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You have a early Chinese one. To verify, post a pic of ur serial number on the receiver. Yours travelled to Albania and then was imported here. Some say it was 15 years ago, some say they were imported recently. We may never know when.

I will post once a clean it up. Anyone have advice about removing Cosmo from the stock?


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It's got a few areas of rust on the receiver bottom that I need to clean up/arrest but otherwise it's pretty nice. The Cosmo cleaning is a 2 weekend project for God's sake. Everything matches on the outside numbers but The bolt carrier has the Russian numbering system.


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yellowsled said:

At the end of the day we all have to understand that these all came from the same "stash" PW arms, CAI, or IO.... I personally don't think one company got "better" rifles than others.... They are all selling the same product, some items will be better than others with any military surplus product.

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Yep ... but I think that SOG now is going through their rifles up-front, culling out the best ones, and selling those as hand-pick. It sounds like Copes did the same.

Also, a recent contact in Albania tells me that there were multiple caches of these rifles throughout the country, and some were stored under better conditions than others, so there were some batches imported that were, overall, in slightly better shape than other ones. Some came from a military complex on an island, but the majority were stored in cave-bunkers built under the Hoxha regime.

Abulg1972 said:

Is there a way that I can determine the arsenal that made my SKS? As I mentioned, I know nothing about these. The limited information I found said that the arsenal mark would be on the left side of the receiver, either in front of or behind the serial number. Mine just has the serial number. Is there another place I should be looking?

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If there is one, it will be a number inside a triangle ... just to the right of the serial number on the receiver. Not all of the Chinese SKSs have an arsenal mark, though. If there isn't one, it's what's currently being called a "ghost", and it should have a 4-6 digit serial number. The best thing to do is post photos. You don't have to clean it first. Just wipe that area off with a paper towel. Many of us know what we're looking for and a little cosmo doesn't matter that much.

Abulg1972 said:

I will post once a clean it up. Anyone have advice about removing Cosmo from the stock?

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You're going to get a million different answers for this, and all work ... some better than others, and some safer for the gun than others.

I've cleaned a bunch of these, and believe the best for the stock is mechanics' hand cleaner (GoJo without pumice) and a bunch of paper towels.

For the metal, cheap charcoal lighter fluid is the cheapest approach and you can find it anywhere. You can get a big bottle of it from Wally World for less than a small can of mineral spirits at a hardware store, and it's essentially the same thing.

You're going to hear people tell you to "sweat" the grease out of the stock with various heating methods. Those work, but it's better for the wood if you don't.

Heat on the metal is OK, including putting the bolt into boiling water, etc., but I can clean one faster, easier, and better with charcoal lighter. Soak the parts in that, and the cosmo will soften right up.

And yes ... I have seen them as covered in cosmoline as yours is. See the second photo.

The first picture shows you one that has a 1958 serial number (two million series ... if it's in the millions, add the million number to 1956 to get the year of manufacture). This method works with Jianshe arsenal rifles.

To the right of that number is a triangle with a "26" in it. That's the Jianshe arsenal mark. Most of the SKSs that went through Albania either have this arsenal mark or no mark at all.

Charcoal lighter fluid is a good tip, I've been using mineral spirits or some environmentally friendly paint thinner.

yellowsled said:

You have a early Chinese one. To verify, post a pic of ur serial number on the receiver. Yours travelled to Albania and then was imported here. Some say it was 15 years ago, some say they were imported recently. We may never know when.

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Serial number pic


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Def Chinese. early 1956 era

yellowsled said:

Def Chinese. early 1956 era

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That might explain why the bolt carrier matches but the bolt itself has the old Russian Cyrillic coding system.


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Abulg1972 said:

That might explain why the bolt carrier matches but the bolt itself has the old Russian Cyrillic coding system.


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There was def Russian influence when yours was made. It is unsure if yours was made with Russian parts or actual Chinese made with Russian tooling very early on in production. That's why it lacks the maker mark.

One of my theroys is that it could have been made for export and China didn't want it known that they supplied the arms. They have done that before with other guns. AK's and Tokarevs with no maker marks.

yellowsled said:

There was def Russian influence when yours was made. It is unsure if yours was made with Russian parts or actual Chinese made with Russian tooling very early on in production. That's why it lacks the maker mark.

