non mercuric priming mix was a European effort, occuring during the late 1920s. This mix was non-corrosive, meaning it would not contribute to bore errosion."...." but, all in all, primer chemistry has not changed radically since those first non corrosive, non mecuric primers."



munk
 
Back to SKS talk. I've owned a Yugo SKS for 2 years now and have shotin excess of 2,000 rds through it. Never had a gas blockage, failure to fire or jam. Its accurate to 2 inches at 100 yds when I do my part. The only thing I don't like about it is that big bulgy grenade launcher. I understand that it can be cut off legally now and will perform surgery in the near future.

NIB SKS cost from $119.00 up to $149.00 at the gun shows depending on how many dealers are competing.

Yugo SKS = fine rifle IMHO.

Ice
 
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