#Sks

FAB Defense has introduced a couple of new product prototypes during Arms & Hunting 2017 exhibition held in Moscow, Russia. One of them is a new handguard for the AK-47 type rifles and the second one is an SKS chassis. Both products are still in development and only the 3D printed prototypes were shown during the expo.

Another good idea, bad idea. Hical.ca has a magazine release for the SKS rifle. It is shaped like a trigger and positions the trigger to the side of the trigger guard.

The Victory Day Parade is a military parade annually held in Red Square of Moscow in celebration of victory in the Second World War. The parade takes place on 9th of May, which is the day when Nazi Germany signed the instrument of surrender in 1945. Let’s take a look what firearms were spotted during the parade.

Recent social media activity has indicated at least one Chinese 7.62x39mm Type 74 for sale through the online gun markets of Baghdad. At a casual first glance the light machine gun appears to be an RPK. But upon closer inspection one will notice the oddly shaped carry handle, the SKS-like bolt, uncovered upper receiver, and pistol grip. In fact the Type 81 series of small arms is much more of a modern SKS in an assault rifle issued role than a Chinese take on the Kalashnikov. For more information on the Type 81 and other Chinese LMG designs, Small Arms Defense Journal has an excellent article published on the subject.

The SKS is seeing a lot of love in Canada lately, as another chassis system rears its head. The Pearce Armoury ILS chassis is 3D printed, and creates a pseudo-AR lower for the SKS. The means AR-15 stocks, pistol grips, magazines, trigger assembly, and bolt release.

Cheap SKS rifles have always been a thing in Canada. Black Friday saw Cabela’s Canada selling them for $140 USD. With that so far endless seeming supply of rifles, we see more and more people putting time and money into making sharper, better, enhanced versions. New this year will be the SKS-15, a standalone rifle created by merging a modified SKS with a domestically manufactured chassis.

The editor says: This article was contributed by our friend Vitaly who runs Rem870.com, a blog and forum dedicated to the Remington 870. 

I recently had a brief range day with Matador Arms and put some rounds through their SKS and Sabertooth Chassis combo. Matador is a Canadian company, and produces a variety of accessories for the domestic market.

The Sabertooth is arguably their flagship product, a machined aluminum chassis for the SKS that adds AR-15 stock & grip compatability, a slim picatinny quad rail, and a magazine well for duck-billed magazines. The idea is that no permanent modifications to the rifle are necessary, and that the entire thing can be reverted back to “pure” without any gunsmithing.

When the SKS began appearing in large quantities, many US buyers snapped them up. The SKS is a solid rifle chambered for the same intermediate power cartridge as the AK-47 rifle: the 7.62×39. Unlike the AK, the SKS used a more traditionally shaped stock and lacked a detachable magazine.

The SKS rifle was once the most popular surplus rifle in the USA, but various import laws and regulations put a damper on its importation. Regardless, these rifles are still quite popular around the country and in this video we show you how to rip yours apart.

(This is Part 2 of the TFB Rifle Weight Omnibus. You can read Part 1 here.)

Over the past month my good friend Max Popenker has been focusing on adding shotguns to his World.Guns.Ru database. The most interesting new gun added is the  VPO-208 semi-automatic shotgun manufactured by Molot. It is essentially and SKS shotgun with a smoothbore barrel. The end of the barrel has rifling, making it technically a “paradox” barrel not a smoothbore. It is chambered in .336 TKM, which is a 7.62x39mm case necked up to .336 TKM, essentially a small shotgun slug in a rifle case.

There are odd guns out there, and then there is this. A listing on Gunbroker that just ended consisted of six SKS rifles with 75 round drums arranged in some sort of odd Gatling mechanism. The listing was started at $3,500 and I don’t think anyone bid on it at all (it was viewed 341 times). Either way, this tops some of the oddest combinations of machines and firearms I’ve seen. From the auction description-

I was originally alerted to the idea of this post by the recent posting of pictures from a parade in Pyongyang in which troops were shown goose stepping with bayonet affixed Model 91/30 rifles and thought to myself, just how bizarre looking it appeared in the modern age, with a comparatively modern army. Then I started looking at more pictures of North Korean parades, and they must either be getting tired of looking at AKs, or have some sort of a need to display everything in their museum armory, because everything from M3 Grease Guns to PPSH41s are on display in some sort of fashion. In addition to all their modern stuff! The whole thing reminds me of a time myself and my uncle visited a military museum in Rangoon, where the front guard had an M2 Carbine and was standing post. My uncle inquired about whether or not the poor guy should put it back in the museum.

The pictures are a couple of years old (prior 2009), but interesting nonetheless. Apparently it is a picture from a seized weapons cache in Iraq, later in the war due to the ACU helmet cover on the kevlar laying on the floor. The gas tube is completely removed so I’m pretty sure it is a bolt action. Still, it’s an SKS pistol! The guns in the crate seem to also be of varying designs, some conventional such as the PKM with polymer stock and various AK rifles as well. I can’t tell right off the bat what the compensator is, but it certainly isn’t AR based, the birdcage goes all around, and it tapers from the bottom up. I haven’t included AK modified (Peshawar or otherwise) pistols in this post because they are far too numerous to mention and are a different operating system.