One of my theroys is that it could have been made for export and China didn't want it known that they supplied the arms. They have done that before with other guns. AK's and Tokarevs with no maker marks.

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For the OP, these are currently called "ghost" rifles, because there's no arsenal stamp. That term doesn't really mean much outside of the current collector world, though.

Sled - my only problem with that theory is that, in 1956, the only people who China might have considered sending firearms to would have been the Viet Minh in their fight against the French ... and none of these "ghosts" seem to have shown up as bring backs by French or U.S. forces. Of course, they could well have all been trashed by the time we got into that war.

Machodoc said:

For the OP, these are currently called "ghost" rifles, because there's no arsenal stamp. That term doesn't really mean much outside of the current collector world, though.

Sled - my only problem with that theory is that, in 1956, the only people who China might have considered sending firearms to would have been the Viet Minh in their fight against the French ... and none of these "ghosts" seem to have shown up as bring backs by French or U.S. forces. Of course, they could well have all been trashed by the time we got into that war.

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I read on the Interwebz that the first Chinese SKS were made using surplus Russian parts and under Russian guidance at one or more factories in China. When the Russians phased out the SKS in favor of the AK, they sold/gave a lot of their unneeded parts to China and sent some helpers to assist the Chinese with their manufacturing efforts. This would explain why my bolt has some Russian stamps, etc. Once I get it completely cleaned up (this will be a multiple weekend job!), I'll post updates.

Abulg1972 said:

I read on the Interwebz that the first Chinese SKS were made using surplus Russian parts and under Russian guidance at one or more factories in China. When the Russians phased out the SKS in favor of the AK, they sold/gave a lot of their unneeded parts to China and sent some helpers to assist the Chinese with their manufacturing efforts. This would explain why my bolt has some Russian stamps, etc. Once I get it completely cleaned up (this will be a multiple weekend job!), I'll post updates.

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Yes ... and no.

• Yes, the first Chinese SKSs were made with the Tula plant's old equipment when they phased out the SKS.
• Yes, the Russians sent Techs to the Jianshe arsenal (only) to help them learn to make this rifle. That was the only arsenal making the rifle in the beginning.
• There is strong evidence to show that the Chinese also got a substantial number of spare parts at the same time.

But, unfortunately, I have to say that it doesn't explain why yours has a mis-matched bolt. From several people in the U.S. who have looked at a bunch of these rifles (Yooper John, Howie Bearse, myself and others), it would appear that everything on even the early rifles matched, except in very rare cases of error by workers, when they left the arsenal. I feel pretty sure that your "Russian" bolt was substituted sometime later ... either in Albania, or possibly even after it got to the U.S. importer.

The reason why I say "Russian" in quotation marks is that there are also what are now generally being called "Chinese letter guns". These are rifles that also came out of the Jianshe arsenal, but had what was assumed to have been a single Cyrillic letter prefix on all of the (matching) parts. Then it was realized that not all of the characters were actually from the Russian alphabet. There's a good bit of discussion about whether these "letter guns" were the earliest batch of Sino-Soviet SKS, or whether they were made later, but many of the letter guns also went to Albania.

Show us the number and we might be able to tell if it is from one of the series of Chinese letter guns, or not. It could have been swapped out in Albania when the original bolt was broken, lost, etc.

Here are some "Chinese letter gun" serial number examples. Note that there's a single letter that's followed by a 4-digit serial number. You can tell by the /26\ Jianshe arsenal marks that these came from the Chinese arsenal. There are other prefix numbers that were used, but here are an "H" ... "I" ... reverse "J" ... and an "X".

The last photos are of another "I" series Chinese letter gun, but this one didn't go through Albania before it came here. It was shipped, in virtually new condition, to the U.S. in the late 1980s, before the ban on Chinese imported weapons was imposed. Most of the SKS rifles sent in during this time were the later models now commonly (and incorrectly) called "NORINCOS", but a small number of very early rifles came in with those. You can see from the Arctic birch stock that whenever the "Chinese letter guns" were made, they were very similar to the original Russian SKSs.

And the letter guns ( whatever else they are, pinpointed in history) are well made, desireable rifles.

brentb636 said:

And the letter guns ( whatever else they are, pinpointed in history) are well made, desireable rifles.

