Albanian Trench Art - Anyone Ever Try and Decipher?

[cztulsa]

Dug out the old, beat to crap Albanian I have, and started looking over the carvings in it again.  Never could quite figure anything out - thought it might be a guy's name, girlfriend's name, etc.  Well, got a paper and pen, and started writing what I though I could make out, between the nicks, dings scratches, and cracks.  Lo and behold, I plugged "PETRANPERMET" into google, and up popped "Petran, Albania"!  Seems "Permet" is a municipality in southern Albania, and "Petran" was a village that became a subdivision of "Permet".  Now I know where my rifle came from.  Now, for the possible name "Stefnn", and possibly "Admango"?

These things can be fascinating.  If only they could talk.

[Phosphorus32]

Very nice!  I like the trench art.  I have one with "I. Ferko" and another with "E. Sota" on my mixmaster and matching "ghosts", respectively.  Both are Albanian names of individuals who had to carry them around at some point.  Others with trench art that I have no clue about, such as initials.

[cztulsa]

Wow - yours are very clear!  My conscript crudely gouged his names in.  Writing is in both finger groves on the front of the stock, and more on the right side of the butt.  Would be much easier to read if it didn't look like he drove tent pegs in with it and used it as a shovel. 

[Phosphorus32]

Would be much easier to read if it didn't look like he drove tent pegs in with it and used it as a shovel.

  Well, you know it's hard to carve carefully when you're huddled in the darkness of one of Hoxha's Bunkers 

[Loose}{Cannon]

 

[cztulsa]

I'll bet that's the bunker dug out by my Albanian!

  Well, you know it's hard to carve carefully when you're huddled in the darkness of one of Hoxha's Bunkers 

[newchi]

IM curious, the Albanians with trench art did they come covered in cosmoline? If so were they put back into storage and cosmolined like that?
I will never see an Albanian up here, just wondering.  Im sure the soviet refurb process threw any with trench art out, maybe Albania had no sks stocks to replace them with at the time?

[cztulsa]

This one had plenty of cosmoline in it (and still has a little).  Odd that they put it up for storage in it's condition, as the stock even has a crack with a piece broken off, and the action probably moves about 3/16" in it.....it's beat.  Metal is really pretty nice, about 85% bluing.  Guy sold it to me with a new replacement stock, but I just don't have the heart to separate it from it's original unit. 

[Greasemonkey]

Albania had spare stocks.. Many were imported. I have a unfinished Albanian replacement stock that came with my first Albanian. I dont think Albania had quite the high standards as other refurb facilities.
Some recient Chinese have been found to have replacement Albanian stocks fitted also.

[Phosphorus32]

IM curious, the Albanians with trench art did they come covered in cosmoline? If so were they put back into storage and cosmolined like that?
I will never see an Albanian up here, just wondering.  Im sure the soviet refurb process threw any with trench art out, maybe Albania had no sks stocks to replace them with at the time?

All of my Albanian-sourced early Type 56s came fresh from retailers (or the LGS) packed in Cosmoline.  I suspect their militia, or partizans, as Hoxha liked to call his citizen militia, were as disciplined as a highly trained regular army force and thus trench art became commonplace. The Albanian refurbishment program seemed to be chuck it into a new ill-fitting beechwood stock when the original breaks