Because I make and sell a variety of AK furniture, I often get asked about where to find parts and accessories for a given type of firearm. One brand that comes up quite a bit is Norinco.
Norinco, or China North Industries Group Corporation Limited (中国北方工业集团有限公司), is a huge defense conglomerate and makes everything from small arms to big weapons systems such as tanks and missle systems (click here if you want to visit their site). They were established in 1980 and began selling small arms to the US domestic market not long after that.
Unfortunately, they ran into a number of legal problems. In 1993, importation of most of their firearms and ammunition was blocked other than sporting shotguns and shotgun ammo. In 1994 US Customrs conducted a sting on the importer and in August 2003, sanctions were imposted that effectively blocked their remaining lines of firearms and ammunition not already banned. In short, Norinco is very much still in business in China and exporting to clients elsewhere – just not in the US.
This unfortunate series of events leaves US owners of Norinco firearms such as their Type 56 SKS carbine, Type 56 assault rifle (and specifically the civilian MAK-90 and NHM-90 rifles), the NDM-86 Dragunov clone DMR, their various other rifles, pistols and shotguns wondering where to find parts. As for myself, I wish I could afford an NDM-86!
There are two reputable businesses I have dealt with who carry Chinese firearm parts – one is Numrich and the other is PolyTechParts. Of course, there is Gunbroker and the many sellers who use it as well.
There is another surprising source – eBay. Below is a live feed of Norinco parts for you to peruse plus they have much more:
Just to be clear, I am not a Chinese firearms expert. I get asked questions and have done some searching to try and help clients but that’s it. I created this blog post to have a quick link to email people when they have questions about where to find parts and I hope this helps you out.
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Photo of the Type 56 is by Dhalikar – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25006497