I believe that I have taken an Albanian SKS to the range only two or three times. But I don't recall that I had any functionality or accuracy issues. They performed as expected for an SKS.

As for fit and finish, all of my Albanians are rather crude.

 

I have handled the Albanians and they have a crude air about them. Reminiscent of the Albanian SUV we purchased back in the 90’s. Not the bargain we thought.

 

I think there is merit to the notion. As far as finish quality goes, it seems to adhere to a lower standard with the Albanian variant.

For example, I have an all matching 1969. Shoots great. No functionality problems whatsoever. However the firing pin hole on the bolt face is too small for a standard firing pin.

The firing pin it came with has noticeable honing marks at the tip-- an apparent DIY modification to get the firing pin to protrude far enough the strike the primer. I've only pu ~100rounds through it. All recovered casings had extreme light strikes.

I have tried three separate pins (used Russian, used chinese, and new chinese) and none them protrude far enough to strike the primer on a chambered round.


At 60 yards I got consistet 3-4 inch groups. And exactly ZERO function issues.

The hand guard is almost impossible to remove.

Luckily, the sks is a very forgiving design.

 

aim has you Albanian parts, they’re great shooters.

 

Albania being the poorest nation in the Balkans and perhaps the SKS their first attempt at domestic manufacture of any modern firearm, it is surprising the weapon is not more problematical. In addition, with the limited number of rifles produced over a number of years, improvements were likely few & far between. On the other hand, this is just what tends to make such a rifle attractive to the collector. Undoubtedly some perform better than others. I shot one of mine and other than needing to adjust the front sight blade, the rifle experienced no issues.

 

I think this sums it up nicely

 

I have two, one that's beat up and mismatched, the other one is nearly pristine and remains "in the grease". I've only shot the beat up one but it functioned fine and had average SKS accuracy and trigger feel. It is not entirely surprising that they function well, since they almost certainly had significant Chinese assistance in setting up production at Gramsh, just as the Russians had assisted the Chinese in setting up their SKS production at Jianshe about 11 years earlier.

 

They are the Indian 2A Enfields of SKS rifles.

No time was wasted in making them 'pretty', but they are definitely 100% as functional as the 'best finished' ones.

 

I've run into more weak or collapsed springs in Albanians than in other makes of SKS.

 

The extension spring in mine was so mangled that when I finally got the op-rod out, the spring had a 30° bend.

Luckily, the seller was the only owner post import (import tags still on the gun and cosmoline thruoghout internally), and he said he had never fired it since acquiring it.

I am curious niw if it would have still functioned with the mangled spring.

 

My Albies had 3/16” thick hard cosmoline on them.


To me nothing is refined on any brand of sks. The best accuracy I got so far with my Chinese norinco paratrooper is 1 1/2” groups at 100yds. Using norinco yellow box ammo. They all look crudely machined inside.

 

I had one. It would fit 7 or 8 rounds in the magazine, had sticky chamber (was able to fix), and did 3-4 round bursts.

 

As to an Albanian SUV, over here we call that a mule with a cart. Been to the factory in Gramsh…….not state of the art! It does however match with a few of the low end Chinese factories (been to many of those). The Albanians put their factory way up in the mountains away from everything. It is now mostly deserted. The labor pool there must have been made up of goat herders since there isn't much around there. I got there early in the morning after a 3 hour trip from the capitol and had strong coffee and a water glass of peach brandy(shlebovich) to start the meeting!! Hello!! The factory hadn't been in operation for years. There has no CNC machinery everything was line dedicated. The tooling (what I could find) was old and incomplete. Bear in mind that the Albanians were trained by the Chinese not the Russians. Chinese factories were heated by a 55 gallon drum with a lump of coal in it when I first started going there in the 90s. We aren't talking high tech!! The guns do function well however.
US consumer standards are much different than Foreign military standards. Do you think that an Albanian Army inspector cares about surface finish an a weapon?? Hardly!! I remember going to the Cugir factory and trying to explain that we were getting returns of their AKs because the front sight was canted. They showed me that they shot perfectly. I know but it doesn't look right I told them!!!!!
Different criteria.
SteveK