8 Mill IC

[Worm]

My new early import 8 mill. Thing has had a hard life. Has a replacement stock, and boy does it have a booming red/orange stock towards the butt. Great metal patina too.

Hands down my new favorite toy. Much more beautiful in person.












Import CAI ST A VT & SKS 7.62 CHINA

[Loose}{Cannon]

Nice gun!     How do you 'know' its an IC?     

[Worm]

Is there any significance to a "last four" digit serial stamp/replacement stock? - page 2 - General SKS Discussion - SKS-FILES FORUM - Page 2 of 3

My post from above thread:

Bringing an old thread back to life, never noticed last comments. After much reconsideration, I'd have to agree these are IC.

After looking into early imports and not having much luck, it seems as if the earliest Chinese SKS's were from Israel.

Being the CAI ST A VT is missing two characters from the standard CAI ST ALB VT, yet are identical in font, and size, I would imagine the "A" quickly turned into "ALB".

The fact that we received only 9 & 12 Mills, with the exception of a Russian that Stoned just got (and possibly a few others secretly roaming the states), when Lebanon was such a huge melting pot of SKS's (Germans, Russians, Chinese, Romanians, probably more) means that when Israel invaded Lebanon & captured millions of dollars worth of weapons, they must have done some major sorting when they started exporting.

We find Russian SKS's from Canada that are Arabic marked from the same period. Israel sent different rifles to different regions it seems, or maybe it was just whatever the importers worked out with them at the time.

(See Israel Cap-Sino-PLO Sticky for more info on the war and cap'd weapons if ya want)

Since we figure these are an earlier import (Probably NOT by much) I would assume these were also from Israel, but possibly a different batch. It could have been the ATF that said to add the "LB" to the "A" with Century's next batch, or Century just chose to be more specific, but I believe it was a separate batch.

There is no reason I can think of that the PLO would just receive 9's and 12's when aid was so plentiful, even from early 60's.

That sand in the receiver is identical to many reports of IC guns, in both Stoned's & Cannon's examples. The fact that Stoned's stock is sanded, and that Cannon's stock looks like it could have gotten the common IC red shellac supports them being IC. The sand looks just like Cannon's arab marked 12 mill right when I bought it, all caked to the gun.

I just found an 8 mill on Gunbroker with the same import mark, with matching numbers and similar patina, so I pulled the trigger on it. This seems to be a VERY small batch, as looking throughout other older forum posts and photos of older imported SKS's I cannot find any other examples. Not a single one. And my brain is FRIED after looking the last few days. I could be just missing them, however.

Here is the 8 mill. I decided to join the club.

Very similar Patina to IC's, like my current 9 mill, and your guys' letter series:



The fact that there are less than 10 arab marked IC's while theres about 40+ known, And since we've only seen 3 examples of these, means it's not enough to say they are NOT IC's because of lack of arabic marks.

These feature caked sand, matching patina, the correct era of production, ruby red stock, a sanded stock, and an import mark of the same era as the IC's.

I believe it's safe to say.

[Loose}{Cannon]

I know man .. just givin ya crap.   

Hella cool gun.   If my 8m wasn't an honorguard, my 8m would look like worms 8m.

[Worm]

lol, thanks 

[Dannyboy53]

Beautiful carbine Worm!

[Stoned_Oli]

REALLY nice amount of wear on that one. I understand the love...

[Worm]

Thanks fellas,

Just found another 8 mill with the common 9 & 12 mill IC import mark (CAI ST ALB VT) that's only 10k #'s away from mine with the earlier mark, (CAI ST A VT)

Another growing known serial range like the 9's & 12's perhaps?

[Loose}{Cannon]

What about the letter guns?   

[Worm]

What about the letter guns?   

A little more difficult to find a range with the letter guns being there's different prefixes every 10k or so, but yep, those too.

[Worm]

Your V & the similar W I recently found that share our early CAI mark are two prefixes that are right next to each other.

So that would give us an approx 20k rifle range.

8 mills currently have a 10k range.

Then we have a 10 mill 28k rifle range,

And of course our obvious 9 & 12 mill ranges.

[Loose}{Cannon]

Where da 6,7, and 11 at?

[Worm]

Well we did see a non import marked 6 mill with what looks like a heavy red reshellac, very similar to your 11 mill that also has it. No sign of 7 mills at this time.

[running-man]

There are a ton of 7's and 11's out there.  Everybody thinks "Vietnam!" when they see them because they are usually in used condition, but maybe they should be thinking IC instead when they see the CAI stamps.  I'll look through my files and see if I can find some CAIs to post.

[Worm]

Sounds good RM, that'd be great.

Look for the red reshellac.

To keep people on our page, Canada received some of these guns, and during the time of import they didn't need to import mark rifles. LC has a nice example of an 11 mill with replacement stock and red reshellac. Of course, thats not a requirement. There has been gritty nasty brown reshellac jobs also.

[running-man]

Here's about the only early CAI stamp I can find.



It looked really promising at first, then I realized it said Norinco.  And then I realized it's on a stamped receiver. 



This one might even belong to a member here.  Stock is a pretty red though! 

[Worm]

Yup, needs to be on the barrel. I believe it was in 88-89' they switched from barrel to the receiver, I have an /016\ that was purchased in late 89' and it is a receiver import mark. An improvement from the hard to see barrel one.

Thanks for looking though