Death givers as heavy as 10 boxes

[Ninurta]

Yep and stripper clips of 10 rounds each for the SKS.. Surprisingly I liked the SKS accuracy and feel even though the 7.62X39 ammo kinda sucks for any shot longer than ?? 125 yards ?? if accuracy is a concern.

Considering all the crap that has been talked about them, and the "cheapness" of their construction, some of those communist made weapons would fool you for accuracy. I could turn a beer can into a colander with my AK-74 at 100 yards without fail, and using just open iron sights, not even "peep" sights. If you can hit a beer can, then you can hit a man - or any part of that man you can see peeing through the foliage - and that is close enough for government work. They weren't made to be sniper rifles, so the inherent accuracy was something of a surprise. I believe my AK had about 1 MOA accuracy, kind of astonishing for an old war horse intended for "spray and pray" shooting.

As I recall, the SKS stripper clips stripped directly into the rifle, because the magazine was built-in to the rifle unless it had been modified to use external magazines. With the AK and AR, the stripper clips strip into magazines, and the magazines have special "cut outs" or mounting grooves to accommodate the stripper clip loader clips.

In Vietnam, there were flimsy, weak-ass bandoliers with 7 pockets on each one. The pockets had cardboard liners, and each liner could hold two 10round stripper clips, because Vietnam era AR magazines would hold only 20 rounds for the most part, although some folks experimented with jury-rigging their own personal higher capacity magazines - because some times, 20 rounds just ain't enough to extract yourself from a situation, and you'd much prefer being obnoxious for a few more shots while finding cover or getting the hell out of Dodge.

In humid jungles, the flimsy bandoliers and cardboard inserts don't fare well, so you'd have to use them up and toss the empties pretty quick before they all fell apart. I used some of the Vietnam era "surplus" in other damp venues. The ammo held up, but the packaging, not so much.

I don't have any more of the bandoliers, because, Like I said, they were weak and flimsy, single-use. The cardboard liners, however, are still in use, and have now  been increased in size to hold 3 10 round stripper clips, because modern standard sized AR magazines hold 30 rounds. I have scads of stripper clips pre-loaded with both M193 (55 grain) and M855 (62 grain "green tip") ammo from Lake City Arsenal. Now they come pre-packed like that in 420 round ammo cans, with the loader clips included but without the bandoliers. Just open-ended cardboard "box" inserts with 30 rounds per box and 14 boxes per ammo can - two full combat loadouts of 7 magazines each per can.

All of my AR magazines, from the 50 year old USMC issued aluminum mags right up through the new polymer/steel hybrid Lancer mags have the grooves for mounting the stripper clip loading clips in them. Even the (ironically made in California) Colt branded 40 round steel magazines have those grooves, as do the Bulgarian made polymer/steel hybrid 40 round magazines - those are made by the same fine folks that produced the "Circle-10" AK magazines, and are far more reliable than even the Colt 40-rounders.

All of my AK-74 mags also had the mounting grooves for stripper clip loaders, from the Romanian steel magazines through the East German "bakelite" magazines to the Russian "bakelite" magazines and the Bulgarian "Circle-10" polymer magazines, all had the grooves to accept stripper clip loaders. I still have a couple of the AK stripper clip loaders, a few empty AK stripper clips, and some of the AK magazines stashed away in a box somewhere, even though the rifle itself is long, long gone. 

Those East German "bakelites" were all the rage for a while, and could be bought for as little as 2 or 3 dollars each, as many as you could carry off. They "normally" went for about 5 dollars each, and if anyone tried to charge you 10 dollars for one, you'd just move on to the next guy with the more reasonable prices. The market was absolutely flooded with them, and not many had the 5.45 AK's to really need them. Now, in the modern day, I've seen those same 3 dollar magazines going for as much as 80 to 160 dollars EACH, roughly 320 dollars for 4 mags and a pouch that I paid around 15 dollars for the whole kit.

Talk about a "return on investment"!


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