My old Norinco is a hell of a gun. I love range time with it and its simplicity resulting in minute of paint can accuracy at 100 yards. My biggest beef are the stripper clips I received with it. I can have a 30cal can loaded with them, drive down the bumpy ass road to the range and all of a sudden, I have 8 rounds per strip, not 10. I;ve tried bending the tabs back in but they break and piss me off. Grrr..

Who do I give my money to for better clips?

Hmm, I thought that was just par for the course with all SKS stripper clips.

I've noticed brass cased ammo seems to "stick" a little better to the steel clips, although stripping isn't quite as smooth as steel cased stuff.

My NC Star clips are terrible also. Would love some better ones if they are out there...

The Yugo and Chinese military Strippers are higher quality.

I had to buy some Yugo ammo loaded on strippers to get them.

My SKS shipped in from AIM and am looking for some good stripper clips also.  Trying to avoid the NC Star ones.  Anyone have any leads on surplus Chinese ones?

Wow !  I didn't think stripper clips mattered so much.  I'm guess I'm outa touch with SKS stuff.  I have 40 + stripper clips gathering dust since 1994.  Maybe they're the good ones ??

Where can one obtain quality SKS stripper clips, if such a thing exists?

I got 10 off of eBay that were from M67 ammo.  They work great.  Wish I had bought more.

So generally the European clips are better quality?

Try to find some M67 ammo at gun shows.

Never ordered from Old Sarge's Drop Zone, but people on other boards have, and like the stripper clips.

https://oldsargesdropzone.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=78_4&products_id=1966&zenid=6pvlqpdqvlh0li8tkg1e5l07u7

Since the late 80"s the only good ones I have found or would even buy are the ones from Yugo M67 ammo. Of which I have cases of on strippers. I was just giving them away until last fall. Then I found out how fast they sell and for how much.  If Spring ever gets here, I will have a bunch more extra. But for now, I would say watch ebay and they show up on Gun Brokers once in awhile too. Just be certain they say from M67 ammo.

I was going to order some from Old Sarges Drop Zone today but they seem to be out. I have seen a couple of people on other forums state that StrikeHard Gear has some good stripper clips.

I was about to ask this question myself. Bump.

Mine have 31 stamped on the bottom.  I've had them about 15 years.  Are they the good ones?

Please sit down, clear your mind, and try to relax.  I am going to use my psychic powers to remotely control your brain for a few minutes and answer this question.  

Take a few deep breaths and imagine yourself taking a nap in a hammock in your grandmother's back yard. Do you feel calm, yet?  That's good.

Now, while your mind is drifting away, I am going to take control of your body.  

I am going down to your basement and finding your stripper clips.  Ah, there they are, next to box of old Hustler magazines from 1974, 8 track cassettes, and a CB radio your uncle gave you after he wrapped his truck around a fence post.  Ah, good old Uncle Mario....they took away his driver's license....they took away his car...and he still managed to walk into a telephone pole.

Now, where do you keep your 7.62x39 ammo?  Eureka! Your "ammo fort" consists of hundreds of empty Danish butter cookie tins spray painted FDE, OD, and black, with little magnets labels to tell you what caliber ammo you put in them.

Now, since you are too lazy or busy to actually figure it out yourself, I will now use your body to take a few boxes of ammo, a half dozen of your "31" marked stripper clips and see how well they work.  

This could take a few minutes.....Oh, snaps, your wife is coming down to the basement....and she is wearing some Victoria Secret negligee and perfume you got her for Valentine's Day.....

"Honey, who are you talking to down there?  Come upstairs to bed.  It's Friiiii-daaay!"

BRB

OK, near as I can figure the new made, sets of 20 clips that come in either the green or white boxes from China are the ones that suck. They are generally blued steel, not parkerized. Depending at which point the rounds are, the rounds either fall out, or stick.  Some of them will not fit into stripper clip guides of the SKS. I don't have an SKS, but a VZ, and some of them gave me a hard time fitting into the guide, or slipping rounds into the mag.

