Kalimat al-Mutafalsif

(Part 2 of the Diamond in the Rough series, cleaning the SKS)

Where to begin?
Now that I had an idea of what it was, I decided to start cleaning. I had no idea where to begin, there was grease covering every surface, so I started by tearing it down according to field stripping, and wiping grease off the bits as I got them out.

First I found the accessory compartment in the stock, almost stuck closed from gunk. Pushing in yielded the cleaning kit... soaked in grease, it literally came out brown. I wiped it down, pulled the jag, brush, and tap out... in one bunch! They were stuck together! Wiped the outside down, and got this shot.

I soaked them for a while in hot water and after a little scrubbing all the grease was off.

Then came the really icky part, stripping the whole thing down. I wanted everything apart before I could clean each part individually and put it back together perfectly clean.

First you have to remove receiver cover and recoil spring assembly:

Then you remove the handguard/gas tube (make sure NOT to rotate the takedown lever too much, and/or watch your eyes.. you have been warned):

After this you pull out the bolt/bolt carrier, gas piston, and set them aside. At the end of the first day I had this (a stock with a trigger):

On day two I wasn't as interested in photographing everything, as my hands were icky all day from grease and solvent. But essentially what happened is I gave everything I'd taken out a THOROUGH cleaning, then popped out the trigger group and receiver, and cleaned the stock. Finally it was time for the barrel and bayonet, both much easier than the stock as I could simply use a strong solvent and some scrubbing.

At the end of the second day I had this (a sparkling clean gun!):

I had a lot of issues with the magazine, hence my not speaking of it. It seems like someone before me took it and either put the wrong follower (the bit the bullets ride up on) in, or intentionally bent the top of the magazine. it never, ever, ever fed properly, not one round. Jammed every time. As such, it still sits next to me in abject failure, until such time as I deem it worthy to try to fix. After replacing the magazine, she shot beautifully.

What's the take away from all this?

First off, if you're going to start a blog series, make sure to finish it!

Secondly, old guns can be great finds, both in terms of fun to shoot, and in terms of history (I found this Type 56 to be really cool).

Third, gun shows are great places to pick up decent deals. This should have been $75 10 years ago, but I'm happy with what I paid considering the current gun economy. I spent just about nothing cleaning it, was able to make it look incredibly better. Don't be scared of the ugly!

(Oh, and my brother really liked it, which was the important part. It looked like a different rifle!)

Thanks to the Nation's Gunshow that was held a few weeks ago my brother ended up with an SKS. He'd been talking about them for a bit, and the price was right ($275, cash). It was bought with no knowledge of SKS's beyond when they were designed (way long ago), or what to look for (serial numbers, marker's marks, etc). Now, it didn't look all that pretty, but the important bits were on it (firing pin, magazine, barrel), and it was $100 cheaper than any other SKS at the show, so it was bought.

As my brother was headed out of the country on a trip, I decided to take the gun to my place and clean it up a tad while he was gone, and see how good it could look. Then I'll give him the cleaned up version when he gets back and see if he recognizes it. I picked up a small SKS manual, enough to show basic disassembly and cleaning, cracked open Google for the rest of the bits, and sat down to start.

What is it?

My first desire was to find out exactly what this rifle was. It resembles a typical SKS, 20" barrel, knife style bayonet, wood stock, only difference was a detachable magazine, which wasn't in the original design. Next step was to find all the serials I could, which yielded the following:

Receiver/Trigger Group: K4992 (with a marker's mark of '26' inside of a triangle)
Stock: 33616
Bolt carrier: 05676
Bolt: 35505
Barrel: (Odd character) 3276

So we obviously have parts from at least five separate rifles. I'm taking the receiver serial as the firearm's serial (since that's usually where firearms put the serial) and the others as just references to figure out where it came from. I used a great SKS site: Yooper John's SKS information.

The receiver's serial was the easiest to track down. It has a few distinctive marks: The lack of Chinese or Cyrillic characters on the receiver, the obvious maker's mark of '26' inside a triangle. This fast narrowed it down to the Jianshe Armory in 1956. Why 1956? Because I believe in late 1956, or in 1957 the Chinese started serializing their weapons with more than 4 digits, and using no Roman characters. So the receiver/trigger group are all original parts from the same rifle, a Chinese Type 56, built in 1956 at Jianshe. The barrel appears to be the same numbering scheme as the others, (1 character, 4 digits) so I'm again taking this to be a Jianshe Sino-Soviet part, just replaced at a later time.

The stock is from a [presumably Chinese] replacement, however most Chinese stocks had a side mount for the sling, and this has a bottom mount so I'm thinking it may be Russian or Yugoslavian just tossed on there at some point in a repair shop. There is a marker's mark of a 6 in a triangle, and googling seems to suggest this is a Chinese mark, so I don't know. I do know it has to be younger than the receiver, and most likely is a result of the gun going back for service at some point. Whatever the case may be, serial number is 33616, which would be the last 5 digits from a longer serial (only place the full serial would be stamped is on the receiver).

