WW2 Russia SKS-31 SEMI-AUTO RIFLES 1:35/1:72

In the early ’40s, arms designers in the Soviet Union were tasked to develop a lighter and more compact carbine version of the self-loading rifle chambered in 7.62x54mmR. Many of the designers that were working on this concept were trying to design a shortened version of Fedor Tokarev’s SVT-40 rifle. However, Simonov decided to make a carbine based on his SVS rifle design that was the contender of Tokarev’s rifle. As a result, Simonov submitted to these trials a carbine called SVS-53. Although the SVS-53 carbine showed a poor performance when tested in harsh environmental conditions and had breakages of minor parts, the design concept itself impressed the military officials and they came to a conclusion that if further improved, Simonov’s design could make a successful carbine.
Simonov started working on improving the design of his carbine. In April of 1941, he came up with two versions of the new carbine called SKS-30 and SKS-31. Both rifles were chambered in 7.62x54mmR and they had mostly identical design with the exception of magazine design and capacity. SKS-30 was fed from a 10-round en-bloc that was inserted from the bottom of the rifle. SKS-31 was fed from the top via stripper clips and had a 5-round magazine capacity. Testing of these two rifles showed that bottom en-bloc feeding was quite a troublesome and time-consuming process compared to the magazine change of the SVT-40 and even compared to the top stripper clip loading method. In order to load a new en-bloc, the shooter had to open the floor plate, remove the empty en-bloc, insert a new one (loaded with ammunition) and close the floorplate. The result of this initial testing was the decision made in favor of the stripper clip fed SKS-31.
Despite all the problems, the development, testing, and deployment attempt of the SKS-31 carbine allowed Soviet designers to gain huge experience in designing self-loading combat firearms. For example, they found out that increasing the weight of the BCG would allow to increase the overall reliability of the action. Lessons like that were learned and used by many other Soviet arms designers in their future designs. Simonov himself fixed all the problems of his basic action and managed to later design the 7.62x39mm version of his carbine which was ultimately adopted in 1949 as the SKS carbine that we all know today.

I have set them to a 1:35/1:72 ratio for easy printing, and the size comes from the data provided by the encyclopedia. You can adjust its size to any place by yourself.

Note: If using the model for 3D printing, model repairs may be needed