There are very few of the old GI surplus guides out there, and no one is shooting there ammo and re-selling their clips, so the supply has dried up and people are asking crazy prices for them at gun shows and on line.

I used to pay $4 for 20 of them in 2008.  Now, I have had to settle for the aftermarket NC Star and its "brand X" competitor for $7 a box.

Years ago, I succumbed and purchased some Chinese 10 round stripper clips for 7.62 NATO rounds.  They didn't do a good job of holding the rounds, either, so I got real surplus 5 round FAL and M-14 clips and put the Chinese clips away.  Has anyone tried to put AK rounds on those stripper clips?

Try these.
K&K Surplus

Are these any good?  What can you tell us about them?  Blued or parkerized?  Made where?

I don't have any newly manufactured clips to look at. The old ones I have, the thin piece of metal at the ends between the tracks is convex. I'm not sure if the new ones are or not. You may try and crimp the tracks a little a pair of needle nose pliers. Just a couple thoughts and are probably worthless.

Had the day off so I made an excursion to storage dump that is my basement.  I found some of the clips with the "31" in the circle. They had round on them (Wolf polymer cased) and I tried to load them using the stripper clip guides on my Czechpoint VZ=58 and using a stripper clip guide into a 20 round AK magazine. They did not operate smoothly (the standard would be doing a similar operation with 5.56 USGI or Thermold stripper clips into an AR magazine) in either task.  Sometimes they loaded fine, sometimes rounds would pop out, sometimes the clip went too deeply into the guide. Some needed pinching with pliers on the ends to fit into the stripper clip guides. However, the circle-31 clips did not need pinching with a set of pliers to keep all ten rounds on the clip.  

The ten round .308 clips will work on AK rounds with a little pinching at the spot held by round number 2 and round number 9, in order to keep round from falling off. the clips will fit into the SKS "bra" bandoliers, as well as USGI 7 pocket bandoleers that hold 140 rounds of 5.56 ammo on 14 stripper clips.  However, the stripper clips will NOT work on VZ-58 or AK magazine guides (presumably, they will not work on an SKS guide) so what is the point, except compact storage and easy counting?

Does anyone know if K & K surplus ones are Chinese knock offs or real surplus goodness?  How about what Sarco is selling?

This looks like a job for Thermold!  Their 5.56 stripper clips are the best thing out there, and I am sure they could do a great job of making SKS clips.

just got myself 2 sks's and looking to get some stripper clips, bump for info on good ones

>>Mine have 31 stamped on the bottom. I've had them about 15 years. Are they the good ones?<<

Even my new ones from NcStar are marked "31", and they don't work worth a crap! So, I'm not sure what the "31" designation means, if anything.

Are they blue-black and shiny?  Or are they parkerized-grey?

It is quite possible that NcStar is just putting that stamp on them to fool people.

Talked to someone who is a ComBloc weapons expert for a living today. He says the Chinese don't use circles, they used triangles on their ordnance. The Warsaw Pact used circles.

>>He says the Chinese don't use circles<<

My Chinese made NcStar stripper clips beg to differ.

Allow me to correct myself: "He told me the factories that made stripper clips for Red Army did not use circles."  
The NcStar clips are aftermarket.  My friend believes that NcStar must have gotten some old, surplused machinery from the Red Army supplying factory, and that the equipment is out of spec, hence making clips that are too big for the stripper clip guides and turning from 10-round clips to 8-round clips whenever you jostle them.

>>The NcStar clips are aftermarket<<

Yeah, I'm stuck with 30 of these damned things, and they're about to be tossed in the trash. I'm not sure why they continue to sell these things knowing they don't really work.  I've got some of the ones that supposedly work on the way. Now I just have to hope they do in fact work.

They are not completely useless. They can be salvaged.

