M1 Carbine versus SKS: Milsurp Showdown

hello everybody i am chris baker from luckygunner.com despite my best efforts it seems like you guys are not yet tired of hearing me drone on about the m1 carbine so i've brought it back out today to put it up against another military surplus favorite the sks now why compare these two rifles in particular well mostly because i thought it would be fun but they also have a lot of things in common they're both semi-auto military carbines from the 1940s they were both precursors to the modern assault rifle they both served above and beyond the military roles they were originally designed for and they both have a ton of fans among civilian shooters and collectors that last part is what i want to focus on today my goal is not to determine which of these rifles is better than the other i'm going to compare what the m1 carbine and the sks have to offer for you and me they are both still really fun and useful rifles but in different ways i have owned a few m1 carbines and a few sks's over the years i currently own just an m1 carbine i will admit to being biased here the m1 carbine is probably my favorite long gun of all time except on days when my favorite is the marlin 1894 but i still like the sks and it definitely has some things going for it that the m1 carbine does not so i'll try to be as fair as possible let's start with some of the basics the m1 carbine has an 18 inch barrel and an overall length of about 35 and a half inches it weighs 5.9 pounds loaded with a 15 round detachable mag it is chambered for the 30 carbine cartridge which typically consists of a 110 grain bullet traveling at roughly 2 000 feet per second now i've already gone into a lot of detail on the history and the background of the m1 carbine in other videos so i'll let you go back in the archives and watch those if you want a refresher basically it is a world war ii era american military carbine that was intended for non-front-line troops but it ended up being used on the front lines anyway it is a very compact lightweight carbine that's extremely easy to handle and shoot and it fires a cartridge that is more effective than a typical handgun but has less power than a true rifle cartridge beside the m1 carbine the sks feels pretty beefy it's over three pounds heavier at 9.2 pounds loaded it's also longer with an overall length of 40 inches and a 20 inch barrel it's chambered for the intermediate 762x39 cartridge fed from a fixed internal 10 round magazine most loadings of this cartridge consist of a 123 grain bullet in a steel case out of an sks the muzzle velocity is usually around 2 400 feet per second you can load rounds through the top of the receiver one at a time or 10 at once with a stripper clip which is what i would recommend the floor plate swings open at the bottom for easy unloading most versions come equipped with a folding bayonet it's got a notch style rear sight that's adjustable from 100 to a very optimistic 1000 meters some sks variants have shorter barrels or larger magazines and some have even been adapted to accept ak-47 mags in the us though the vast majority of sks rifles that you'll come across are in the standard military configuration similar to this one unless they've been modified by the user in terms of ballistics size features and overall capability the sks kind of splits the difference between the m1 carbine and the m1 grand if you told a team of soviet engineers to come up with the cheapest way to combine the best features of those two american rifles they would probably give you something a lot like the sks but that's not how it actually happened the sks was actually developed in the soviet union in the mid-1940s by the prolific weapons designer sergey simonov during world war ii the soviet military brass noticed the extended range that they could get out of their full power rifle ammo was actually wasted because most of their fighting took place inside of 300 yards so they developed the shorter 762x39 cartridge that would allow units to carry more ammo and overwhelm enemies with a higher volume of fire at the end of the 1940s the first sks carbines utilizing this new cartridge were issued to soviet troops however by that time the soviets were also testing early prototypes of the ak-47 so the sks did not really have a very long service life in the soviet union as a primary infantry weapon it was rendered obsolete by the ak-47 before it ever really got any traction but the soviets didn't let those brand new carbines go to waste they wanted to make sure their communist allies around the world were not trying to liberate the proletariat with outdated weapons so in the 50s and 60s the soviets were handing out sks's like candy to left-wing armies and guerilla fighters and insurgent forces all over europe asia and africa the chinese army was especially fond of sks with help from the russians they started producing their own variant called the type 56 carbine the chinese ultimately made about eight million of those compared to less than three million sks produced by the soviet union the sks was also produced in other communist countries like yugoslavia romania and north korea as well as some commercial variants fast forward to the present day ak pattern rifles have almost completely supplanted the sks around the world for actual combat use that has allowed millions of surplus sks carbines to make their way into the u.s and canadian civilian markets here they are probably known first and foremost for being very affordable back in the 90s you could pick one up for under 100 bucks and not too long ago the price was still only about 300 in today's market the most affordable sks variants are usually in the four to five hundred dollar range that's still a lot more affordable than most semi-automatic center fire rifles the sks i have here is russian made like many of these surplus rifles the stock looks a little rough but overall it's in decent shape it's a mechanically sound at the moment it is basically in its original configuration but that's almost become the exception rather than the rule people love to modify and tinker with the sks and that is the first comparison i want to make between these two carbines there are of course plenty of modified m1 carbines out there but owners of these guns seem to be a little more reluctant to make any changes compared to the sks in certain circles of gun culture there's kind of a reverence that surrounds american world war ii era firearms it's almost considered taboo to even consider modifying