The bolt carrier bears the number 05676, which does match the bolt, or any other bit on the rifle. There are no other identifiable markings. The bolt itself has a few markings, a '2', an 'A', what looks to be another 'A'. then a '5' overlaid on an 'I'. I couldn't track down any of these.

My best guess is that these parts are all Chinese, and at some point the stock became damaged, leading to replacing it, and later on replacing the bolt/carrier. They could also have been touched by someone much further on down the line, trying to make one working rifle from a few spare rifles.

Next up, cleaning!

Due to the recent elections, and fears of a renewed Assault Weapons ban (Which actually bans a lot more than should be considered an 'assault weapon', and only semi-automatic weapons) gun parts have been getting extremely rare, leading to me still waiting on the 20" barrel I ordered over a month ago. I've heard I may be waiting another 4 weeks for it, though I'll probably just cancel the back order. Saturday I rush delivered Midway's last 24" AR barrel (at least, within my price range, and with a gas block) thanks to a Veteran's Day sale. Between this and the hand guards I just ordered, I've got enough of a gun for "Hero pictures". Kidding aside, the gun's about 95% complete, all I have left to do is tighten the hand guard (its serving as the barrel nut), and put the gas tube in.

So, after I take the hand guard/gas block off again tonight and put everything in there, I'll have the following:

• DPMS Stripped Lower
• DPMS Lower Parts Kit
• CCA 6 position stock
• Hogue tactical pistol grip
• DPMS stripped upper
• DPMS bolt assembly (I don't recommend this... it was really shoddily put together and not lubed. While I intended to strip it down anyhow, I was very sad to find that I *had* to. Anyone buying the bolt I got as a drop in replacement would have been sorely mistaken)
• 24" DPMS stainless steel 1x9" barrel.
• Aluminum gas block
• DPMS gas system
• Hogue Molded foregrip

Total cost: $632.12! That's under what I was aiming to spend ($700)! Try finding a 24" AR-15 from DPMS, Olympic Arms, or Stag for under $1000... I feel like I'm forgetting something here, but I've gone through and touched every bit, and they're in my list.

Now, the one big thing I'm missing is optics. I'll be buying a scope next pay period, and ordering iron sights as a backup. The minor bit I'm missing is a bipod. It turns out this thing is *heavy*. Because I have a more 'tactical' stock on it (light and collapsible) its also very front-heavy. To fix this I could either get a traditional solid stock, and toss a 2-3 pound lead weight in the back, or get a bipod and just be happy with bench shooting. I'm going the latter route, though it will mean ordering a new gas block with rails on the bottom as well. I have one, but its for a smaller barrel, oh well.

But, overall I have a piece of equipment that should put a tiny piece of metal down range very, very quickly. The 24" barrel means I expect this to be shooting around 2500 ft/s. The other advantage to a nice heavy gun is low recoil, this will be very interesting to shoot since I've only ever fired the 16" tactical set ups.

Now I just need a name for her.

As I mentioned before, I'm putting together an AR-15, and my next few posts will be the story of how its been put together. I'm also using this project to test out Picasa, so I'll use that to post my images (just as soon as it finishes scanning a few of my automated rip folders, such as icanhascheezburger, forgot I had all them!)

Before I begin, I'd like to link to a schematic which can be found here. This way when I mention random parts you can find them and play along!

This first post is about the lower assembly, which is the buttstock, lower receiver (has the hammer, trigger, magazine well, etc). At this point I'd like to note I'm using a great book by Walt Kuleck and Clint McKee, The AR-15 Complete Assembly Guide, its got nice pictures and very very good detail on how you'll screw stuff up if you don't listen. Well worth the $17!

Parts

Lower Receiver
I bought a DPMS stripped lower receiver from a local gun enthusiast, which cost $158.73 after taxes, cable lock fee, etc. On the AR, this stripped lower receiver, meaning it is just the frame, no trigger, hammer, nothing on it, counts on its own as an assault rifle, because it has the serial number on it. So I walked out of there with a piece of metal in a locked dry box with a cable lock through the mag well, to make it 'safe' to transport.

Lower Receiver Bits
I'm not too particular about my trigger yet, so I also picked up a DPMS Lower Receiver Parts Kit for $56.99 (Don't buy anything direct from DPMS by the way, you can always find it cheaper). Some may ask why I didn't just buy a completed lower receiver, but I wanted to understand how everything works, and say I built every inch of this gun.

Buttstock
All that was left was the stock, and I snagged a Command Arms 6-position stock assembly, for $92.99. Its a very nice stock, and am quite happy with the sturdiness of it, as well as the function. It has rails on the right side, and a 4 battery storage area on the left side (can be swapped for more rails) which is more functionality than I'll need for a while. Went on in about 5 minutes, including forgetting to put a detent in, and having to redo it.

Assembly
The assembly was easier than I expected in terms of simplicity (piece X goes in slot Y), but harder in terms of executing it (piece X really does not want to go into slot Y, and X's spring is fighting me too). It took about two hours, including redoing a few steps to make sure it was right, flinging detents all over the room as I learned why they say to do something one way, and searching my house for various tools I thought I already had.

