My "dilemma"
So here I sit with a very beautiful SKS that has all the matching numbers right down to the stock having the number in it....when I say beautiful I strongly believe in the "eye of the beholder" as this ol' work hours has seen some trying times. Some gouges in the stock some "carvings" as someone must have been born and from what I can tell and have been told some "blood rust". My dilemma is do I refinish and clean up this firearm (possibly destroy the SN on the stock)or do I leave her in the glory and hope someone else see's its beauty?? Ill have to try and post some pics later but I always seem to have a hard time doing that on this sight.
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Make a junk e-mail account. The go to photobucket, open an account and upload your pic's. Follow the direction in this link http://forums.GunBroker.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=259294
Very seldom does refinishing a firearm improve the value. As far as I know it's a shooter, not a collectable so it might sell better cleaned up.0 -
Leave it alone. 0 -
When asking any question about an SKS, it's important for you to tell us what country made it.
Neal0 -
If one makes the mental leap straight to the part where we realize that nothing makes an SKS eye appealing, then it follows that whatever you do to it matters not.
Refinish it if that is what YOU want to do.0 -
IMHO: Buy another stock, refinish it and save the one with the SN. 0 -
It's a beat-up SKS. If you want a shiny new looking one--buy a shiny, new one. 0 -
quote:Originally posted by bullin82
So here I sit with a very beautiful SKS that has all the matching numbers right down to the stock having the number in it....when I say beautiful I strongly believe in the "eye of the beholder" as this ol' work hours has seen some trying times. Some gouges in the stock some "carvings" as someone must have been born and from what I can tell and have been told some "blood rust". My dilemma is do I refinish and clean up this firearm (possibly destroy the SN on the stock)or do I leave her in the glory and hope someone else see's its beauty?? Ill have to try and post some pics later but I always seem to have a hard time doing that on this sight.
I'm guessing you're talking about a Yugo (ie Serbian) SKS rifle.
Many of those saw actual wartime use in the 1980s Balkan conflicts and believe it or not, some people like to collect ones with authentic wartime carvings. Such carvings (aka "trench art") won't add much (or "any") extra value, but they also don't detract from the value, and there are people who deliberately seek out such guns.
If it were me, I'd clean dirt/grime off the stock, but nothing else. Carvings or other such marks just give the gun character.
As above if you really want a pristine SKS, go buy one. Prices on these have skyrocketed over the past few years, but they're still out there. Since supply of surplus European SKS rifles has effectively dried up now, I don't think prices on them are ever going to go DOWN.
quote:If one makes the mental leap straight to the part where we realize that nothing makes an SKS eye appealing, then it follows that whatever you do to it matters not.
I politely disagree with this assessment. No, they're not super fancy hunting rifles, but I think for what they are (ie actual issue military semi-auto rifles) SKS rifles are actually fairly nice-looking. IE, in terms of pure aesthetic they're nicer looking than the AK pattern rifles that most of the places that built SKS rifles ended up using instead.
This is one of the reasons why many of the Commie bloc countries chose to use these as "honor guard" type rifles, even though issue guns were something else. I think there are places that STILL use SKS rifles for this purpose:
Vietnam:
China:
Poland:
In terms of appearance, SKS rifles were many in many places over many years, and some of them have pretty nice wood. The original 1950s era Russian ones often have nice beech wood, and some of the later ones used interesting laminates. Solid beech top, laminates, below:
IMO, the stocks from Poland are really quite nice:0
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