Can't leave well enough alone...

[Gewehr98]

My "new" Yugoslavian SKS had wood furniture that looked like it had been to hell and back, at least once. I bought a fiberglass stock set from www.nouglyguns.com. A little inletting for the larger diameter barrel, and an extra inch of inletting for the longer bayonet, and voila'! East German Rain camo! These guns shoot exceptionally well for the SKS design, I'm averaging just inside an inch for 5 rounds at 50 yards with Accurate 1680 handloads.

 

[Sierra1]

That looks sharp! The gun...not the bayo, altho the bayo looks sharp too!

 

[Fred Hansen]

Oh! The savagery of it all!

 

[DaHaMac]

That is a good looking SKS.

Mine is getting jealous because I have yet to give her some TLC, and stock is inspiring. Thumbs Up!

 

[saands]

Gewehr98: What does that bayo attach to? ... the launcher looks like it is in the way of deploying it. Could I get you to post a close-up of the bayo attachment? I am thinking of getting one, but mine would need to lose the launcher for importation into the PRK.

Thanks,
Saands

 

[Gewehr98]

Oddball SKS configuration

Saands, I don't have any digital pics yet of the bayonet lug area, but I can take some, perhaps e-mailing them to you?

The Yugoslavians did a bunch of stuff to adapt a bayonet launcher, gas valve, grenade ladder sight, and night sights to the standard SKS.

The front sight was moved further aft, and is now integral with the bayonet mount/pivot. The bayonet is a good bit longer than the original SKS blade bayonet, to extend it's reach past the integral(and permanent) grenade launcher. Instead of the ring that goes over the muzzle to lock it in the deployed position, the bayonet has a claw arrangement that locks into the bottom ring of the grenade launcher. See where the blood groove terminates on the pivot end of the bayonet? The non-blood groove section that extends towards the pivot from that point is the amount the bayonet was lengthened to get out there past the grenade launcher. Pretty slick, and it works and locks open as advertised.

That front sight base/bayonet mount also holds the flip-up forward night sight and the grenade launcher ladder sight. The ladder sight locks down onto the gas system, and the gas cutoff valve secures it in the down position when the gun is used as a semiauto rifle. In grenade launch mode, you are forced to set the gas cutoff valve to single shot mode in order to unlock and flip up the grenade launcher ladder sight.

For Kalifornia, you'd be better served getting the Yugoslavian M59, as opposed to the M59/66. The earlier M59 doesn't have the grenade launcher, and looks just like it's Chinese, Romanian, and Russian cousins. The M59/66's grenade launcher is fit pretty darned solid to the barrel, and then pinned. Not impossible to remove, but then you have to deal with the rest of the grenade launcher bits, too...

I know what you're up against out there, I was assigned to McClellan AFB near Sacramento until August of 1999. I was never so glad to take my AK, AR, M14NM, BM-59, BAR, AR-7, FAL, 10/22, and all their hicap magazines across the Nevada border to Florida before I had to register them with Bill Lockyer.