I have fixed some of the NcStar clips with a pair of pliers. For making sure that the 2nd and 9th round do not fall out, I have loaded the clip, then given it a little pinch around the spot that the two little tabs stick out around the position right before the 2nd and 9th round.

As for getting it thin enough to fit into the stripper clip guide, I have also given it a very slight pinch with a pair of pliers, either with a round in the 1st and last round position, but I have had better luck getting the straight line of the feeding end of the clip to get a slight "bow" (looking at the leading edge that goes into the guide) if I gently push it in while squishing with the pliers.

I don't have an SKS, I have a VZ-58, and the only reason I have not gotten crazy buying up every VZ-58 mag I come across is because I can reload with stripper clips, SKS-style. Hence, the need for reliable clips.
I also have an AKM, so I want to load those magazines with the stripper clip guide. This weekend, I took the pliers to a couple of those NcStar clips and got them to work with both VZ-58 and the clip guide.

I'm also considering getting a Cammega speed loader device.  Anyone have any experience with those?

There are two kinds of 31's out there.  Are your clips grey with dark grey stripe along its spine? Are they parkerized?  These are indeed the old school, probably GI issue, ones.  I got some this weekend, and they managed to feed my VA-58 through the stripper clip guide (which is very dependent upon the two tabs fitting into the guide's dimples and touching the top of the feed lips), and they fed into several size/nationality AK magazines using the one of those stamped steel "star" insignia Chinese stripper clip guides.

Are they the "31 inside a circle" ones?  Kinda black, but not shiny black.  Se what I wrote before: They hold onto all ten rounds without pinching, they sometimes fit into the stripper clip guide of my VZ 58 (but as far as getting more than a couple of rounds into the magazine....even less), and they do not want to feed into an AK magazine very much.

The circle-31 are better made than the NcStar, but still temperamental.

At this week's Manassas, VA, gun show, I found some black, but not shiny black, clips. Some were BXN65 and some were marked "CHINA".  I bought a couple BXN for testing on Saturday. The BXN65 passed all tests with flying colors, so I drove back on Sunday to buy them all.  I brought my stripper clip guide, some rounds, a magazine, and the bolt of my VZ-58 to test the "CHINA" clips.  They looked identical to the BXN65 in fit and finish, and they did just as well. Bought those, two.

Dealers told me they get their strips from Numrich, but they have no control over what type they send them. It is an eclectic selection every time.  Currently, on their retail website, they are advertising new blued clips for $1.20 each.  Not good.

Thermold...please make a stripper clip for this caliber.

Please tell me what color they are and what is marked on their spine.

If what you said about 1994 is true, they might indeed be the good ones.  If they are, and if you don't need them, I could "give them a good home."

Contacted this company and explained our plight. They e-mailed me right away. This company is a total class act. The told me they would send me a few to test out, and I got them within days or our initial contact.

These are dull black, circle-31 clips.  I tested them out. No burs, to cut fingers. The retention tabs are where they are supposed to be and not sticking out a half inch in a concave fashion.
No need for adjusting. Rounds slide on and slide off.  Put ten rounds on them, and the rounds would stay on, even if the clip was shaken like a Polaroid.

Would not feed my VZ-58 via the stripper clip guide very well, but YMMV with an SKS rifle.

Mailed the samples back.

I'll say it again: KandK Surplus is a class act.

so are they any good?

Round retention: Excellent

Loading a VZ-58: not so good.

Loading an SKS: Don't know. Don't have an SKS, don't know if stripper clip guide has "dimples" for stripper clip tabs.

Loading an AK mag with stripper clip guide: fair to poor depending on mag. I used a mix of 8 different mags. Test was based on using only one stamped steel stripper clip guide.

Does anyone have any experience with clips marked "386"?  They look like, and are often offered alongside, circle-31 clips?

Received some dull black clips marked "CHINA" and "BXN65".  Both types worked flawlessly.

