HI everyone,

I recently purchased some tapco 20 rnd (pinned) magazines for my sks, but I am having issues with them. I am curious if anyone else has tried these and had similar problems. For the record, I am running a chinese surplus SKS with the wooden stock. There are videos on youtube explaining how to use the tapco stocks with the standard wooden stock, and it is quite simple. Just remove the trigger group, remove the attached magazine, then replace the trigger group, and insert the tapco mag. easy peasy. Here are the issues:

1) I know that the instructions state that the bolt has to be open to insert the magazine. This is fine if you already have an empty mag in and take it out to put in a reload, but for the first one it is a pain in the butt. Anyone know how to solve this issue?

2) Once a loaded magazine is inserted, the bolt hold back mechanism will not release. I have to physically push it down with my finger. from what I can see, it is likely that some part of the magazine is pushing it up in the locked position. Before I start sanding away portions of the magazines, does anyone know exactley why this is? a friend runs the same magazines out of an ATI aftermarket stock, and has no issues. He i using a Russian surplus sks, but the mechanisms seems to be identical.

3) when the magazine is empty, the bolt hold open device does not engage and lock the bolt back. This makes it VERY difficult to eject the spent mag and then start the process over of inserting a fresh one.

If I manually do everything (hold the bolt back, insert the loaded mag, push the bolt hold down, then release the bolt) the gun operates fine, and so do the magazines. But this seems like a ridiculous way to load and operate a very simply firearm!

HELP!