The Nekk'ed SKS
Remember what it was like when you noticed your first girl...how smooth her legs and arms were. Well the SKS is not quite as deadly as that young lady, but has it's own snaky charms now with a clean front end.
I'll give it a shot of cold blue this weekend and see how it looks. Coating with Aluma-Hyde is not out of the picture quite yet. It depends if I can match the deep bluing on the barrel.
What a freakin' job. Rather than buy an arbor press, I took the advice of SailorCurt in the comments of my last post on this and bought a gear puller...and yes, I had to use a 28" breakbar to get it loose. It would "CRACK" and move an eight of an inch...about 10 times. After that I was able to pound the assembly off with a hammer and wood block. The front sight assembly is beat up a bit, but not unrepairable, and the barrel is in the white but without a mark on it.
Sweet. Thanx Sailor and everyone else who offered advice. Check out Sailor's blog for his own SKS saga and lots of other goodies.
My Saga runs from 10/9/2004 thru 12/13/2004 in the 'Guns and 2nd Amendment' archives with a report in the archive 'Range Reports' on 10/24/2004.
Update: Bluing came out pretty good after 3 applications. I'll probably hit it again once or twice. The sling is a WWII vet that I got in '55 for my first rifle.
It looks pretty sleek with the Albanian bolt carrier and 5 round mag.
Glad I could help. It looks very nice. I found that I could match the color pretty well with cold bluing but it took several coats to get it dark enough.
If you click on the "Gunsmithing" or "SKS" labels on any of my posts you'll get the whole sordid story on my SKS adventures.
I've just started a series of posts on my new old M1 Carbine if you're interested.
I just noticed your Gathering of Eagles link and post. I was there too! Small world isn't it?
Pretty sweet isn't it.
I have found that removing the wood stock and most of the crap on the front end shrunk the groups by about 50%, not that that is saying much. With the red-dot I am getting about 4 inches offhand at 100 yards. I'll have to see if it improves any with the weird assembly gone.
The Gathering of Eagles was great wasn't it. My daughter and I had a wonderful time once it warmed up a bit...she really got into the vets. Having a Dad as a vet is like having your Dad teach you how to drive - you're more interested in listening to someone else.