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!

I've been reading through the Heller decision (also known as The District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court case last summer that decided handgun bans were unconstitutional) and it has been *very* enlightening. I consider myself well read on gun laws, statistics and all that, but man, this is good stuff. Both sides have good arguments, this is one of the few times I've actually understood the reasoning behind a 'Lets ban all guns' argument, as presented by the Stevens [don't completely agree with] and Breyer [see much more eye to eye with] dissents. I highly recommend picking up a copy of this book, nice and concise with the full majority and dissenting opinions.

But its had me wondering about various facts, googling around to see what data I can dig up, and what opinions I can find. I stumbled across two great quotes tonight I just had to pass on.

The first is Ghandi, in his autobiography:

"Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest." (page 238 according to the site I found it on)

The Act in this case is referring to (I believe) the Indian Arms Act of 1878. This act made it impossible for a non-British citizen to get a weapon unless they could prove they were loyal. Something about making sure British rule (which was in place by force) wasn't overthrown by the legitimate subjects, or some such. So, we can see that Ghandi recognized that even though he preferred non-violent means, a population without arms cannot fight against an oppressor.

The second is another bastion of peacefulness, the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso:

"If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun. Not at the head, where a fatal wound might result. But at some other body part, such as a leg." (Seattle Times, May 15, 2001)

This was apparently in response to a question about a student turning a gun on another student. I will let go the argument for giving students the right to carry, but just focus on his words. Here we see a (mainly) peaceful man arguing on behalf of the right to use guns in self defense.

Amazing how even those who choose non-violence recognize the inherent need for weapons in our culture.

No, this isn't about Unreal Tournament, sadly, although now I really wanna go play that game again.

Took the AR I built with the intent of getting into competitive shooting out to a match for the first time last Saturday. Since this was a Garand shoot, I was made fun of until I ripped off the optics and bipod, in favor of good old iron sights (Yankee Hill Flip-up sights) and a sling (GI-web, standard issue [for Vietnam]). I had one morning of practice last week, first time shooting the AR with iron sights, and the first time ever shooting with a sling (turns out, no, it doesn't go over your shoulder). It was hot (turns out showing up in a t-shirt and shorts isn't competitive enough), it was long (35 minutes are averaging about 1 shot a minute), and quite discouraging (sighting in at 100 yards, standing, I hit paper 5 out of 20 shots).

I wanted to practice most of the week with the sling and my positions (prone, supported by the sling, sitting, support by the sling, and standing off hand), but work and prior commitments got in the way every day! Come Friday night I had just enough time to load my mags, strip/oil the gun (my bolt catch sticks something awful), and get everything in one pile before going to bed. And waking up every, single, hour, thanks to a dog I'm babysitting. Not that big of a deal except for the fact that I had to be up by 4:45am. My thoughts that night were that I'd be happy if I could average 5's (the largest circle), satisfied if all my shots were on paper, and really happy if I knocked in a bull.

Morning came, way too early. In fact, it was still dark, and neither I nor the dog were awake for our walk. Got down to the range without eating breakfast, figuring we'd be gone by lunch, and was feeling pretty good as I headed off into the pits at 8:45.

Let me explain how this works. This was a Garand match, but very laid back, so there was a few other service rifles that weren't Garands (they were older), and two ARs. The distance was 200 yards, we all had open sights (no scopes), and were shooting with slings. Now, at 200 yards its hard to tell if you hit a bull that's two inches wide, so half the shooters were back in the pits, imagine a concrete trench back at the business end of the range, just under the targets. As they shot, we could pull the targets down, mark where the hit was, and mark what point value it was.

The targets were standard 200 yard targets, pasted onto a cardboard target that expanded it. The X ring is about 2 inches in diameter, and I believe each additional ring was about two more inches. So it went X - 10 - 9 - 8 - 7 - 6 - 5, and everything outside of that was a miss. Scoring was whatever that zone was numbered, Xs count as 10, but in the event of a tie, its the number of Xs that determines the winner.

The course of fire was the opposite of a 'normal' order. It was prone slow fire 25 shots (5 were sight-ins, 20 counted), prone rapid fire 10 shots, sitting rapid fire 10 shots, standing slow fire 10 shots. Slow fires were alloted one minute per shot, rapid prone was 80 seconds, rapid sitting was 70 seconds. For the slow fire, the pits pull down the target after every shot, marking where the hit was, and marking what it was worth. For the rapid fire, the target is only pulled after the time limit is up, and all hits are marked.