one of them uh obviously i've done that and if you saw my last video on the m1 carbine you know that i do not subscribe to those taboos now i wouldn't be too quick to make permanent changes to a gun that has real collector value real historical value but otherwise i believe guns were meant to be shot and if you can do anything to make them shoot better or make them more enjoyable then you should go for it so i have replaced the wooden hand guard on my m1 carbine with an ultimak picatinny rail and a swamp fox optics justice red dot sight the ultimak rail is very well made it holds zero if you install it properly and it sits low enough that you can still get a good cheek weld on the stock i've also got the olongapo outfitters mag pouch on here on the buttstock which i think is an improvement over the original gi mag pouches other than those two things though i have not really seen a whole lot of non-gi m1 carbine accessories that really seemed worthwhile some of the commercial variants of the m1 carbine have deviated from the original design a little bit but as far as end user modifications the most common changes i've seen are usually limited to various types of optic mounts now the aftermarket situation with the sks is i guess a polite way to say it would be more robust maybe it's because the sks is inexpensive or maybe because they are communist rifles for whatever reason people tend to treat the sks a little less like a precious military antique and more like a cheap platform to experiment with there are a ton of parts and accessories for these rifles you can choose from a wide variety of optic mounts polymer pistol grip stocks vertical foregrips bolt-on muzzle devices extended magazine kits bipods and much much more unfortunately most of those things are hot garbage in recent years the sks tricked out with cheap mods has kind of become a running joke and the target of much online ridicule some of that might be well deserved now i don't have a problem with tinkering with an sks in theory i have seen a few sks mods that were very well done but most of them required some technical skill or an actual gunsmith as a whole the drop in and bolt-on parts probably create more problems for shooters than they solve in particular the magazine mods tend to be really unreliable and most of the optic mounts either don't hold zero or they position the optic where it's impossible to get proper eye relief or a cheek weld we did read some good things about the red dot mount that's made by bad ace tactical since the sks factory iron sights do leave a whole lot to be desired we decided to give that mount a try installation was easy the mount fits in the existing slot for the rear sight assembly after you remove that we mounted a swamp fox liberator 2 red dot sight and took it out to the range after a couple hundred rounds it was still holding zero just fine but i was getting quite a few failures to eject about 1 in every 10 or 20 rounds fired judging by the dents and dings that appeared on the bottom of the rail it looked like the shells were bouncing off the rail and back into the action however after we removed the rail and went back to the factory iron sight we still had ejection problems i had not fired this rifle much before we installed the optic so i can't say for sure whether the rail was the real cause of the issues or if there's something else going on with this rifle i couldn't find anyone else complaining about the that particular problem with the bad ace tactical rail online so it might not be the cause either way i wasn't really happy with the lack of cheek weld that i was getting with the optic mounted if i were to try that mount again in the future i would definitely want to add a cheek riser on the stock to go with it okay that's enough about mods and accessories let's talk about actually shooting these things we're going to look at ammo and ballistics and accuracy both of these carbines and the cartridges they fire have reputations for being inaccurate and for being useful only at limited range those things are both mostly true at least by today's standards but we also don't want to sell these guns short most m1 carbines and skses have an accuracy potential of around 3 to 4 moa you can tinker with them and experiment with ammo sometimes get them down to one and a half or two if you're lucky but three to four moa is pretty typical back in the 1940s for moa was considered pretty good especially for a military rifle in terms of pure mechanical accuracy potential they can't hold a candle to a decent ar or even a modern budget-grade bolt-action rifle i wouldn't want to try to shoot a deer at 300 yards with an m1 carbine or an sks but if you just want to make some noise on steel you can still have a whole lot of fun with these guns even at that distance i shot some groups on paper at 100 yards and true to form i averaged about four inches with the sks the m1 carbine did slightly better at 3.3 inches later we took them all the way out to 300 yards which is the maximum distance at our range that's not particularly far for most rifle cartridges but both the 30 carbine and the 762 by 39 start to drop like a rock after about 200 yards using a 100 yard zero 30 carbine should be hitting about four feet low at 300 yards with a little help from kenneth who was my cameraman spotter for the day i had my holdover figured out within about four rounds and i was getting consistent hits on steel 762 by 39 doesn't drop nearly as fast as the 30 carbine with a 100 yard zero most loads will hit around 25 to 30 inches low at 300 yards but since i had the iron sights back on the sks i just moved the rear sight up to the 300 meter position at 300 yards that meant i had to aim just slightly below the target and i was getting hits on three out of four shots that is not bad for a couple of supposedly inaccurate rifles and with the sks in particular there's just something gratifying about ringing steel at 300 yards using crappy sights and cheap steel cased ammo now if you actually want to use one of these rifles for something practical like hunting or self-defense or defending your family during the coming cyborg uprising of 2029 you might be more concerned about the terminal ballistics of these two rifles that is one area where the sks definitely has some advantages at least on paper the typical 762 by 39 bullet has about 12 percent more mass and 20 percent more velocity than 30 carbine if you look around you can find numerous official and unofficial reports of how both of these rounds have