Nick out of the receiver of SKS?

[His lordship.]

I used to have 2 SKS rifles, a Chinese, and a Russian.  I put 1,400 rounds through the Chinese, and the action looked fine when I sold it.  The Russian was rarely shot, until last Summer when I decided to trade it and then fire off a few boxes of ammo, estimating that I put about 500 rounds total through it over the 7 years that I had the rifle.  Both SKS were very well cared for, cleaned after each outing, well oiled and greased.

Just before I sold the Russian I noticed a small chunk of metal was gouged out of the left side of the reciever face, about where the bolt body shrouds over it when it slams home on closing.  It was small so I did not worry about it, thought there might be an alignment problem, etc.  Was at a local gun store recently, and there was a well used Chinese SKS that was obviously used by the Chinese army, lots of handling wear, but seemed like it would be ok to shoot, and sure enough, the same area on it had the small chunk of receiver gouged out, small, but I saw it, just like my Russian gun. :shock:

Anybody else see anything like that?  I have been toying with getting one of those Jugo SKS's before they get up to $300.00, but am not sure.

Thanks.

[1911crazy]

I just looked at a chinese, a romanian, a albanian, a russian and a yugo sks and some have the mark your talking about and some well used ones don't.   The bolt carrier makes this mark on the reciever when the leading edge of the bolt carrier that has the stripper clip knotch goes over the op rod part of the reciever.  The well used yugo's and romanian sks's had this mark and only some of the chinese ones had it too.  But I have a well shot chinese, albanian and russian that have no marks too.                     BigBill

I found if you hold the bolt carrier to one side when it closes some bump it and some don't.  Its not a nick its just a wear mark where it hits/rubs before it goes into full battery.