We had 4 teams with 4 people each, so there was going to be 4 'relays' firing. Each team sent two guys to the pits, and left two at the line to shoot. My team was two guys I knew from the church I grew up in (my partner was easily in his 70s.... he took third), one of their co-workers, and me. My partner and I went to the pits first, which was nice as the sun hadn't risen enough to warm the concrete, and we had shade.

I tell you what, it was quite intimidating to watch one of our guys, who shoots at Camp Perry every year, get misses. Made me think I had no shot. One shocking thing I learned (and for all I study firearms, never thought about) is just how loud a bullet it. Not the report from the gun, but the bullet going over you. Its traveling in excess of 3000 feet per second, well over the speed of sound, so you get a nice sonic boom as it whips over top of you. At 200 yards I couldn't hear the report of the guns over the bullet coming by. Another thing that's easy to forget at indoor ranges, is just how destructive bullets are. The rounds going over were hitting about 10-20 yards up and in front of us, and yet I'd still get showered by dirt occasionally. Amazing.

Shooting commenced around 9AM, first shooter was done around 10:30, and we were changing pits with the firing line around 1145. Yes, it takes a LONG time. The old guy with me shot first, so I could see what the rhythm is how it all works. He took his time getting prone, and into sitting, complaining of some cataracts and a touch of mono.... Proceeded to run up a string of 9's in the rapid fire that were almost touching. To give you an idea of how good that is, an 'accurate' weapon might shoot '1/2 MOA [minutes of accuracy]'. 1 MOU is roughly 1 inch at 100 yards. So to shoot with 1 MOU accuracy at 200 yards means your bullets should be spread out over an inch. So for him to have them just about touching, that's good shooting.

Finally around 1pm, with some nice heat exhaustion (didn't bring more than one bottle of water) and no food all day other than two granola bars, I got my chance on the line. I basically just wanted to shoot my 55 rounds, and get the heck out of dodge. Being sighted in at 100 yards, I wasn't even sure where I'd be hitting for my sight in shots, but, thankfully, they were right on!

5 sight-ins went down range, and I started into my 'for record' slow fire shots. After about 10 (loaded one by one) I was ready to call it quits. But, I was still hitting good numbers, so I pushed through the exhaustion, and just ended up rushing the last 4 shots... with a solid 12 minutes to go! So I stripped out of my gear (sweatshirt and shooting jacket/glove) and bummed some water from people, happy with the three bulls I nailed in the last 10 shots.

Rapid fire I just BLEW through, went wide the first two shots (6's) but the second magazine (you shoot 2 rounds from one mag, then 8 rounds from the next) was all pretty good. Finished that about 10-15 seconds early.

Rapid fire sitting is more uncomfortable, so again, I was just rushing to get it done with. As I finished up I debated just skipping the standing off hand bit, seeing as I couldn't hit anything last week, and the fact that I could barely pick the weapon up in between sitting and standing. I sucked it up, prayed for just 10 more minutes of not-passing-out, and started shooting. Well, the other guys must have thought me crazy. I spent my 'prep' time sitting on the ground, in a t-shirt, not geared up getting a good stance. I was getting gear on as the load command was given, not really caring what happened, as I was already really happy with my three bulls from prone. Took my first shot, started reloading immediately, just wanting the rounds out of my hands, when the spotter called a 10! I turned around said "Could you recheck?" Sure enough, its a 10. A little heartened, I took a second shot. "9". Dang... after the first few shots I actually started trying, which made my scores start to slip, but wow. I scored a 54 total, which means that even on my worst position I met my hopes of scoring an average of 5's. Huzzah. Miracles DO happen!

In the end, I shot a 389, an average of 7s, or just outside the black. I had one 'M' that was agreed upon my the experienced shooters to have been a 'blown jacket', or a bullet that wasn't made correctly, and blew itself apart. They saw no hits from the pits, and it was in the middle of a string of 10s so *shrug*. I'm quite happy with that outcome, and have to thank my dad for giving me the instruction he did on BB guns in the basement, its the only teaching I've had. Other than the guy helping us sight in last week, of course.

