The wife knows me too well.
She asked if I had my eye on anything at the local shop and I mentioned this VZ52 so she got it for me.
The VZ52 is a somewhat uncommon carbine produced in the late 50's and early 60's in Czechoslovakia.
It chambered for the unique, hard to find and expensive 7.62x45 cartridge.
Fortunately the rifle came with 150 rounds of ammo which shoots great but it very corrosive.
I'm looking into getting reloading dies and making my own brass since there isn't a commercial source for 7.62x45 brass, the bullets are standard 123 grain FMJ the same as 7.62x39 which aren't hard to find.
The importer was Century Arms and they painted just about all of these rifles with truck bed liner to hide cracks in the stock.
Main problem is they painted good ones as well as questionable rifles, however they only painted the stocks and none of this crap is on the actual working parts of the rifle.
The folks at the gun shop disassembled this one and checked it and found it to be in very good condition with a bright shiny bore and strong rifling.
The rifle is very accurate for a carbine and though it resembles an SKS variant it has almost nothing in common with that particular weapon system.
This thing is just flat out fun to shoot, the recoil is milder than the SKS even with the more powerful cartridge and it grouped well at 100 yards.
I knew next to nothing about these rifles when I got this one but it's pretty much business as usual to anyone who's fired a military weapon.
The only thing that really caught me by surprise was the fact it ejects the empties to the left front.
It's another unique addition to my modest collection of odd rifles.
Jim