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^^^ This ... absolutely!

Having a mis-matched bolt isn't a big deal with a rifle of this sort. You can look at "collectibility" as having multiple streams of interest.

One stream is followed by those who want examples of firearms that are mint-perfect: un-fired, unmarred, no import mark, and the like.

Another finds interest in rifles that show their history: they have the "been there and done that look" of trench art, field repairs, and that sort of thing. The OP's simply falls into this category. All-matching might be nice to have, but nobody with a bit of sense would poo-pooh a mis-matched bolt on a rifle that has an import mark and a cosmo-soaked stock as well. Of those things, the mis-match is probably the least significant.

There are other streams of interest, too (unusual mechanical design, interesting look for the time of manufacture, notoriety of like weapons, etc., etc.), but the first two are what seem to apply to this discussion.

Here you go. Any info/insight will be much appreciated. I have a lot of work to do cleaning up a few rust spots before I'm ready to take her out for fun.


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At first glance, that not only looks like a Russian bolt, it looks like one that's been re-worked or at least re-numbered (over-stamped). I'll have to do a little research and mental refresher work. (It looks like 1102 was over-stamped with 2035. The prefix letters could both have been put on originally, or each one at different times.)

I have a hard time ... VERY hard time ... thinking that the Chi-Comm doctrine of the worker demonstrating excellence in all things--especially in the mid 1950s--would have allowed them to release a rifle with that bolt originally in it. I'm pretty confident that it was a replacement, and would venture a guess that it was either put in out of a box of spare parts by an Albanian armorer, or even placed there by the importer after finding that the rifle was missing a part that they had in their stock. Keep in mind that there are places that do their own "U-Fix-Em" work if they have the parts and can sell them as complete rifles.

In any case, I wouldn't be too concerned about it. It adds character to the rifle, and is no more of a detriment than the import mark, IMO. People prefer all-matching, but on one that's as far from pristine as these imports all are, it's not a huge deal.

There's no doubt that some of the SKSs that have been sold out of the recent batches of Albanian imports have some Russian parts, and some seem to be all-Russian ... but when you ask how those Russian parts got mixed with the Chinese parts, you start delving into a mystery. It's very possible that the Russians included some pre-marked Russian parts with the stuff they sent to Jianshe, and if that's so, it would make sense that the uber-nationalistic Chinese would have politely set them aside and not used those. After all, their relationship with the Soviets was still pretty shakey, and fell apart again by about 1960.

Likewise, it's possible that the Soviets gave some small arms assistance to Hoxha's regime. If they did, they probably didn't give them much, and the aid probably didn't last for long. Hoxha (and Mao) thought that Kruschev had sold out some of the fundamental principles of pure Marxist/Leninist communism. (That's why China and Albania gravitated toward each other, BTW.)

We may never know the answers ... only the many questions.

Machodoc said:

At first glance, that not only looks like a Russian bolt, it looks like one that's been re-worked or at least re-numbered (over-stamped).

I have a hard time ... VERY hard time ... thinking that the Chi-Comm doctrine of the worker demonstrating excellence in all things--especially in the mid 1950s--would have allowed them to release a rifle with that bolt originally in it. I'm pretty confident that it was a replacement, and would venture a guess that it was either put in out of a box of spare parts by an Albanian armorer, or even placed there by the importer after finding that the rifle was missing a part that they had in their stock. Keep in mind that there are places that do their own "U-Fix-Em" work if they have the parts and can sell them as complete rifles.

In any case, I wouldn't be too concerned about it. It adds character to the rifle, and is no more of a detriment than the import mark, IMO. People prefer all-matching, but on one that's as far from pristine as these imports all are, it's not a huge deal.

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Hey, to me this is a cheap fun shooter. I'm not worried about making my money back - at least not until I burn through the 1,000 rounds of ammo I just purchased. As long as it works, I'm cool.


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It actually cleaned up nicely. Some penetrating oil and 0000 steel wool knocked out the tough rust spots. I will work on the stock this week and have it back together by the weekend. The thing that surprised me is that the barrel is numbered, but not the same number or style as the rest of the gun. And this too.


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Cosmo worms in the bore and the gas cylinder are very GOOD things!