The trigger guard's been the hardest part so far, since its roll pin just did not want to go in, and required a "motivator". After that went in, I put in the magazine catch, so I could mount the gun on a handy little bench I have, and then moved on to the trigger and disconnecter. Somewhere in there the bolt catch went in, and that's where I stopped last night. This morning I got up and put in the hammer, safety, pistol grip, and buttstock. It was very straight forward, but like I said above, there are a few places where you really should get a tool to do the job for ya, like the front take-down pin. Otherwise you're gonna shoot the spring all over the room, and don't even think about finding the darn detent afterwards!

So now I've gotta go order all the upper parts, a receiver, bolt/bolt carrier, barrel, and some hand guards. I'll be getting a scope eventually, but may pick up flip up sights due to cost for this first build, not sure. I have pictures of the whole process, if you know how to get a hold of me in real life I'll pass on the URL.

Its been a long time since I've written anything, I've kept busy at work and at play. On the work side I'm going to look into what it will take for me to actually run Three Planets as a real company, mainly for tax purposes and my own sanity. On the play side, there's been a LOT more developments.

I just picked up a motorcycle about two months back since one thing I love to do while stuck on some code is drive. Naturally I figured that riding would be an even better escape. It turns out it is, but I'm concentrating too much on the riding to be able to head-code. The upside is, this is probably the most fun activity I've ever found. So, meet Kari:

I realized on Sunday that I've put 1000 miles on her in the month and the week since I got my license, not too shabby considering I probably spent on the low side of $100 of gas for that entire time! Since she's an older bike, I'm doing as much of the maintenance as I can, so that I'll only need a mechanic for major operations. More on that later.

I also (very, very recently) decided to get into Gun smithing. To that end, I'm going to be making an AR-15 over the next month(s), and keeping track of my progress here.

So, what do the two new activities have in common? Both of them stem at least partially from an interest to be reliant upon only myself for work. This comes from the programming I do, where I have chided others for not thinking outside of the box, and really doing anything they want with the code. It finally dawned on me that that goes in all walks of life, and you can even approach it in the same way.

Lets take the Gun smithing, for example. I'm approaching this from a design perspective first. I laid out what I want to use the gun for, then set my constraints (money), and planned out the parts. This is exactly the same method I take for programming: First I'll plan out how I want it to look/act, figure out what corners I have to cut to keep it within my memory/CPU/bandwidth bounds, then start with the functions.

In this case I decided I want something for (eventually) match target shooting, for medium ranges (100-600 yards). My constraints were that I wanted to build it all myself, short of fabricating the parts, and that i didn't want to spend more than $700 on the total cost. So far I've decided on the following:

• DPMS Lower Receiver, stripped (already purchased)
• DPMS Lower Receiver parts (already purchased)
• Advanced Technology 6-position collapsible stock
• Ergonomic pistol grip
• 20" chrome lined barrel (not sure of manufacturer yet)
• Flat top upper receiver with rails
• Generic bolt/bolt carrier, stripped

It should be a really fun project, I look forward to learning a new machine and how it all works. This will also mean that from now on my firearms will be like my computers, completely unique, and I'll have an intimate working knowledge of each and every part.

So why now? Why am I trying to learn all this new stuff once I get out of college, and not while I was in it? The answer here stems from some conversations I've had about why I enjoy firearms, and thoughts I've had after them. The short answer is: "I'd rather learn how to shoot now, when I don't need to, than later when I need to, but don't know how." I don't think carrying rifles in public is necessary, though I am a vocal defender of the 2nd amendment, however I do think it is very short-sighted to assume you'll never need to use a firearm, and therefor write them off. Didn't you learn how to change a tire, even though you may never need to, perform CPR in gym class, or how to balance an equation in science (or for the scientist, write in plain English, or not blow up the world)? Sure, all of those will be needed a whole lot more than shooting, but other than CPR shooting might be the most important to know if any of those situations came up.

Now, I considered myself set once I learned safety, and how to aim properly. But lately I've been thinking that its really short-sighted of me to assume the rifle will work perfectly all the time. More importantly, I don't know when its not working at 100%, because I don't understand it all. Just like the sorority girls whose computers I'd clean up at the end of the school year, I might not realize all the junk that is building up inside my gun. So, I've decided that I need to know at least basic gun smithing, just in case. Knowing this will keep me, and those around me when I shoot, a whole lot safer in the long run, plus save me money!

The motorcycle is the same story. I have no idea what's going on, and if you read up on an inline-4 engine, there's really no excuse for that. So again, I'm teaching myself basic mechanics in order to keep my machines running as smoothly and safely as possible.

And if you think about it, these skills of checking the usual fail points, oiling the squeaky parts, and throwing your own custom parts in, are the same across many fields, not just mechanics, gun smithing, and programming. So get out there, and get yourself head first into a new field today!