In this episode of TFBTV, James gives you a comprehensive overview of the Arsenal SAM7SF and the SBR version, the SAM7SF-K. These may be the best AKs ever produced, and we’ll tell you why. In addition to James, Ryan Hicks from Arsenal is there to explain the finer details, and notorious AK scholar Mishaco gives us a rundown of the select-fire military variant of the SAM7, the ARM9, featuring Bulgarian made ARM9 style buttstock and handguards, and the RPK style pistol grip. Arsenal calls this the “game changer” of AKs. So what improvement did Arsenal formulate to “change the AK game?” Arsenal’s radical development is, primarily, the introduction of an AK receiver that is forged before it is milled. In explaining why this feature makes this AK variant a “game-changer,” Arsenal offers this explanation: “Some companies that make milled receivers in the USA bypass the forging process, which can contribute to weak receivers, more prone to stress. The forging process strengthens the material and shapes uniform grain patterns in the steel. These forging patterns are engineered and produced to follow certain directions along the contour of the receiver to withstand high stress from the force and the movement of the working components. The forging process also eliminates any possibility of internal air pockets and cooling deformations that can impact and weaken the integrity of the receiver. While firing, the forged and milled receiver does not have the same deformation issues that are typical to stamped receiver models. […] The solid platform of the forged and milled receiver ensures superior accuracy. […] It is not by accident that all the critical components on the SAM7SF rifle, including the receiver, the barrel, the bolt head, the bolt carrier and trigger are formed through forging process, to give them the crucial strength, reliability, and longevity to last for generations of use.” Anyways, we hope you enjoy this overview.

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Transcript ….

– Hey guys, James again with TFB TV and I’m out here in the Nevada Desert with Ryan from Arsenal and we’ve got a couple of these SAM7SF rifles.

This is the SAM7SF, the standard and the SAM7SFK which is as you can see the short-barrel rifle version and Ryan these are, first of all thanks for being on the show, second you where saying that these are Arsenal’s premier, this is the top of the line AK that Arsenal manufactures, is that correct? – Yes it can be considered the top production AK in the market.

– And why do you say that? What makes this the best AK in the market? – It’s all about the quality manufacturing, we have hot-die hammer forged receivers and instead of just taking a preset block they take it and they hammer forge it again and what they do is get all the impurities out.

They get all the metal going the same way.

They make it tighter, so there’s less flex when firing.

– [James] And about how long does it take to manufacture one of these receivers? – [Ryan] One receiver is five and a half hours of manufacturing time.

– [James] And they’re manufactured in Bulgaria, right? – [Ryan] It’s a Bulgarian receiver, and a Bulgarian barrel, which made from Steyr technology.

Which chrome-lined hammer forged, very durable.

Once they get to the U.S. Arsenal Inc. in Las Vegas, we do is we manufacture all the furniture and the trigger groups we put all that in ourselves.

– Now as far as the 7SF, this barrel is over 16-inches right? – Yes, 16.3.

– So I don’t need to do any paperwork on this, I can just buy it right off the rack but the SAM7SFK that’s your factory SBR.

What are we looking at for barrel length on that? – [Ryan] Eight and a half inch barrel.

So it is an NFA item.

– [James] Okay so, but I can get it from Arsenal that way, it just needs to go to my class III dealer and I need to do the paperwork to get tax stamp for it.

– That’s correct.

– Okay.

– The furniture on these I need to mention is mill spec.

These are 100% brand new production rifles.

There is no surplus, no aftermarket, it is brand new mill spec.

– Break me down on the features for this SAM7SF.

– Okay on the SF models they are a right-side holding butt-stock.

– [James] So you depress this little button – [Ryan] That’s correct.

– [James] And then fold it and you can see the catch right there.

– Now the benefit of that is they come with a scope mount rail so if you have an optic mounted.

On the standard left-side holders you would have to remove the optic for storage or to fold it.

In this case you can leave it on, fold it to the right and you still have clearance for the bolt to function.

– So I can still have an optic mounted, I can have the stock collapse and I can still fire right? – That’s correct.

– What else comes standard with the 7SF? – The SF models, SAM7SF-84, is yours.

This the SAM7SFK-72 short barrel, they have an ambidextrous safety.

So since it does fold to the right, you can’t really reach the safety that way.

So style safety – Ah gotcha.

– So four in the back, for safe and off safe.

– Okay.

And then what about the, tell me about the muzzle device on the SAM7SF, the full size that I have here and then you can drop something I know you have a special project there with the muzzle device on the K, but tell me about the standard muzzle device here.

– Standard muzzle device is I think the 140th design or so.

What it does we got three ports built-in up top to help push gas, the barrel back down to the left since most go up and to the right.

There’s an almost considered baffle cuts in the inside.

So it’s not just cosmetic, it actually serves a function to shot the gas flat out and keep the barrel as flat as possible while shooting repeatably.

– And these are by the way these are made in Bulgaria, but they’re 922 compliant right? – [Ryan] It’s a Bulgarian receiver and barrel, everything else is manufactured in Las Vegas.

– [James] Okay and you guys have your own manufacturing facilities here? – We do, we can 100% manufacture a rifle here.

We do one series of that, the SAM7 Classic, that has the blonde wood furniture.

U.S. milled receivers they cost a little bit more.

That ones about $2,000.

[James] Holy moly.

– [Ryan] MSRP on that’s $1450 and SBR is $2499.

– Yeah and lets talk about the SBR.

Now I’ve said we’d come back to the muzzle device.