Linky

purchased stripper clips from this ebay seller and they worked flawlessly yesterday at the range, ran all of them about 2-3 times each with nothing bad to report

http://www.ebay.com/itm/20-stripper-clips-7-62X39-vz-58-vz58-VZ2008-SKS-BXN63-marked-AK-Czech-made-/321376930304?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4ad38eca00http://www.ebay.com/itm/20-stripper-clips-7-62X39-vz-58-vz58-VZ2008-SKS-BXN63-marked-AK-Czech-made-/321376930304?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4ad38eca00

These work just fine.

The reason I bought an AK pistol instead of an SKS for my truck gun is because of the stripper clip problem/shortage.

Over the last month or so, I went through 14 of the long 40mm ammo cans, 2 "fat .50" ammo cans, and two brown South African 7.62 NATO cases full of AKM ammo on stripper clips packed in bandoleers and SKS "brassieres," testing the clips for ease of loading into magazines and using the stripper clip guide on my VZ-58, replacing faulty clips for those marked "BXM" or "CHINA" and repacking the ammo boxes.  Here is what I learned:

- The "bad" clips are those marked "31" in a large font, inside of circle. If these clips are shiny and black, but display dozens of little tick marks or stress marks along the ends of its spine, and have an angular shape instead of the gentle curve, they would sometimes fail to retain rounds, not feed into my rifle, and fail to feed into a magazine with the cheap stamped AK mag adapter.  Some of the circle-31 clips would work fine, but they tended to have a different finish and lack the striations, and were properly curved.

All stripper clips fed into magazines using the plastic NcStar speed loader that fits over the mag, has a plunger to push the round down, and a magnet to pull out the empty clip.  It is as if NcStar over engineered the speed loader to make even their commercially made clips work. If you have the circle-31 clips, this device will make them work for loading AKM magazines.

My theory is that NcStar purchased the machinery for making the clips. The military no longer needed the mahcines, since they were out of the SKS business two decades ago, but that NcStar does not know how to maintain the machines and they are going out of spec with each batch they make. Truly, after handing over 2,000 clips, I could see the slow decline in the circle-31 clips.

Some clips were had a dull and rough dark grey to black finish and retained rounds but did not work with my VZ-58.

Many clips were marked "31" in small font and without a circle, in grey parkerized finished, grey with a darker thin strip along the spine, and in black.  90% of those were GTG.  

Others that worked well were "211," "386," and other three digit marked clips.

There were some light grey clips that had an unusual symbol on them, sort of like a pyramid outline with three letters. I assume they were of Yugo M67 ammo. These were often worked with the VZ58, not always.

For the VZ-58, and for ease of loading into AK magazines, the BXN, BXN63, and BXN65 clips were the best.  There is an Ebay seller who get batches of BX clips several times a year. Customers reaction was good, so I ordered them, even though they were "in the white" and not blued or parkerized. I bought several hundred and used Birchwood Casey's Super Blue to turn them black.  A 30 second dip is all that is needed to get them nice and black.

As far as effient packing went, I went from favoring SKS 10 pocket "bras" (and the commercial OD variation made of Cordura whose large pockets would hold 300 instead of 200 rounds) to favoring the old 7-pocket 5.56 bandoleers. They sell cardboard boxes for them, and allow putting 14 stripper clips (140 rounds) into the bandoller, the bandoller folding into a nice, tight cube.  Four of these bandoleers fit perfectly into a "fat .50 caliber" can, for 560 rounds. Eight or nine such bandoleers (using the cardboards) fit into the long 40mm cans.

I tried to put about 1,000 round in each lon 40mm can, so learned how to fit 4 SKS bras (200 rounds) and a 7-pocket bandoleer into a can, folding one SKS bra along the side, laying three bras flat, and then laying the 7-pocket along the top.

Pics please of this set up.

