It barely looks like an SKS does it? The bolt handle is the big giveaway! Forum user Loose-Cannon from Texas had this SKS built, and its come a long way from Siminov’s original beast. He describes his creation…

This is a straight-pull bolt-action benchrest style rifle with a custom chambered Israeli 1919A4 barrel. The action is fully bedded with two aluminum pillars. The magazine is a shortened duckbill-less Tapco and locks in similar to the Marcus adapter via a custom aluminum ramp just behind the Anschutz accessory rail and is removed by my custom “Talon” extended release. The stock is solid black-walnut fitted with a Vostok adjustable buttplate assembly, a solid Ebony nose-cap, and an Ebony grip-cap. The Scope rail was completely custom made as well.

The parts came together over the course of 2 years, with the highlight being the Israeli machine-gun barrel. Sized for .308, the barrel was chambered, recrowned, and threaded to fit the SKS receiver. He puts his cost around $500 USD with the optic, which shows you the advantage of slow builds, making your own parts, looking for deals, and surplus parts! This 1 MOA group was shot using Yugoslavian M67 ammunition, and the right handloads could theoretically produce sub-MOA groups.

The intent was to eliminate a few contributing factors at a time in an attempt to narrow down where the sks and x39 lost its accuracy. The rifle at one time had a stock Yugo barrel which it was found the chamber dimensions were atleast half the issue. Harmonics, bedding, pillars etc were the first issues addressed from the start of the build, along with elimination of the gas system as a variable. The barrel is completely free floating minus the first 1.75″ forward of the receiver at the forward pillar/action mount location.

All sks rifles have an enormous jump to the lands and the angles just forward of the mouth are all wrong for accuracy. It actually more resembles a machine gun chamber which makes sense considering it was originally designed to keep operating under extreme conditions including debres etc. The reamer that cut this chamber was custom altered by the manufacturer to eliminate several angle issues and reduce the jump to lands. Given the bore is a true .308 and not .310/.311 and the changes to the chamber, I have to watch my pressures with reloads. Factory loads were tested and ‘some’ showed signs of slight primer bulging, but I have not experienced a popped primer as of yet.