Vids work now. 
Awesome
My "G"7544 has the "ST A." import mark and the sand caked between the stock and action, with other signs of being at least carried in a sandy environment.
Is that a G letter series? just more evidence that perhaps we were right about these back in the day, that they are ICs. I forgot how many of these were caked in sand inside the stock just as the "ALBs" are commonly found. My old (and very well worn) 8 mill with that import mark also had sand when i got it. If that's a letter series, and LC's is a V letter series with the same import mark, and my /666\ "ALB" has a V letter series trigger.. that seems like pretty compelling evidence that some letter series did make their way over there.. The ST."A" mark seems to be far less common than the typical ST."ALB" mark. Probably just a much smaller batch and were sorted differently.
Gonna show my ignorance here.
Does IC mean Israeli Capture?
Yes. After the invasion of Lebanon in 82', Israel captured millions of $ worth of small arms from (primarily) the Palestinians. They started sorting & selling these abroad to militaries & commercial markets, and shortly after we started receiving these SKSs among a few other types of firearms that very obviously came out of the Middle East.
Would it be possible that the laminates that are thinner could be Russian replacements intended for use with 49s at refurb?
With regard the the 9m /26\s those were at the very end of the blade bayonet in Chinese production...by 9.1m(ish) they were spikes. Could it be that they got some stocks along with the original aid that were set up, perhaps experimentally by the Chinese...during the transition that could accomodate both? The Chinese could have been sitting on the laminates as well, forwarded to them along with the Russian parts they started with, and for whatever reason, opted not to use them. The laminates would seem like a viable candidate to be set up for both blade and spike, and remain strong.
This initial cache of parts, then would be spread out over the years with repairs as needed. I suspect they had as much fun getting various stocks to fit a particular SKS as we do here...even with the crossbolt in the proper place. This could further shuffle up the mix of stocks sent by China. This would make a little sense out of the out of place stocks here and there.
Heck, perhaps the initial aid partially was the clean up of the blade/spike transition? Just a WAG...seems like it might fit the timeframe. 
Definitely possibilities. I just received a non-refurb Letter Series Russian today with a laminate stock, and that sucker is THIN.. thinner than the 50' refurb Russian laminate stock that I used to have. I think perhaps I was off base with the laminate stock thing, they probably are just Russian stocks.
Whether they were assembled as such prior to the Middle East or if the Middle Easterners did the bluing/laminate stock combo is still up for debate imo, though. The couple Norinco marked blued/laminate examples are in good shape, no doubt, but so are plenty of non-Norinco marked ones with the blued carriers. No different.. I think the full rebluing just made them look extra-unissued and if they didn't see much action afterwards, then they're obviously gonna look pretty clean. I mean, they needed replacement stocks.. so I'm confident they saw action prior to that configuration. Just about every example in its stock configuration with its bolt "in the white" is in worse shape than the blued ones. Not in
all cases, but in most based on the pics I've collected. Just screams refurb to me.
Because of Carbine's arabic marked example w/ the "Norinco" mark, I'm still leaning towards the blued/lamies being middle east refurbs, not some random Chinese configuration. But without more evidence, we'll likely never know for sure.
Home
Search
SKS Guide
Russian
Chinese
Romanian
Yugo
Albanian
North Korean
Donations
Login
Register