1950 SKS with spike bayonet

[Justin Hell]

Well, first off, welcome to the forum Justin.

And here, is a couple more cents.

What you have is a 49, for sure. It has a bottom pinned stock ferrule... these were only used on the earliest SKSs...including the prototypes, at the changeover from spike to blade, which I highly suspect happened late in 49...they began to top pin them...like every other SKS since, from any nationality. 

Yours has been refurbed at some point, 49 and early 50 covers will only work on the original looped take down cover. During the refurb process, the covers would often be scrubbed and restamped, your cover appears to me to be VERY similarly scrubbed to a 49 cover I bought earlier this year from a Russian who gets his stuff directly from old military buddies who work at the 'recycling' program.

I purchased what appears to be a late 49 early 50...missing stock, trigger group, magazine, receiver cover, original gas tube, and it was a top pinned blade cut ferrule. I then bought the majority of my parts from an early 50 to refurbish it as best I could. I haven't brought myself to attempt to remove the ferrule to see if the barrel is scored for both top and bottom pin options.  Another thing that points to a refurb done on yours is the fact it has the pin on the bottom of the magazine for the stud that was later added to retain the spring.  Finding a 49 magazine is very difficult...as I suspect the springs likely were lost without a way to retain them....I think they tossed these at refurb and never reused them.  I have no proof of that other than they are damn near impossible to find, the only one I have seen had a TERRIBLE Canadian 5 round mod pin buggering it up....other than that, only on certifiable very light refurb 49s.  My search is ongoing.

Now, I am not sure mine is a 49, but I am trying to get it there. I doubt I will attempt to get it back to the spike though, because the stock and bayonet are ridiculous expensive...(although,I did a pretty decent fake with a T53 bayonet).  The REAL problem is getting that bleeding bottom pinned stock ferrule.  These are smaller than the standard SKS ferrule as well, to deal with the skinnier stock...I believe somebody had a fun job modding your stock to fit it...but, I think that happened a long time ago...probably pre-Sputnik even.

Mine happens to be an EO btw...my research is ongoing about when the serial prefixes changed keep me posted, there aren't many EOs to go by.

I think someone tried very hard to keep your gun as close to original at refurb. I think many might have received a later cover, which will actually work. The original covers likely got set aside when they ran out of looped take down lever guns requiring them. The cover I bought was partially scrubbed...poorly, and then lightly sprayed with the BBQ paint to prevent corrosion, and then it was mothballed until my guy was able to dig one up.  Since your receiver and cover stamps appear to be identical, I wouldn't be shocked if the receiver was scrubbed and restamped too.  Whether a totally new serial was applied is something I am curious about...and if they would have resumed with a serial scheme that was current when it was refurbed?  If that is the case, then serial data on Russians might be a little useless with the exception of as issued, non refurbs.  I can only speculate...and it hurts my brain a little sometimes.

If we can only rely on the hardware used, that stock ferrule is going DING DING DING....I am a 1949. 

I am able to have the luxury of either having a scrubbed blank 49 cover on mine, or a 50 cover that matches most of my replacement parts. I am pretty darn happy with the blued blade I put on it, vs. trying to locate that ferrule...and forking over the equal sum for another SKS for a stock and spike....with my luck, I would pull my ferrule and find it was originally supposed to have a blade in the first place. 

Westrifle's reputation aside, nobody is going to try fake that ferrule...I think everything done to your rifle was at refurb...in Russia.

[running-man]

Since your receiver and cover stamps appear to be identical, I wouldn't be shocked if the receiver was scrubbed and restamped too.  Whether a totally new serial was applied is something I am curious about...and if they would have resumed with a serial scheme that was current when it was refurbed?  If that is the case, then serial data on Russians might be a little useless with the exception of as issued, non refurbs.  I can only speculate...and it hurts my brain a little sometimes.

Any that is basically the crux of the matter with the suspect data from all other other surveys summed up in a few sentences.  As-issued guns in original condition are the gold standard and all other refurbs can only provide (in some instances ridiculously) limited input to the whole process.  The thing is, there is also some threshold of "If I get X # of guns with YZ prefix from 19## with these five traits, yet all are refurbs, I can still tease something out just by the fact that a pattern emerges."  I don't have a handle on what the number X should be yet, but with the spreadsheet I currently have, sorting them into these groups is a piece of cake! 


Nice observation on the stock ferrule Justin, I had forgotten about the top pin vs bottom pin examples....   

I too think it's a '49 sporting a '50 cover, I hadnt considered that the cover could have been blank to start out with and the EM S/N was the first to be stamped on it....

[Justin Hell]

I too think it's a '49 sporting a '50 cover, I hadnt considered that the cover could have been blank to start out with and the EM S/N was the first to be stamped on it....