performed on the battlefield but most of those reports involve full metal jacket ammo so we have to kind of take them with a grain of salt because we are not limited to fmj we can use soft point ammo and ballistic tip loads expanding bullets have a major impact on the wounding potential of these two cartridges in particular they create a bigger temporary stretch cavity that is more likely to cause wounding and tearing that radiates out beyond the path of the bullet itself these two intermediate cartridges really need to deform in order to transfer that energy to the surrounding tissue i like the hornady sst bullets for 762x39 and the hornady ftx for 30 carbine but some of the basic soft point loads also expand reliably if i thought i was going to be hunting some medium medium-sized game neither of these guns are ideal but i would definitely lean more toward the 762 and the sks but for stopping a violent human attacker at close range i really doubt there would be much of a practical difference between an sks and an m1 carbine loaded with good soft point ammo the increased ammo capacity and the shorter overall length and the ease of shooting the m1 carbine i think make up for any potential loss in ballistic effectiveness for practical use really i think reliability should actually be a much higher priority than ballistics both of these rifles can be reliable but since most of them are at least several decades old at this point it's not uncommon to run into issues in front of me here i have an m1 carbine that has been plugging along flawlessly for many hundreds of rounds but i had to do some work to get it to that point this particular sks has been giving me some issues that i haven't been able to troubleshoot yet however the general impression i've gotten is that the average unmodified sks tends to feed more reliably than the average m1 carbine i cannot prove that it's just what i have gathered from having owned a few of these rifles and from hearing about other people's experiences the m1 carbine has the added variable of the detachable magazines these can be a weak point in the feeding cycle if you don't have good ones there are also a bunch of commercial m1 carbines out there and those usually tend to be more problematic than the carbines that were made during the war on the other hand the sks is susceptible to the slam fire issue the firing pin in the sks is supposed to jiggle around freely inside the bolt until the hammer hits it but sometimes it can get stuck in the forward position either from corrosion or from the cosmoline grease that they used to preserve these rifles for storage that can easily lead to a slam fire that is when a round discharges when you release the bolt or when the bolt cycles sometimes it manifests as just an occasional surprise two-round burst in a worst-case scenario the gun goes full auto and fires all 10 rounds before you even touch the trigger that is not good and it's a fairly common issue with the sks i've seen slam fires happen with two of them and i really haven't seen that many sks's the easiest way i know of to avoid it is to install a firing pin from murray's gunsmithing it comes with a return spring that holds the firing pin in the rear position until the hammer hits it having said all of that if you get either an m1 carbine or an sks in good condition replace any worn springs or parts keep it cleaned and lubed and use decent ammo both of these guns can be incredibly reliable now i know what you're thinking chris you've been at this for almost 20 minutes and you still have not told me which rifle is better i am lost i need your guidance i want to buy a pointless old gun for reasons just tell me which one to get okay if you are gonna twist my arm i'll pick one for you get an m1 carbine obviously they are just more fun than the sks as a means of transporting bits of lead from point a to point b sks is a fine instrument but it's clunky and heavy it gets super hot if you start shooting like ammo is 12 cents around again the safety is a negligent discharge waiting to happen it is the same shape and right next to the trigger itself on the other hand the m1 carbine is light as a feather probably an eagle feather because the m1 carbine smells like freedom instead of cosmoline it's got a better trigger the safety is safer it holds more bullets it has better iron sights and better optic mounting solutions and if you're really into the whole bayonet thing you can get a bayonet for your m1 carbine and they're actually kinda sharp the only real downside is the cost even with sks prices going up they still cost about half of what you'll pay for a decent m1 carbine and then you still need some magazines and 30 carbine ammo is always a little more expensive and sometimes more difficult to find than 762x39 if your primary concern is home defense or you're preparing for the cylon evasion and you can afford an m1 carbine you probably should not buy an m1 carbine buy an ar-15 if they're legal in your state they're also really fun but generally less of a headache to own an m1 carbine can be your second rifle and if you're still curious an sks can be your third rifle and then you can sell it in a couple of years when they go up to 700 bucks but if you cannot afford an m1 carbine the sks is a pretty good rifle to see you through the end of the world yeah they're kind of dated but they're also rugged and usually pretty reliable if you don't mess with them for any kind of defensive use i would definitely trust a surplus sks over the kind of ar or ak that 500 will get you in 2021 so there you have it the m1 carbine is freedom loving fun for filthy capitalists the sks is personal protection for the poor's and i am the very model of a modern major general buy some ammo from lucky gunner i'll see you guys next time

Channel: Lucky Gunner Ammo

Views: 121,307

Rating: 4.9365416 out of 5

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Id: zyPKMMZ7yiM

Length: 21min 4sec (1264 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 19 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/DisastrousHawk835]

New lucky gunner video and it’s about SKS? Sign me up! M1 Carbines are at least twice the price for starters…

[u/NathanBego]

Fucking love that channels m1 carbine videos

[u/ridge_runner56]

I tried a modern repro M1 Carbine. Reliability sucked. Sold it after fussing with it for a couple of years. Would love to own a real M1 Carbine, but they're so danged expensive now. SKS seems like a much better value - I'm pretty happy with both of mine.