My Worse CHICOM SKS purchase ever.

[usabaker]

They said it had a small amount of rust on the bolt. When it came in, it was a complete rust bucket. I'm ok with wear and tear (thats called "character" here), but rust throughout the gun was ridiculous. I sent them an email with pictures and they replied that they stood by their assessment. ... I had that 91/30 bead blasted then painted with duracoat since I wasn't going to pay $300 to reblue a $239 gun. It turned out alright and functioned really well when it was done. I sold it a few weeks ago for $175 which I put towards a 1934 Izhvesk with a 3-digit serial number. I'm done with Classic.

Your experience seems to be the 'NORMAL' when it comes to Classic, quite a few of their review echo what you and I have found. I once had a boss that asked me to lie about an installation we were doing on a ship and I told him that I would not lie, that if asked I would tell the truth. He told me; "Its not a lie, its an elaboration of the truth". Sounds like he might have a career at Classic should he get a job there.

I'm thinking of refinishing the rifle with a black manganese parkerizing, just don't like to fire up my parkerizing tank unless I have a bunch of things to parkerize, which I don't right now. Even though you can reuse the parkerizing solution, the results are not always optimum.