Well, I'v been promising to build a friend of mine a special SKS for a couple of years now and how could I say no since he fronted all of the cost up front. So, I show him a few SKS stocks with the thumb hole style and he took a liking to them as long as I could slim and trim it down to fit a shorty 16" configuration. These were originally AK mag-ed SKS-M sporter stocks. The 2 issues I have with these M's or D's is for one, the factory chops out a big notch in the right-side receiver rail for the AK mag to sit up higher in the gun since the feed lips of the AK mag are far thicker that a standard 10 fixed box. I have all ways said that the rails need not be cut up so badly since adding a simple 5 & 7 O'clock feed ramp eliminates any kind of low mag feed issues. It even feeds Privi Lead round nose cartridges perfectly. The other thing that the factory AK guns "should" have is a manual bolt hold open. The original BHO is a good robust design and should have been included in the AK guns but was deleted all together along with its stripper clip cut in the bolt carrier. That was the first thing to be addressed in this build. Since I was using one of my Yugo receivers for this build, I designed a BHO that was simple and relatively easy to mod into the receiver. It retains its spring loaded release as OEM.
In the down at rest position;
BHO engaged
Here you can see the original pin hole for the BHO retaining pin is now used as a taped 6x48 hole holding the new BHO in place.
Engaged on the gun, its in a practical position to engage it while you pull the bolt back as you normally would. The AK mag is now fully capable to be fed with stripper clips as a std SKS.
This is my proprietary mono gas piston system that uses a modified Yugo gas block. The piston retaining plug is 316 stainless over a .106 gas port. Thats .050 smaller than whats needed to power a std 16" barreled SKS. This system still launches empties about 20 or more feet away. The gas cylinder is shortened by about 1" and a piston head recoil sleeve has been welded into the gas tube to limit the spring loaded piston to a short stroke since there is no longer the rear sight base piston to limit its throw.
If your familiar with these sporter stocks, you can see its been shortened by 2.75" and drastically tapered with milled in deep finger grooves over the remnant of the beaver tail. This makes for an advanced grip surface over the bulky OEM.
The rear sight sits on the older cast steel Golden bolt covers that I cut the rail off its high tunnel and lowered it to what you see with the tunnel walls still in place for the peep to be inserted.
This adjustment knob gets turned to a smaller OD and machine knurled.
The handling between these 2 weapons is a night & day difference. You don't have to find the sights on the SKS, They find you!
The stock is shortened by 1" at the Butt. The new owner peppered the can pretty good off hand at 35 yards. Needless to say, the new owner was more than thrilled with his new hammer.