I didn't consider that it could have simply been refurbed in 50, and then restocked with the laminate even later? A blank cover...but then scrubbed and reserialed...I didn't notice scrubbing on the trigger, but heck, they could have just used a new 50 trigger and replaced the mag with the pinned version all at once?  The 50 trigger would have the same traits....ALMOST....my 50 trigger required me to file down the retaining pin because the frame is thicker than on 49 triggers. This example might have had the luxury of having its retaining pin replaced too...since they had them and all.

I thought the cover looked scrubbed in one of the photos, but it might have been a glare...the matching serial fonts kind of bug me, because, why scrub the receiver at all, unless it was completely reserialed...and then, by what serial scheme would they use? The current one at the time of refurb?  If not, why bother with the receiver...those wacky Russians.

I swear I have almost no interest in any other Tula's than the 49/early 50 ones...maybe a little for a 45 degree gas block transitional...but these early ones are really neat. There is a lot of transitional minutia that makes it more interesting.

[jstin2]

Justin- what you might have seen on the cover is grind marks. It was like that when I got the rifle. There was pitting on the bottom of cover and extending on both sides of receiver to pin holes. There is also grinding on the front of receiver(bottom).Also concerning the cover, if they replaced the cover, would they not have stamped the date rather than engraving? And tula star on cover appears not to be a single stamp, like later stamps. Also would they have replaced the bolt and carrier with a new one and stamped. There is a close-up picture of bolt. Like I have mentioned before, this SKS is something to ponder over.

[Justin Hell]

Justin- what you might have seen on the cover is grind marks. It was like that when I got the rifle. There was pitting on the bottom of cover and extending on both sides of receiver to pin holes. There is also grinding on the front of receiver(bottom).Also concerning the cover, if they replaced the cover, would they not have stamped the date rather than engraving? And tula star on cover appears not to be a single stamp, like later stamps. Also would they have replaced the bolt and carrier with a new one and stamped. There is a close-up picture of bolt. Like I have mentioned before, this SKS is something to ponder over.

I think the cover then, if those are indeed grind marks...was scrubbed and restamped. It was probably a 50 cover with another serial restamped to match the gun's serial...the 49 and early 50 covers were all hand struck...the stars and dates are very random as a result.  IIRC my 49/50 thing is a little rough on the machining on the receiver's underside...nothing horrible, but not quite as polished and proper as later guns. With mine, I had the original (I think) bolt that matched the receiver...the cover matters little in the function. I almost wonder if the stamps were new enough at this one's first refurb that they just happened to match?  I cannot fathom why they would scrub and restamp the receiver with the same serial....but, I also cannot fathom many things the Russians did...I just try and make sense out of it, and try to draw the most reasonable conclusion...assuming they were trying to be frugal with parts and materials that were perfectly good.

I would love to hear from a living person what exactly went on with refurbing...I suspect there were some big batches that came in for refurb and all hell broke loose trying to get parts back together to specific guns...and then some smaller batches where light refurbs and hard cases like these might have received more attention...all a guess, but...there had to be some common ground between what made sense between getting the guns back together at all, or fudging here and there with problem children like the 49/50s with their parts being improved upon frequently in those early years.

Of my current 11, this one is my most favorite to contemplate the details over...and the why behind some of them.  Sometimes you can tell it was just a material saving modification, sometimes it was an actual improvement....sometimes you just don't know why.  I am still kind of curious whether there was some kind of difference in the three different gas block designs over the first two years in function vs the material differences...which seem to be minor... Perhaps it was just aesthetics?   The straight ear vs angled on the bayonet lug was an obvious deployment improvement...from what I understand from Russian boards, the blade seemed scarier in the troops opinion than the spike...and that was the supposed reason for the change... The spring loaded firing pin change to the floating have me a little perplexed...if it was a cost cutting measure, I wish they would have never changed for whatever minor shaving in expense was facilitated, since that is one of the few 'flaws' in the design.

I think yours might have just come from refurb (twice most likely) as you received it....a hot mess of questions, that a lot of dead guys would probably giggle at a bunch of democracy based folks wasting their time asking them. Although, I think the poor dumb bastard that had to whittle and sand that laminate stock to fit a 49 ferrule and spike might not laugh...he might appreciate the fact we care enough to talk about it nearly 70 years later.

[newchi]

I would love to hear from a living person what exactly went on with refurbing....

I would walk around every town with an arsenal asking all the old folks that question if i could afford to do it.

Im sure the refurb when Ivan dropped his sks out the back of the troop truck in 1951 and had it run over was a different one to the, there's 50,000 sks's coming in next month to check and prep for storage,

Guns are refurbished every single day.