I'd embellish more, and add some pictures, but Firefox keeps crashing so I'll just hit publish.

I'm currently in a nasty quandary: I'm at a time in my life when I want to pursue shooting as a sport and a hobby, going down an amateur competition road, and I'm also at arguably the worst time to afford shooting since, oh, probably WWII when all spare metal was going to the military. The price of firearms is incredibly inflated, and the price of ammo is outrageous.

"Assault Rifles" that were around $600 might now fetch $1200, and a complete package with goodies can easily top $2000. Cheap WWII surplus that may have been picked up sub $100 at a gun show is now being auctioned above $300. A box of 20 rounds of 30-30 has gone up from around $10 to $20, and more, since I started shooting that rifle, and some calibers (such as .50) have gone up as much as 3-5 times the previous cost just 5 years ago. This is due to a number of factors (fear, low supply due to fear, some crazy shenanigans trying to change how ammo is produced as to outlaw guns, and the rising cost of metal in the cases), but the fact remains, its a sucky time to try to get into shooting.

5 months ago I was looking at building a second AR-15 but the cost of the stripped lower receiver had almost doubled in just 7 months (I paid $120ish after tax last summer, and was looking at paying over $200 to $250 for the same receiver in February), and I really couldn't justify my purchases. I wandered into the local Bass Pro Shops just to see what I could get for the same price, on a whim. I asked around about what they might have that I could afford to shoot on a regular basis, specifically looking for a .22 caliber rifle (.22LR rounds currently run around $20 for 500 rounds).

The man helping me said that Ruger had good stuff, and the 10/22 started around $220 (note for those who opened the link... this is cheaper than the website price as dealers always buy under MSRP). I asked about one, was informed they were out of stock, then the guy checked in back and they had one left. Pulled it out, waved it around a bit, and decided "Why not?" So I walked out with it that day, with some ammo, for about $250 total, as opposed to $220 for one piece of one gun.

Took it out to the range, and wasn't immediately impressed, it put rounds down range, but made the tiniest of sounds (its a .22) and was just OK.

Fast forward to the summer. Now I'm going to the range a lot more (once a week), shooting a lot more (few hundred rounds a week, mainly .22 and 9mm), and getting a lot more into it (treating it as 'practice', concentrating on my posture, breathing, control, getting smaller groups). In the last week I've had the 10/22 out three times to the local indoor range, and tossed 800ish rounds through it.

First night was around 250 (of my ammo, more with his) with my roommate, fairly easy (taking our time, not really concentrating). We had two failures to eject the spent case, both with his (cheap) ammo, and I'm attributing it to the ammo being fairly weak (noticeable sound difference between his cheap, and my cheap).

The next night I took it out with another friend, and we proceeded to do a very fast rate of fire, with one of us loading the spare mag as the other emptied the first, maybe a 3 second turn around time in between every 10 shots, just pounding them. Was also staying fairly accurate. After 200 rounds the barrel got too hot to hold, but she was still accurate as we could be. After 340 rounds in 30 minutes we'd had no failures to feed or eject, no problems whatsoever, in fact. It was still accurate by the end, though dirty dirty dirty (told you it was cheap ammo).

After that night, I was very impressed. For a $220 piece of metal, I did not expect it to stand up to that kind of punishment.

Finally yesterday I took her out and blew through the rest of my 200ish rounds, taking my time and focusing on accuracy. She actually had some nice groups when I worked at it, much better than I expected from a bottom of the line .22 rifle.

I highly recommend this rifle. The 10/22 family consists of (currently) 35 models, so there's something for everyone. Bottom of the line is a wood stock, simply open sights, nothing to speak of. Goes up to some serious marksmanship pieces, good platforms for amateur shooting, as well as pretty pink models to get the girls interested. The prices are rock bottom (for this economy) and its an American company (made in the USA as well).

I like it so much when I was looking for a .22 pistol I just picked up a Ruger Mark 3, as I know I can trust the manufacturing and quality.

So if anyone's looking for something small, something to try out shooting with minimal investment and easy shooting (girlfriends that are scared of big bangs will even like them [although I prefer the ones who don't mind tossing an AR around]), look no further than the Ruger 10/22.