What goes around comes around, Tale of an old SKS

[Greatguns]

So, way back in 2007 I owned quite a few SKSs. When My youngest daughter got married that year I decided to give the new SIL one of the SKSs as a gift 'to take good care and protect my daughter' as jokingly put it at that time. He was military and ended up in Iraq, some of you oldies may remember this story, and after his return suffered quite a bit with PTSD and ended up getting killed in an altercation with police. Basically it was suicide by Cop.
All of his firearms were confiscated and in evidence for some time and then eventually returned to my daughter. She gave all of the firearms that he previously owned back to his family and stuck the SKS in the basement buried with his other stuff not wanting to deal with it. Fast forward to about 2 1/2 years ago, having moved and remarried, she asked if I would finish out their basement. Part of the deal was they were going to give me back the SKS because they didn't want it around. As we wound down the work they were slightly overbudget and had a plumbing bill to take care of. I knew the Plumber and worked out that he would take the SKS instead of cash. Well, I never found this out until a week or so ago, but he got sick and never finished his work so cancelled the last of the bill. They eventually got someone else in there and paid them cash. I was over last week doing some more work in another part of the basement and out they came with the SKS asking me if I wanted it.
So, after 13 years apart I now have back in my possession an early Chinese 0138 factory, all numbers matching, SKS. side sling loop and spike bayonet. Complete with sling, cleaning kit, ammo rig, stripper clips and some ammo. Only issue is the stock is cracked pretty bad and I'm not sure what I want to do with it. Sadly, Tom(Galahad) is no longer around to send it to.

[K.Campbell]

Where the crack at? Might not be too terrible to fix.

[Bacarnal]

I agree with K.Campbell.  Keep us posted.  I've fixed many cracks on different firearms.   Cheers, Bruce.

[Greatguns]

Pics now up

[Justin Hell]

Pics now up

Are they?  Or does my VPN now not work with images here?

Great story though...sad to hear about the stock, I need two side swivel stocks...last thing I need is more competition.   

[Greatguns]

Pics now up

Are they?  Or does my VPN now not work with images here?

Great story though...sad to hear about the stock, I need two side swivel stocks...last thing I need is more competition.   

Hey Justin look again to see if they are there. I accidentally set imgbb to autodelete the images after 15 minutes, LOL

As to the side sling stocks, I would work on repairing this one to keep it matching. Also, there is one on Ebay at around $36 + $11 shipping right now.

[Matchka]

Repaired a crack on the comb on one of my Russians, essentially invisible - stood up to 100+ rds - me happy.

[Larry D.]

That's an interesting chest rig.
Don't see many with ties instead of toggles.

I think I need one now........It's the curse of being a gear-queer.......

[carls sks]

good read, thanks for sharing. shame about stock, i try and fix especially because of number matching.

[Greatguns]

That's an interesting chest rig.
Don't see many with ties instead of toggles.

I think I need one now........It's the curse of being a gear-queer.......

I'm not sold on the ties and actually prefer the toggles. Much easier to deal with. If you have an extra toggled chest rig laying around you might be able to convince me to do a swap.

[Phosphorus32]

Interesting and sad story. Glad it came back to you.

I'd try drilling and pinning or doweling vertically fore and aft of the recoil lug with good quality wood glue. Some like gorilla super glue, or similar cyanoacrylate adhesives, and it's certainly strong, but I don't like how it expands as it cures.

[Greatguns]

Interesting and sad story. Glad it came back to you.

I'd try drilling and pinning or doweling vertically fore and aft of the recoil lug with good quality wood glue. Some like gorilla super glue, or similar cyanoacrylate adhesives, and it's certainly strong, but I don't like how it expands as it cures.

Gorilla glue is notorious for strong adhesion and massive expansion. Fortunately it is able to be cut, sanded, and finished over when dry. I do prefer a more conventional adhesive though, like Tri-bond waterproof wood glue. Takes longer to set up, but works well and not as  messy as Gorilla glue. In my experience anyway.
But yeah, that was my initial thought on the repair was to drill down from the top to dowel and glue. The stock will definitely need to get spread at the split in order to run glue into the crack though.

[Bubbazinetti]

Did somebody run over the gun with a truck?What a shame,you didn't give the rifle to the SIL like that.Perhaps that Chu wood used is very weak as compared to the arctic birch.

[Bacarnal]

Am I the only one not seeing the pictures?

[Larry D.]

That's an interesting chest rig.
Don't see many with ties instead of toggles.

I think I need one now........It's the curse of being a gear-queer.......

I'm not sold on the ties and actually prefer the toggles. Much easier to deal with. If you have an extra toggled chest rig laying around you might be able to convince me to do a swap.

I'm in.
Shoot me a PM>

[K.Campbell]

I’ve used tite-bond wood glue with some success. Also gorilla glue comes to mind with some serious clamping. You’ll have to spread the crack apart and apply, then clamp. If you have enough room to drill and pin with small wooden dowls, do that too.  glue the dowls in as well. If done correctly you will have a hard time telling it’s been repaired.
I’d try like heck to fix it before resorting to buying a different stock. 

[Larry D.]

I think we have a tutorial post about repairing cracked stocks around here somewhere with pictures.

[Greatguns]

Well all, I finally got around to gluing up the crack in the stock yesterday. You can still see the line, but it is glued back together and came out fairly decent I think. Posting a pic of the crack from the 1st post so you don't have to go back to see it.(unless you want to, LOL)

[running-man]

Looks good and solid now GG!  Did you wind up doweling it and using tite-bond after all?  Nice job. 

[Phosphorus32]

Nice work, looks solid