RM note: Because of the difficulty the community has in dating a Chinese SKS I came up with a quick look grid that helps ID any particular triangle arsenal gun at a single glance (which honestly is not terribly difficult, but the statements of many of the *ahem* 'real' collectors have so muddied the waters with horsetrash, crap, and outright wrong information I've decided it's simply not worth my effort to try and correct it anymore. The damage they have done to the SKS collecting community as a whole is quite disheartening to say the least, especially when I see new 18 year old collectors on Reddit spewing the same horsetrash over and over again).
This grid gives a basic rundown of all the known & identified triangle arsenal type 56 carbines and their known S/N prefixes, how that corresponds to the years of manufacture based on the SKS-Files method of dating, and then where a reasonable yet conservative C&R cut line falls based on this information. The cut line is based on a gun being known to be 50 years old even if it was assumed to be manufactured on December 31, of the year in its date stamp which is the worst case scenario.
The grid itself should be relatively explanatory:
- Anything shaded green is a C&R as of the current timestamp date in the upper right corner as per the SKS-Files dating method.
- Blue boxes are suspected but as of today, unseen year codes of that particular arsenal based off a cutoff of under two years 'missing'. Please note that type 56 carbines from these holes may not actually exist and it may be that the Chinese idled that particular factory for unknown reasons during this time.
- Of course, all BATF C&R rules apply to any C&R and if any question arises in whether a particular firearm can be classified as a C&R, the easiest way to be 100% certain is to get a determination from the BATF of that particular firearm.
- For a C&R transaction to occur, both the buyer and seller have to agree that the firearm can be classified as a C&R. A firearm may well be a verified C&R but if the seller refuses to sell it as one, the buyer has little recourse but to go through a FFL01.
If there are any questions or comments please feel free to ask!
Downloadable
PDF is here