Here's an off the wall topic that I've been contemplating posting for several months now. I happened to stumble upon a very lucky find while doing a simple Google search for:
Aртиллерийская База Вооружения
Which loosely translated is "Artillery Base Weapons" and is condensed to the acronym "AБВ" (ABV in English) used in the various 'known' Soviet era refurb facilities such as 1871st ABV in Liski (our /1\ ex-ex-DDRs) or the 1827th ABV in Nizhyn.
Anyhow, it turns out that there was an ABV near Moscow that is long abandoned. Various hardware still exists inside it and various members of "urban explorer" groups go out (possibly illegally, they mention evading guards and whatnot), enter these abandoned sites, and take photos to post on their blogs.
I found a site that describes one of these bases in detail, complete with lots of neat old photos (note, all of these photos taken and owned by alexdoomer2009):
http://alexdoomer2009.livejournal.com/180547.html (in original Russian)
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ru&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Falexdoomer2009.livejournal.com%2F180547.html&sandbox=1 (translated to English via Google translate)
Nice thing about this one is it has a description caption for each photo. Anyhow, not a ton on SKSs or weapons in general there at all. There were lots of photos of optics though, and we know many optics went through refurb at these types of facilities:
and large piles of old helmets:
That last image made me think, there can't be tons of piles of helmets so I started searching for that specifically and then came upon this next site that has a collection of photos from various different contributors (you may want to make sure to update your virus checker and whatnot, I'm not saying I don't trust .ru websites, but I think it's certainly prudent to tread carefully):
http://urban3p.ru/object19051/ (in original Russian)
https://translate.google.com/translate?depth=1&hl=en&prev=search&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=ru&u=http://urban3p.ru/object19051/ (translated to English via Google translate)
The site has numerous links to what are probably very neat sites all around Russia, but they all seem to be open to members only. I have no idea how I happened onto this page that is open to the outside world as everything else is closed, but there are a boatload of images in there (including either of the same ones from the above link, or photos taken by a different camera of the exact same piles of helmets, hardware, etc.) and that's where our favorite SKS finally starts to peek through just a little bit. There's no certainty that they were serviced here, but it's certainly a possibility. Again the following photos are not mine and appear to be from various contributors over at urban3p.ru.
First the piles of helmets again, they are clearly the same piles at the same location:
Next piles of optics cases:
Next we find out it is indeed near Moscow like the first link author stated (the title of the map is "ПОДМОСКОВЬЕ" which Mr Google says means "Moscow Region"):
In some of the rooms we see that yes, they did service weapons! SKS is on the poster on the lower right along with a Dragunov, some flavor of Mosin Nagant, a PPS, and a couple DP Degtyaryovs. The poster it titled "СТРЕЛКОВОЕ ОРУЖИЕ" which Mr Google wants to translate into "Small Arms":
And then we find stuff like these AK mags and buttstock cleaning kits:
Then we see what I believe to be pistol holsters and ammo belt pouches. these look exactly like the 7.62x39 / stripper clip ones that came with our favorite SKSs:
Tools we'd expect to have been used in a shop like this. Lathes, vertical/horizontal mills, and woodworking machines:
This one was an interesting bit of safety signage. If any of you guys have ever worked in a machine shop, these three images will be pretty familiar to you! I can't remember how many stories of guys I've worked with telling how they stuck a dial indicator with a mag base, lathe chuck wrench, or a screwdriver that they forgot to pull off the machine through a <insert part of building here> when they spun it up.
So that's perhaps a small glimpse into a possible SKS refurb facility. Very reminiscent of US military facilities from the cold war era that I've been to actually. If you have a few hours to kill, look through the photos on both those sites and then take some of the links that lead elsewhere. There are some very neat glimpses into the old Soviet way of doing things out there.