[jstin2]

Justin- the grind marks that I am referring to are below the serial number. Who did it?? This is my opinion only- S/N are legit, stock ferrule is for a 49/50. My only question are the date(engraved) and tula star and are they original? And why not stamped like newer covers? Everybody is concerned with the question of S/N's and what I am thinking is date and tula star. Also looking at pictures it appears that there is a faint refurb marking on it. Nobody has brought this up. Also if the cover was scrubbed the cover edges would also have been redone. If date was scrubbed they would have to take a lot of material off. And if at refurb why would they put 1950 on a 1949 and they would have to redo the tula star?

[newchi]

And why not stamped like newer covers?

  Find the guy at the factory in 1949 and ask him.  No one knows. (that ive ever heard)

As for the refurb mark, it might have been the tenth gun that receiver cover was put on, the fifth stock and been re-barreled twice.
  In fact it could have been refurbed so many times that none of the pieces other than the receiver are actually the ones that rolled of the line in 1949, just to play devils advocate.
Unfortunately theres no individual gun logbook with every entry of what happened to it.  (But that would be soooo cool if there was.)

Its all best guesses.

[jstin2]

The way I look at it, if the cover was dated 49, there would be no problem. Year 49 had several rifles recorded with EM S/N. With the engraved 1950r and the older version tula star on the cover is what causes confusion. And you are right in stating in who knows what happens in refurbishing.

[Justin Hell]

This rifle could have been refurbished at any time...it might have had it's original cover for the majority of its lifetime...at some point, a 50 cover with the tiny hole for the tiny looped takedown lever was scrubbed to match the serial of the gun. 49/early 50 covers only work on 49/early 50s...whoever did the refurb got as close as they could I suspect. Who knows, if the serial font doesn't match all the other components...maybe Westrifle did reserial it...I doubt they would, but it is possible since the serial for the receiver and the cover so closely match.  With the common problem of mismatched covers to Russian SKSs after refurb, I seriously doubt they cared what star or year was on the cover when reassembling. Regarding the scrubbing and reserialing of the cover and receiver at the same time...to me is the biggest question.

There were trial guns from 45-48 too....this could be one of those, and THAT might be why it was reserialed later...heck, it might have not had a serial at all until it was mated up with the 50 cover....which could have even been surplus until they were joined together. I think the serial matching was more important so that when broken down in small groups the troops would be able to get their parts back for their gun without issue.  I have seen modern Russian children being trained in school to break down AKs...and they actually pound out the sight leaf in the process...by hand.  Which would explain why they bothered to electro pencil the serials on them....everything with a serial was a part that was removed for full takedown and cleaning.  We are lucky they didn't serialize op rod pistons and recoil spring assemblies!  Early on, they even serialed the extractors....which I believe was either phased out after manufacture of them ceased in Russia, and refurbs didn't get them on their already existing bolts when replaced....or perhaps at some point during manufacture they stopped.  Hard to say.  It seems to me like any part with any fitment issues specific to it's original gun got a serial.

IIRC a considerable amount of fitting was required for my 50 cover to fit my gun...not so with the 49 cover...there may have been some slight changes made between even early 50 and 49 covers...I didn't measure, or am sure I even could measure the differences....but I think there were alterations that have yet to be confirmed over the first two or three years Russia made these exquisite beasts.  I also suspect that there were some alterations to the FSB as well, at least in pin placement between 49-50...I had to replace mine, first I accidentally did it with what I think was a 51, which was straight eared...but had lightening cuts....ooops! I then got one that was as close to correct as I could...but I think was a 50, because the pin depth and position was slightly different....as it also was on the 51.  My original was either neutered by the State of California upon importation...or heck...maybe even in Russia.  But it has zero bayonet lug, or nubs for the cleaning rod....perhaps the asshat who had it before me did that..I cannot tell, as it was bead blasted and then duracoated.  My import mark is almost invisible....so much I had to take great care to ensure not obliterating it when removing the damn paint and rebluing.

Regardless, I am certain there are a few features in the first year or two that were altered unbeknownst even to the most hardcore collectors...even regarding the metal finishing....there is some neat stuff going on underneath a lot of those BBQ painted guns....you just have to strip it to bare metal and note the layers on the way there...  

I have never heard of or seen evidence that the original Tula star/date stampings have ever been scrubbed or altered...I don't think it was an issue to them.

I seriously doubt this was ever rebarreled. If it was, the stock ferrule surely would have been replaced with a modern one, for the stocks on hand at refurb, and for the bayonets on hand at refurb.

[Boris Badinov]

What is unique about jstin2's 1950 dated gun is that serial font on the cover and the receiver are stamped in what appears to be the exact same font and size.

How often does an exact match in serial fonts occur between the receiver and replacement parts on refurbed guns? Even when they look similar, upon closer inspection there's always a detectable difference. Not so with this gun. And I've examined the two serials at least 50 times.

