It’s been about three years since Brandon Herrera, also known as The AK Guy, came up with the idea of designing a scaled up AK-47 chambered in .50 BMG. He has recently finished some initial assembly of the AK-50. The gun was assembled just enough to see whether it will be able to fire or not. And the first test fire was successful!

As you can see from the video, the AK-50 currently has only the bolt carrier, bolt assembly, the milled receiver with the barrel pressed and pinned in place, and the trigger mechanism. Now that they have confirmed that the gun is in spec and matches their expectations and calculations, they’ll go on with making the rest of the parts and assembling a complete working AK in .50 BMG.

A couple of days before this video, Brandon has also shown some of the manufacturing processes of the prototype AK-50, as well as a test fire of a blank .50 BMG round.

The idea of a .50 caliber AK-47 possibly came to minds of many people, but The AK Guy has actually made it. One can only imagine how much time and money, intellectual and physical work is put into this project. I am sure there were moments of frustration and disappointment, but this guy kept pursuing his dream and looks like it is coming true.

I was following this project for quite a long time and by seeing the devotion of The AK Guy to his project and judging from the teased information, I was sure that it won’t have a problem with this test fire. To me, the real challenge will be making it properly function and cycle the action.