So, I picked up one of the bottom-of-the-barrel M44s that AIM had a year or two ago. "Functioning with good bores but holy hell is the rest of it a mess" kind of deal. $99 was all it took, so I said "eff it!" and hit the buy button. It came in crusted in cosmo, mud, and rust. The stock was beat to hell with gouges, breaks, and splices galore. Heavy pitting on a few minor areas. One rear corner of the mag well, one of the barrel bands, a bit on the butt plate, but the rest of it actually cleaned up pretty well. Several good scrub-downs with soap and boiling water, some steam-cleaning for the hard-to-reach places, electrolysis treatment for the rust, and then a good thin coat of rem-oil with a thorough wipe-down for protection and the metal was good. The stock took a ton of steam cleaning to get the cosmo and dirt out, but eventually cleaned up halfway-decently. I haven't fired it yet, it just sits in the safe, and here's why and where I could use some help.
It's a 1945 Izzy. There are no refurbishment/re-arsenal marks anywhere. The entire thing is matching except for the bolt. The entire action and all parts but the bolt are Russian, the bolt is Chinese. The inletting for the sling escutcheons (which are missing) is HEAVILY worn on one side from continuous rubbing by the sling. This tells me it saw heavy use. Lastly, the stock. All the splices are most definitely NOT birch. They do, however, look exactly like the chu wood used on my Type 53.
The only thing that AIM could tell myself and the others who bought these is that they came buried in the bottom of a shipment of Norinco SKSs via Albania. All of them were the same. Some had the original Russian bolts in them but were usually mis-matched, all were non-refurbished, all had the non-birch chu-wood type splices in the stocks, heavy wear on the sling holes, etc.
My speculation is that they were "gifts" from the USSR to Mao or Kim Il Sung at some point. I just can't think of any way to verify or debunk this theory. Anyone know of any way to go about it?
It's a 1945 Izzy. There are no refurbishment/re-arsenal marks anywhere. The entire thing is matching except for the bolt. The entire action and all parts but the bolt are Russian, the bolt is Chinese. The inletting for the sling escutcheons (which are missing) is HEAVILY worn on one side from continuous rubbing by the sling. This tells me it saw heavy use. Lastly, the stock. All the splices are most definitely NOT birch. They do, however, look exactly like the chu wood used on my Type 53.
The only thing that AIM could tell myself and the others who bought these is that they came buried in the bottom of a shipment of Norinco SKSs via Albania. All of them were the same. Some had the original Russian bolts in them but were usually mis-matched, all were non-refurbished, all had the non-birch chu-wood type splices in the stocks, heavy wear on the sling holes, etc.
My speculation is that they were "gifts" from the USSR to Mao or Kim Il Sung at some point. I just can't think of any way to verify or debunk this theory. Anyone know of any way to go about it?