The exact match between the reciever and cover serial fonts is what makes this gun so intriguing-- because it ties the date on the cover to the receiver.

[Loose}{Cannon]

I dunno how many fonts they allowed/had, but I haven't seen much variation among Russians.

Having the same font stamp set at the refurb facility as the factory is entirely possible and likely in my opinion.

[Justin Hell]

The mere presence of a bottom pinned stock ferrule...and that it has a spike makes it quite unlikely that it is even an early 50.  The grind marks on the cover lead to the conclusion it was scrubbed.  It is intriguing...I cannot explain the serial stamps matching so closely. 

With the research I have done, I don't think any feature is set in stone as to when the transition to later features came along...at least enough to say that sure, there were some early 50s with 90 degree gas blocks...and other features changed a little over those first years, but I am almost positive....none would have been bottom pinned on the stock ferrule by the time 50 came around.  I think the blade bayonet came in late 49, there are a few examples out there, and I don't subscribe to the thought that they would reinstall all those barrel parts to retrofit for the new bayonets....since the effort was put into this one for a laminate to both fit the ferrule and the spike, why would some get that and others not at refurb time?

I truly wouldn't be surprised if this is a trial gun that was later serialed and rebuilt with whatever parts were around that fit.  I wish I was more familiar with the 45-48 run...and what may have changed during those years from what the 49 eventually was mass produced as.  If it was a trial gun, maybe they didn't get serialed in the same fashion...and that explains the serials being so similar between the parts?  It is a real head scratcher...but it screams 49 to me more so than the cover date says.  It's just my opinion...but I am pretty secure in thinking so. 

[Boris Badinov]

If the average yearly output of sks45 was 200-300k guns-- then we've too small of a sample pool of early cruciform guns to make any definitive claims on precisesly where the cruciform bayo ended.

We've just recently seen some overlap between the Type 56 "ghosts" and the onset of the /26\ stamped guns. Which suggests that  transitions between feature sets wasn't necesarily clean break from one design set to the next.

Regarding the horizontal grinding marks on base of the cover and the back of the receiver-- They do not strike me as indication of the cover serial having been scrubbed. Why would the marks remain after scrubbing an rebluing? Why do they run across both the cover and the reciever. It just doesn't jive.

I would even say there's an argument to be made that all of the stamps look like they were struck with the same stamps -- aside from the EM on the carrier and some dimensional differences in the top and bottom half of the  some of the E stamps. But the receiver and the cover are -- undeniably the same.

I'm not saying that it is or isn't without exception a 1949 or a 1950. What I'm saying is that there is a considerable argument to be made that it's an original as-issued 1950 (not including the stock). And that based on such a relatively small sample of guns with cruciform bayonets-- it's impossible to make any attempt to definitively claim that this rifle is a re-furbed '49 with a 1950 cover ...scrubbed AND stamped in the exact same font and size as the receiver and most of the rest of the gun.

In the case of this gun, I prefer to keep an open mind.

[Boris Badinov]

...Understanbly there was probably a lower output of guns with the 90 degree gas port than the output of sks45s in subsequent years, but the sample pool we're working with is still statictically small. And the range of potential cruciform 1950's would likely be even statistically smaller.

[Justin Hell]

Kind of makes you wonder if perhaps there was a period of time when they made both spike and blades and perhaps that time frame covered late 49 into 50? 

My partially scrubbed cover was pretty harshly ground on...not quite enough to completely obliterate the serial, but close.  It looked very similar to the grind marks on this one. I finished the job and reblued it, as I had to match the rest of the gun anyway. It was the only part that actually still had original bluing..except the ground part...which was a bit of a bummer, but...  It also has no refurb stamp 

[jstin2]

Look again at pictures of cover. Grind marks are below the serial number and extends on receiver to latch pin holes. If you would like more pictures of cover, let me know. Won't be high quality, but should show you what you need. On the front of receiver, bottom there is also grind marks. From what I could see, there was pitting and a sloppy job grinding.

[Boris Badinov]

Not sure more pics are needed.

I don't see how those marks can be associated in any way with refurbishment.

They could be from previous owner. They could be from westrifle. But that's not a trait associated with refurbishment. Marks like that would have been buffed out and reblued or painted over during refurbishment. It's not an indication that the cover has been scrubbed and restamped.

[jstin2]

I have this carbine on CGN. I have requested any info on early 50s. I got one reply from bobdbldr that he has a 50 with 90 degree gas port, hand stamped tula star, engraved date, eyelet latch cover, blade bayonet and the S/N starts with ER. I was hoping for EM, but it is a start. I asked for pictures and he will send me the webpage when done.

[jstin2]

Bob posted a few pictures on CGN , but also stated that it has a sloped gas port not a 90(looked at it and compared). It definitely has a engraved date, hand stamped Tula star and eyelet latch pin.