The Enigmatic C44-140

[jmaurer]

Well, as promised (far too long ago), some details of the C-series Long Barrel M59. Again, after reviewing the photos, an interesting mix of parts; note that the receiver cover and bolt were from another rifle, with the bolt (as seen on other Long Barrelled rifles) used on this one and possibly another rifle.
























I've got to go through some other stuff, but in looking at images that are available for the Long Barrelled rifles, I note the hand-applied number on the magazine bodies, which would possibly indicate a number of these things that could exceed the estimate of 100. After reading a couple of articles by Bogdanovic on Oruzje Online in which he references a practice of Zastava in producing prototype series for new models of firearms, I wonder if the number of these may be similar. I don't remember which was which from his articles, but when discussing the Yugoslav pistols M57 and M70, I think I recall correctly that one had a prototype batch of approximately 100 pieces, and the other (M57?) had a prototype batch ("0" series, if I recall) of approximately 1000 pieces. If Zastava's practices were consistent, do these rifles represent that prototype batch (ignoring the obvious production series receiver on this one...or not?)? Another piece of potential evidence that may indicate a number of Long Barrels in excess of 100 is that these have the timing/degree marks as seen on other, regular production rifles. Would a hundred or so barrels be worth the time to stamp the degree number on them, or would it be faster to electropencil the number on them? Just conjecture, until we get the final word.

Anyway, enjoy the photos, and I apologize to all for not posting more. Gotta hit the road soon; perhaps more later!

[carls sks]

sorry, don't know anything about them. nice, thanks for sharing. 

[Phosphorus32]

Cool. Thanks for the pics. Is the EP’d number on the mag seen elsewhere? These assembly numbers are common on Yugoslavians.

[jmaurer]

Phos, I don't think this number shows up anywhere else on the rifle. Each of the Long Barrels for which I've seen photos or handled first-hand have such a number; I've just not been able to look at other M59s/59 66s/59 66a rifles to see if regular production guns have the same EP'd number in the same location. I'll try to do so after Independence Day festivities.

[running-man]

That's a nifty one JM. The S/N is especially neat in that the dot matrix printing is so coarse that you can see the individual pips.

I have seen many mags with the assy number in that location. In this instance, the assy numbers should be "8", not 925, so it appears maybe the mag was added at refurb or this gun was built from previously used hardware.

The plate on the stock is interesting. I've not see that style of hyphenated number on a yugo before. I wonder why they hyphenated after the '44'? 

Neat gun all in all though.  I wish it could talk!

[jmaurer]

Thanks, Running Man. This is one of the batch that, as I understand, remained among the last assets at Zastava. The tag reminds me of shop travelers I've seen in a couple of labs that I've worked around: a quick and easily-verified identifier for a test specimen that needs to be tracked, and not mixed up with others. That's sort of what I was thinking about the number on the magazine, as well-but if that's commonly applied to most Yugoslavian SKS rifles, it would have to be a regular sub-assembly number.

As far as the hyphen, perhaps it's a clue as to how serial numbers were assigned, in addition to the letter prefix. Along those lines, I've got an interesting rifle in the 50XXX range WITHOUT a letter prefix, and I've only seen one other for public consumption. As always, I'll try to post some images as time allows.