WHY a Saiga (VS Other AK platforms)

[Ermac 8]

wow. this thread is 90% bullshit written by guys who've owned maybe a couple rifles but deffinately not the spectrum of communist era firearms.

 

only the russians make hammer forged barrels?

chinese sks's are on par with the russian ones?

parts kits are crap?

 

ya'll are crazy.

 

how bout we hear it from the people who've owned and shot across the spectrum....

it's pretty hard to fuck up an ak.... so they're all good rifles but claiming that overpriced chinese crap is superior, or that any rifle other than russian will melt after a couple mags... there are differences, but not like everybody claims... and the guys talking about the galil or sako and valmet rifles are dead on. once you buy a rifle from every country making them you really start seeing whats up. and snobs who pay too much for a rare model or those who've only owned a saiga and a wasr and think thats all there is....

 

lighten up :-)

oh and cut the bull....

Speak for yourself.

[Reverendfranz 160]

There are hardly any stamped Chinese SKS's out there. They weren't very successful if I recall. None of your claims about the Chinese models having cast parts and stamped parts are verifiable other then the stamped trigger guard. That dosen't make it a, "cheaper mouse trap" I hope.

 

Sal went over this with me in chat. He also said in his post here that there were few stamped receivers, and then said they had the same number of machined parts. They aren't both true, and there are stamped parts, i didnt make anything up here.

 

Ok, i didnt say the ChinaKS was absolute rubbish, and i rather like any SKS, so dont think im on some anti commie gun kick, as people often are. Commie Guns kick ass, especially when they are being used to kill commies and fascists. So, the Trigger guard and safety being stamped isnt a giant issue, i agree. But it is a fact, and it isnt a design change entered to improve the gun, as it sounded to me like Sal was alleging. The Russians also had a stamped safety, as well, for a while. It sucked, and wore prematurely, often becoming useless. It wasnt a design improvement, it was a cost cutting measure. That doesnt mean it ruined the venerable russian design, but it isnt an updated "better" SKS. It does not add quality.

 

Other "Improvements" that the chinese made over the years include dropping the lightening cuts from the bolt, press pinning the barrel (a thinner profile barrel, no less) instead of threading it, less machining on the rear sight base, which sometimes resulted in a very linear and NON-tangental rear sight, much cruder (cheaper) machining on parts like the dust cover, and yes, the stamped receiver, as rare as it is. There are so many variations of course, that really, you never know what any given chinese SKS is gonna be, from the reground military receivers they welded over to turn into an SKS-M to who knows. I did like the improvement of the Type63/68, (and some of its more SKSish predecessors) but really, that was never brought into this country, and isnt what we are talking about. Again, I didn't say they were shyte rifles, I said they are not copies of russian rifles that are identical in quality, with many improvements over the years. I said that, because they arent.

 

Go ahead, tell me the later (bottom right) Chinese is an improvement in quality over the 1955 Russian. Its a fine rifle, and i dont really care about any of it, if the cheapest rifle works, shoot it, I loved my chinese sks, it was a fine rifle, but the superiority of chinese SKS's is seriously in question in my mind...

 

 

 

 

 

Oh, and Vladmir, who does also use hammer forged barrels? I would be interested to know. The Saiga is the only one ive heard is.

 

[edit to fix anti-hotlinked photo]

Edited January 28, 2010 by ReverendFranz

[bigsal 757]

There are hardly any stamped Chinese SKS's out there. They weren't very successful if I recall. None of your claims about the Chinese models having cast parts and stamped parts are verifiable other then the stamped trigger guard. That dosen't make it a, "cheaper mouse trap" I hope.

 

Sal went over this with me in chat. He also said in his post here that there were few stamped receivers, and then said they had the same number of machined parts. They aren't both true, and there are stamped parts, i didnt make anything up here.

 

Ok, i didnt say the ChinaKS was absolute rubbish, and i rather like any SKS, so dont think im on some anti commie gun kick, as people often are. Commie Guns kick ass, especially when they are being used to kill commies and fascists. So, the Trigger guard and safety being stamped isnt a giant issue, i agree. But it is a fact, and it isnt a design change entered to improve the gun, as it sounded to me like Sal was alleging. The Russians also had a stamped safety, as well, for a while. It sucked, and wore prematurely, often becoming useless. It wasnt a design improvement, it was a cost cutting measure. That doesnt mean it ruined the venerable russian design, but it isnt an updated "better" SKS. It does not add quality.

