My Worse CHICOM SKS purchase ever.

[browningautorifle]

I think it would be in Cyrillic

Depends on which, Serb looks like Russian and Croat looks like German...

[Ovidio]

Little correction: the rifles are Tula, not Chinese.
That would fit me much better!!!

[mmppres]

These rifles are returns from Vietnam I had about 50 of them from the whole sale who shipped them to main brokers. One they were degreased there was potential to make up a nice shooter grade rifle. Yes the stocks are really bad on some, with some broken in half. Lots of rusty trigger guards an magazine boxs. I buy lots of the stuff the main company's don't want. Using them for my parts sales. But found out alot of them can be refinished with some elbow grease.

[usabaker]

These rifles are returns from Vietnam

AH! now that ties it together and would explain he graffiti in what looks to be a western character set, it's French Vietnamese. I'm going to send the pictures of the writing it to one of my Vietnamese friends to see if it makes any sense. Would you know if they went back to China first or come from Vietnam? Thank you for the info.

Do you have stocks for these? my buddy is looking for one, he has one of the broken in half ones.

[mmppres]

I think these were put in storage in lots of 100. Came thru China. Not sure if sold that way or not. Does he want an orginal needing repair or replacement

[usabaker]

I think these were put in storage in lots of 100. Came thru China. Not sure if sold that way or not.

Must have been sitting in a country other than China since there are laws preventing the importation of military firearms and parts from China. Would be interesting to find out.

Thank you

[Boris Badinov]

What is a bit confusing about this rifle is that the graffiti on the stock seems to be in a western character set. If these are truly from the Chinese Army I would expect this to have Chinese character set graffiti.

Makes you wonder if these actually were Chinese surplus or surplus from another country where the Chinese supplied the rifles.

The Chinese sks imports to the US from 2012 and onward are from Albania. China began supplying Albania with economic and military aid in the late 1950's when Peking and Tirana were on the outs with Moscow.

The OP's rifle has the PW Arms import stamp which identifies it as a US import from the Albanian stockpiles.

[Boris Badinov]

These rifles are returns from Vietnam I had about 50 of them from the whole sale who shipped them to main brokers. One they were degreased there was potential to make up a nice shooter grade rifle. Yes the stocks are really bad on some, with some broken in half. Lots of rusty trigger guards an magazine boxs. I buy lots of the stuff the main company's don't want. Using them for my parts sales. But found out alot of them can be refinished with some elbow grease.

Not from Vietnam. From Albania. This has been pretty well known, and documented since the first imports in 2012.

Firearms researcher and author, Steve Kehaya, went to Albania working for Century Arms Importers in 2010-2011 to begin the selection of early bladed carbines for the first US shipments. He's a member at gunboards.com forum, where he has described in great detail and with photos his experiences finding and selecting the Chinese Type56's from the Albanian military stockpiles.

[usabaker]

Not from Vietnam. From Albania. This has been pretty well known, and documented since the first imports in 2012.

Perfect! On one side of the stock is the words TEPELENE when I put this into Goggle as Albania TEPELENE, it brings up Wikipedia as the first listing "Tepelenë (definite Albanian form: Tepelena) is a city and a municipality in Gjirokastër County, in the south of Albania. "

I found an interesting bit of history on the SKS and Albania on the MDSHOOTER forum here -> https://www.mdshooters.com/showthread.php?t=98467 that shed a bit of light on it.

With this information, now I'm torn on changing the stock on this rifle.

Thank you Boris

Jim, looks like you almost hit home with your guess on where it was from.

[browningautorifle]

Jim, looks like you almost hit home with your guess on where it was from.

Pretty close, yes...