New to me Undated Alby

[Shoot The Refurbs]

Picked this up recently, only took a month in shipping to get to my door but i digress...   
finally got around to taking some pictures for posting, pictures of some other acquisitions to come when im not so darn busy house hunting.... takes longer when the wife keeps trying to murder my plans for a workshop...   


  beautiful

Missing the side sling swivel hardware

disassembled

No date side, EP'd SN F1006.  '10' stamp near barrel-receiver guide lines

EP'd mag

EP'd receiver cover

stamped F1006 trigger guard

stock number appears to be 01006? last digit is dicey, could be a 0,6 or 8. 6 makes sense but hard to tell.

EP'd Looks like, F111006 on bottom of gas tube, i could be misinterpreting some of those lines, but looks like he either got confused or just practiced a few lines, obviously with EP's there could be human errors but interesting to me to see this.

Ah yes, the mismatch bolt   

Bolt and carrier atleast match


Anyone have any information on the F character before the SN on Alby's or really any more info in undated series?
I know no date albys are a little hard to come by but if anyone here has any information at all on them i'm all ears.

-STR

[Larry D.]

No info from me, but that's a cool rifle.

I need an Alby.....NEED I say!

[running-man]

Neat one!  I'd say a true Franken-gun.  The 10 receiver # doesn't match the 4 barrel match number, they did not leave UM Gramsh in that configuration.  That barrel should be 60° off nominal at final torque.  I wonder what they did to force it to match?  Probably took a bit off one or the other to get it to seat.

The F1006 on the stamped trigger group may simply be a part off a Chinese letter prefix gun.  I've attached some pics of letter TG's with similar numerals.  I think this likely as we've seen replacement parts on Albys numerous times, though it's very rare that the rest of the gun is renumbered to match a single part.  The stock being close is really interesting.  May be a coincidence, or it could be the whole gun may have once been 0100X and the TG was stamped to match.  Impossible to know 100%. 

[Shoot The Refurbs]

Wow never crossed my mind, the fonts all match perfectly from those examples you provided of F series chinese prefix gun TG's as well.
So now I have more questions than answers 
How did it get a letter series TG? why would the EP they rifle to that? why should the barrel lines not line up? etc.
RM I would be extremely grateful for any more info on this, my mind is whirring now 
-STR

[Larry D.]

Wow never crossed my mind, the fonts all match perfectly from those examples you provided of F series chinese prefix gun TG's as well.
So now I have more questions than answers 
How did it get a letter series TG? why would the EP they rifle to that? why should the barrel lines not line up? etc.
RM I would be extremely grateful for any more info on this, my mind is whirring now 
-STR

You're getting the idea that you found the right place now, aren't you...

[Bacarnal]

Just a theory,  but what started out as a Chinese receiver went through a rework.  The only barrels available were Albanian,  so the barrel was made to fit, either facing it (most likely), shimmied (another likely way since the shims are in the thousandths), or the receiver was faced (least likely).  Since the TG was good, use it and the receiver as the starting point for the serials.  Find a bolt and carrier that headspace and fit the remaining hardware to the rifle.  VERY nice find IMHO.

[carls sks]

pretty. 

[Bubbazinetti]

If the forced match was done properly and it headspaces it should be a decent shooter IMHO.Very nice looking.The rear sling swivel shouldn't be too difficult to find.

[Shoot The Refurbs]

Just a theory,  but what started out as a Chinese receiver went through a rework.  The only barrels available were Albanian,  so the barrel was made to fit, either facing it (most likely), shimmied (another likely way since the shims are in the thousandths), or the receiver was faced (least likely).  Since the TG was good, use it and the receiver as the starting point for the serials.  Find a bolt and carrier that headspace and fit the remaining hardware to the rifle.  VERY nice find IMHO.

Interesting! So you thinking that it was scrubbed from an originally chinese serialized rifle. Would this have been early on before they got solid production running? or could it have been a period where they regularly used scrubbed receivers, perhaps the famed gap period? Or did i miss what you were saying entirely and you are suggesting bubba was up to his crafty ways? I will take her apart again and take a closer look, also if anyone wants to see specific spots i might miss or have missed please ask, more than happy to get more pictures up.

Upon trying to research this online i keep coming to more questions than answers. If this is a scrubbed chinese receiver why scrub the receiver serial if you are going to EP the gun to the original serial you scrubbed off? unless the receiver was a different one in which case wouldnt it still be easier to line out and ep the TG instead of scrub the receiver? Ep'ing would be easy too during early production years i'd imagine. Trying to find actual hard info on how the chinese helped with the supply and early manufacture of sks's mentioned on several online sources but it only says that they supplied them with rifles, parts, and manufacture starting after 1958, but 0 details of how they went about it, times switches happened, which certain supplies were available not to mention any information on how the albanians refurbished (if at all) their rifles. I know these are the rarest of the common 5 but dang digging for info on these is sure harder than a russian or chinese 
Again, i look at these like puzzles and really hope to discover as much history as possible to everyone of my pieces, but i am looking for actual history not a story to make me feel good so please if you have better info, burst my bubble so to speak if theres something blatantly obvious i'm missing, (because again, my first Alby) i'd rather learn than believe a feel good story 

-STR

[Bacarnal]

STR, I don't know  .  Looking closely at the receiver on the left side, from what I can see is some deep sanding/grinding lines taken out by heavy buffing causing more rounding than usual. Could have had some pitting at the wood line they wanted to take out and scrubbed that side then re-applied the indexing number. Or could have been a blank receiver. As with all theories, there is a lack of information. Also, I could be FOS .

[running-man]

Sometimes, when you hold them in just the right light, you can see the original stampings even on a well scrubbed receiver:

This is the M8 I just posted in another thread, notice the old triangle /416\ stamp beneath the new M8 stamp (which the configuration fits perfectly with the M8 feature-wise).  This gun was previously built, then scrubbed / refurbished before getting the M8 designator, a totally new S/N on all other parts, and a brand new stock.


Here is a Russian receiver that was scrubbed and restamped.  The old S/N "ИO342" is pretty apparent beneath the new one:


While it's true we can never know with 100% accuracy the pedigree of any particular gun, we can certainly make educated guesses after analyzing the data we do have.  There may be particular features on the receiver that would designate it as an Albanian, early Chinese, late Chinese, etc. too.    From the photos I've seen, there is nothing that prevents that receiver from being Albanian made.

[BishopofBling]

Interesting how they electro pencil instead of roll marking them on the early models

[Phosphorus32]

Interesting how they electro pencil instead of roll marking them on the early models

Electropenciled markings are a sign of refurbishment and/or force-matching on parts other than the gas tube, gas piston and rear sight leaf (Russians).