 

Other "Improvements" that the chinese made over the years include dropping the lightening cuts from the bolt, press pinning the barrel (a thinner profile barrel, no less) instead of threading it, less machining on the rear sight base, which sometimes resulted in a very linear and NON-tangental rear sight, much cruder (cheaper) machining on parts like the dust cover, and yes, the stamped receiver, as rare as it is. There are so many variations of course, that really, you never know what any given chinese SKS is gonna be, from the reground military receivers they welded over to turn into an SKS-M to who knows. I did like the improvement of the Type63/68, (and some of its more SKSish predecessors) but really, that was never brought into this country, and isnt what we are talking about. Again, I didn't say they were shyte rifles, I said they are not copies of russian rifles that are identical in quality, with many improvements over the years. I said that, because they arent.

 

Go ahead, tell me the later (bottom right) Chinese is an improvement in quality over the 1955 Russian. Its a fine rifle, and i dont really care about any of it, if the cheapest rifle works, shoot it, I loved my chinese sks, it was a fine rifle, but the superiority of chinese SKS's is seriously in question in my mind...

 

 

 

 

 

Oh, and Vladmir, who does also use hammer forged barrels? I would be interested to know. The Saiga is the only one ive heard is.

 

[edit to fix anti-hotlinked photo]

 

Weren't the type 56 Chinese SKS's made in the 50's? And weren't they the most prolific SKS put out by China? I think you have a later 1960's/1970's model in your photo.

[Ermac 8]

There are hardly any stamped Chinese SKS's out there. They weren't very successful if I recall. None of your claims about the Chinese models having cast parts and stamped parts are verifiable other then the stamped trigger guard. That dosen't make it a, "cheaper mouse trap" I hope.

 

Sal went over this with me in chat. He also said in his post here that there were few stamped receivers, and then said they had the same number of machined parts. They aren't both true, and there are stamped parts, i didnt make anything up here.

 

Ok, i didnt say the ChinaKS was absolute rubbish, and i rather like any SKS, so dont think im on some anti commie gun kick, as people often are. Commie Guns kick ass, especially when they are being used to kill commies and fascists. So, the Trigger guard and safety being stamped isnt a giant issue, i agree. But it is a fact, and it isnt a design change entered to improve the gun, as it sounded to me like Sal was alleging. The Russians also had a stamped safety, as well, for a while. It sucked, and wore prematurely, often becoming useless. It wasnt a design improvement, it was a cost cutting measure. That doesnt mean it ruined the venerable russian design, but it isnt an updated "better" SKS. It does not add quality.

 

Other "Improvements" that the chinese made over the years include dropping the lightening cuts from the bolt, press pinning the barrel (a thinner profile barrel, no less) instead of threading it, less machining on the rear sight base, which sometimes resulted in a very linear and NON-tangental rear sight, much cruder (cheaper) machining on parts like the dust cover, and yes, the stamped receiver, as rare as it is. There are so many variations of course, that really, you never know what any given chinese SKS is gonna be, from the reground military receivers they welded over to turn into an SKS-M to who knows. I did like the improvement of the Type63/68, (and some of its more SKSish predecessors) but really, that was never brought into this country, and isnt what we are talking about. Again, I didn't say they were shyte rifles, I said they are not copies of russian rifles that are identical in quality, with many improvements over the years. I said that, because they arent.

 

Go ahead, tell me the later (bottom right) Chinese is an improvement in quality over the 1955 Russian. Its a fine rifle, and i dont really care about any of it, if the cheapest rifle works, shoot it, I loved my chinese sks, it was a fine rifle, but the superiority of chinese SKS's is seriously in question in my mind...

 

 

 

 

 

Oh, and Vladmir, who does also use hammer forged barrels? I would be interested to know. The Saiga is the only one ive heard is.

 

[edit to fix anti-hotlinked photo]

I bet had the Russians continued making the SKS, they would have employed similar cost cutting measures. The press and pinned barrel isn't really a big deal. The Russians started to do it when they came out with the AKM. The barrels looked like they had about the same thickness when I compared my Russian one to Chinese one. I always thought the machining on my Chinese one was nearly as good as my Russian one. Nobody said they were better then the Russian one, I said they were on par.

[russiangunrunner 10]

all except maybe us made ak barrels are hammer forged. all i'm saying is that russian ak's are 95 percent of the time better, but not enough to where i don't buy other ak rifles, just not at russian prices....

 

here's an example... the first romanian akm was a dead nuts on copy of a 1962 russian akm except for maybe qc.... it was all built on russian built or contracted tooling, so why would they bother doing everything the same way and then go ahead and use a button rifled or cut rifled barrel? and the only real beef i have with chinese is the diff specs and none of the euro parts enterchange. and qc isn't quite up there.

