The SKS is seeing a lot of love in Canada lately, as another chassis system rears its head. The Pearce Armoury ILS chassis is 3D printed, and creates a pseudo-AR lower for the SKS. The means AR-15 stocks, pistol grips, magazines, trigger assembly, and bolt release.
The concept looks interesting for sure. Essentially create a lower receiver to mate with the SKS upper. An additional hand-guard creates the front swivel point for the receiver, and a top mounted optics rail fits onto the rear take down pin.
Ryan Pearce, the creator, explains the origin:
“About 2 years ago, I bought my first SKS rifle. Like many new SKS owners, I searched the aftermarket for upgrades to improve it’s accuracy, reliability, cartridge capacity and ease of magazine reloading. I could never find exactly what I wanted, so I began researching the dimensions of the SKS and learned that I could integrate what I wanted to it, if I created an all-new chassis. It was then that I started Pearce Armoury to develop modern technology solutions for the SKS rifle.”
I (and I suspect many of you) am initially skeptical of the durability in a 3D printed polymer system, and I asked Ryan directly about his materials:
“We are using a material called Nylon 12, it has good strength principals in the thicknesses we are using and produces a fairly nice finish, now these could smoothed by hand if the layers are bothersome. We will be offering them only in white at the moment but looking at an option to have them painted.”
Now the kicker: this is a permanent change to the SKS, one way ticket. $800 CAD gets you the printed stock, and all the hardware to install it, but you have to modify the original rifle yourself. The hammer channel must be extended and the magazine well opened up to work with the new mags.
The latest news is that Pearce will be offering their own line of SKS-7 rifles in the Spring, theoretically fitted with an ILS out of the box. They are discussing the potential for a larger run of CNC aluminum versions of the chassis, but right now the 3D one-offs are all that’s available to the public.
Keep in mind that SKS rifles can still be found for under $200 in Canada. There’s lots of them around, with less and less collectors value as the Russians start laser engraving export info on the receivers. There’s quite a few concept and schematic images so far, but just the one functional rifle that I’ve been able to find. What do you think TFB readership? Worthy of a can of Krylon?