I bought a large amount of Czech BXN stripper clips off fleabay a few months back. They are excellent. Came straight from the Czech Republic. Feed my 59/66's great but haven't tried them in my vz58 yet.  I was patient and held off buying NCstar or any other new production Chinese strippers after reading the terrible reviews on them. The BXN's weren't cheap, but I should have them for a lifetime of enjoyment.  My advise is to be patient and check fleabay often for decent deals on milsurp strippers that are not heavily used.  From what I have read, military grade strippers were every where back in the day but have really dried up since.

This.

Wait for some Czech BXN clips on Ebay. They pop up so often and are worth the wait and the price. They will work forever.

Anyone bought from buy milsurp.com


Stripper Clips 10 rd Original SKS & AK Rifles QTY 20
$18.00
Original SKS Stripper clips for ALL variants of SKS rifles.
These stripper clips each hold 10 rounds of 7.62X39 ammunition. These are used to load your fixed magazines on your SKS Rifles. These SKS Sripper clips will work on your Chinese , Russian or Romanian SKS rifles. These can also be used on AK Magazines with the magazine loader. With a little practice you can load your SKS fixed magazine quickly.

These are also compatible with the AK magazines using the AK loader.


Add to Cart:


Model: MAG-2 MAG6622
Shipping Weight: 0.8lbs
204 Units in Stock
Manufactured by: TAPCO

what did you do with all the clips that the ammo came on?

It might be considered a sacrilege, but I took a needle file and opened up the bolt slots on both of my SKS'. They work like charms.

FWIW- I have a bunch of Chinese SKS stripper clips I purchased in the 90s. They are a dull, blued steel with no markings of any kind. I bought them in unmarked, heat sealed plastic bags of 100ea for $3-$6 per bag. In the bag they had a light oil on them. I have only loaded and stripped about 100 of them but they seem to work reasonably well. They seem more prone to losing that 1st or 10th round than Yugo clips but if I carry them in a Chinese surplus bandoleer then I rarely lose a round.

ETA- I just discovered that an M4 single pocket two mag pouch will hold four loaded stripper clips nicely and keeps every round in place until you need them.

I opened a case of Yugo M67 ammo last month.
1200 rds of 7.62X39 brass cased ammo
EVERYONE OF THEM ON A BRAND NEW STRIPER CLIP

didn't know they were valuable

I have been using the ammo in my 7.62 AR

I have the same issues with my Norinco strippers, although they and my Yugo are mainly just range toys so it is really just an annoyance.  I have 20 clips loaded in a surplus Chinese chest rig, and you better believe that when I go to reload and pull a stripper clip out of the pouch (which is kind of a pain in the ass given the small/tight pouches) that I am only loading 8 or 9 rounds.  The extra is lying in the bottom of the pouch.  

On the plus side, I read all sorts of reviews that the Norincos were improperly sized and wouldn't load properly.  I have had no problems in my Yugo at all with the clip fitting, just retaining ammo completely.

The circle 31 ones work flawlessly, here is some for cheapish on fleebay.


http://www.ebay.com/itm/251725358367

If those are original circle-31, they should work well.  The problem is that NcStar clips, the shitty ones, also have circle-31 stamped on them.  Reportedly, NcStar bought the machinery when it was already out of spec or ran so many initial batches that the machinery wore out and what is presently produced is garbage.   It's difficult to visually distinguish the original ones from the NcStar.  

That Ebay seller above states they're original and accepts returns so your only risk would be a couple of bucks for return shipping.  Stripper clips that also work very well and have been mentioned in this thread are the Czech BXN ones.  I just got some from these guys:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/20-Bxn-Stamped-Stripper-Clips-For-SKS-Vz58-Vz2008-Nickle-chrome-Czech-Surplus-/221704638556?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item339ea0505c

http://www.ebay.com/itm/271754398314?_trksid=p2059210.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

True military surplus (any military) clips are of "better quality". The NCstar clips are of new manufacture intended for commercial export sale (meaning they won't be held accountable if they fail to work).