[Ermac 8]

all except maybe us made ak barrels are hammer forged. all i'm saying is that russian ak's are 95 percent of the time better, but not enough to where i don't buy other ak rifles, just not at russian prices....

 

here's an example... the first romanian akm was a dead nuts on copy of a 1962 russian akm except for maybe qc.... it was all built on russian built or contracted tooling, so why would they bother doing everything the same way and then go ahead and use a button rifled or cut rifled barrel? and the only real beef i have with chinese is the diff specs and none of the euro parts enterchange. and qc isn't quite up there.

Now you're getting into Romanian stuff. I'm not going to deny that some countries might have gone through some cost cutting measures that affected the rifle negatively. The theory is that the reason why the Chinese stuff is different from the european AK variants is that the Russians didn't give the Chinese the specs to make the AKM so they had to make something from scratch to imitate the AKM using AK-47 parts. I don't think it's entirely correct to say NONE of the parts interchange. The furniture might be different but bolts,barrels, and firing pins is all the same. As for qc. I don't own a Russian AK, I've only held them and I didn't think that they were better then my Chinese AK. I'll give you a better opinion when I get the chance to finger fuck one.

[evi1joe 1]

While I think the Saigas are great guns--and seem (to me!) as good or better than any AKs I've ever inspected, I do think the fact that other AKs have cheap, compatible parts readily available has a lot of merit. When I first bought my Saiga, I wrongly believed that it was basically being un-converted back to its original AK self; only after spending some time here did I discover I had bought a proprietary AK-style gun that uses many of its own (read: not AK) parts--e.g., bolt, firing pin, etc.--all, for some reason, unavailable to the consumer who might like to have back-up parts on hand.

[nalioth 405]

only after spending some time here did I discover I had bought a proprietary AK-style gun that uses many of its own (read: not AK) parts--e.g., bolt, firing pin, etc.--all, for some reason, unavailable to the consumer who might like to have back-up parts on hand.

 

Au contraire, mon ami.

 

There's nothing proprietary about the parts in a Saiga. The same parts are found in any AK-101 (Saiga .223), AK-103 (Saiga 7.62x39) or AK-74M (Saiga 5.45x39).

 

The problem is that these are Kalashnikovs of a upgraded design, and rifles of this design haven't reached the "millions sold" point yet, as have their older brethren that are currently available to us. .

[cholly_horse 3]

Opinions are like assholes, everyone has at least one.

Ive got 2

[Who Dat 0]

my buddy has a Norinco AK47 with the thumbhole stock. I must say, it's a pretty nice gun. I have shot it and i like it. We both shot my SGL21 the day after i picked it up and were very impressed by the way it performs. He loves that Norinco, but he keeps kicking himself in the ass for not jumpin on that Kvar sale a few months back. Go with the Saiga. You'll be glad you did

[Eddie 0]

I've been fortunate enough to own Arsenal, Saiga, Norinco, and Romainian AK variants as well as an SKS-M (Paratrooper SKS that accepts AK mags). I sold my Norinco's and my Romanian in favor of my Arsenal SA M-7R, Saiga 12, and SGL21( Now I just need a Vepr in a 7.62x39, hehe). In my book these are my top preferences for various reasons, and also because I can't get my hands on a RK-95 .

[into_the_knight 22]

While I think the Saigas are great guns--and seem (to me!) as good or better than any AKs I've ever inspected, I do think the fact that other AKs have cheap, compatible parts readily available has a lot of merit. When I first bought my Saiga, I wrongly believed that it was basically being un-converted back to its original AK self; only after spending some time here did I discover I had bought a proprietary AK-style gun that uses many of its own (read: not AK) parts--e.g., bolt, firing pin, etc.--all, for some reason, unavailable to the consumer who might like to have back-up parts on hand.

 

I could be wrong on some of this but I remember looking into what you're talking about as well.

 

Meh. It's just the bolt and carrier. You can get an AK 74 firing pin and it should work. Would be unsurprised to find that an AK 74 carrier will work. The gas tubes are the same. Barrel diameter is the same for FSBs, GBs, and LHG retainers. Same FCG. Same recoil rod and spring. Same buttstock. Same pistol grip nut and hole. Bolts on AKs are also mated to the rifle they are installed on, so it is not plug and play. You must re-headspace if you replace the bolt. Plus the bolt and extractor on an AK rifle are unlikely to fail. Unlike an AR where it is expected to replace the bolt after a certain round count.