Why don’t you tell everybody about the special muzzle device on the K.

– So this is not the one that comes with it standard, this is a quick-detach mount from Gemtech that goes along with the Arsenal suppressor they built exclusively for us.

– We did a video special on the Gemtech suppressor.

There is an Arsenal Gemtech collaboration.

They made 300 suppressors specially designed for the AK and these are, they where built in collaboration with Gemtech, so if you’re looking for something to mount straight on to your Arsenal or any AK for that matter as long as you have concentricity, it’ll work right? – Yup, you just need to gauge it to make sure you’re not gonna get an awful strike and that all plays into how the thread mounts are on.

(gun shots) But it will come with two of these, 14x1mm left, 24×1.5mm right and the 100% titanium suppressor for $999.

– Let’s shift the focus a little bit more over to the K.

So the K, this is a factory SBR.

– [Ryan] Yes, exactly. Minus this muzzle break everything else comes like this from the factory.

It’s basically the baby of that one.

It’s the same receiver, only difference is the sights on this has a flip-up, it’s got a role-notch and role peep sight.

Standard front, it has a hinged dust cover.

So you don’t have to worry about losing it or dropping it.

Other than that it is, everything else is the same on the SAM7SF.

Trigger groups, these have the Arsenal trigger groups in them.

They are double hook, they are very smooth, they’re not two stage and they break about 4lbs clean.

– [James] Oh wow.

Three pounds, 8.7 ounces.

That’s incredible.

What about the furniture? – The furniture, this has the crink-style furniture with a stainless steel heat shield in it.

That has stainless steel heat shield as well.

Comes standard on Arsenal furniture.

– [James] Alright I’d say let’s go and see how these things shoot and we will.

I’m gonna take it out to the range right now, but I’ve actually been shooting these for a while.

You guys sent me one a few years ago and these really are top of the line AKs.

So I already know how it’s gonna perform but you know what let’s take some footage, cut some footage, maybe even take it to the 100-yard range, see what kind of accuracy we can squeeze out of it.

Ryan thanks a lot man. – Sounds good.

Thanks for having me.

– Oh, hey there. We’re out here shooting at 100 yards with the SAM7SF.

We’ve got a Trijicon ACOG 3×30 with a 7.62 reticle, gonna shoot some groups real quick.

Roll back over now.

(gun shots) Shot a number of 2.5 inch groups with round bear ammo.

So this is cheap Russian steel ammo.

Shooting 2.5 inch groups with three power optic at a hundred yards using just a sandbag.

It’s pretty good.

Got eight rounds over here.

You can see four of them are touching, and then you’ve got another pair in between and then another pair touching on the right hand side.

So the accuracy, and again that’s with the Russian brown bear, so the accuracy’s been pretty impressive to say the least.

So my apologize for the lame ass voice over but I had to make a last minute change to this video to add something special.

If you’ve watched any AK videos on Youtube, you’ve probably ran into my friend Mishaco before.

Misha’s a really interesting guy.

He lived in Russia for a while but the most interesting thing about Misha is the fact that even though he’s blind he knows more about AKs than you or I will ever know.

Anyways it’s great honor to have Misha on the channel, I highly recommend that you guys check out his channel if you like Aks.

It is one of the most criminally underrated channels on YouTube, I’ll put the link to his channel on the description but he’s a big fan of the SAM7 series, so I figured I would get his comments in this video, take it away buddy.

– H, this is Misha and James asked me to put in my two cents or maybe three cents or knowing me my hour and a half long cents on the Arsenal milled series, the SAM series SAM7.

So brought out a couple of my guns.

Here we have my SAM7SF, and here we have my SAM7R.

Now these may not look exactly like the ones you’re used to.

I’ve modified these a bit for my own personal taste.

I have this one set up as a military AR-M9F clone of one of the select fire models that is currently being offered by Arsenal.

As with the original military gun, we have the side-folding tubular stock.

This is hollow to save on weight.

It used the same hinge mechanism that Russia originally developed for the AK-74 which is very well known, now those are left-side foldings, this is a right side folding.

We have ARM9 handguards, which have a very unique shape but it’s not just cosmetic.

These seem to really handle heat and head dissipation very well, they are also quite comfortable.

The pistol grip, the ARM9 pistol grip, I think it’s a little larger than the standard AK grip which is I think we can all agree a good thing.

90 degree gas block, we have an AKM so a lighter weight profile barrel.

We have a bayonet lug you can see with my bayonet on here.

I didn’t actually just super glue this or duct tape and bondo it.

Just because I’m from the South doesn’t mean I duct tape and bondo everything.

We have 24 mm threads, and we have a Bulgarian four port flash hider often knows as the A meter.

Now this does have a cleaning rod under the barrel.

One of the most common misconceptions is that the SAM7SF does not have a cleaning rod.

It does.

It just comes with a two-piece cleaning rod in the box.

The reason it’s two piece because of this latch back here being in the receiver here, they had to have a shorter rod to go under the barrel and then the other half of the rod goes in your magazine pouch.

We also have a standard scope mount, riveted to the side of this receiver for attaching any manner of objects.

From original Russian combloc style like the Cobra to modern pickrails.

What’s nice about this is this is very secure.

It also allows for quick detaching and in theory will return to zero at least battlefield zero.

So you can’t take it off for cleaning.

And they will take standard AK magazines and most drums.

I would say all drums but whenever you say 100% there’s always an exception, right.

So let’s just say most.

It even has a small rubber recoil pad on this metal stock so at least you don’t have metal up against your body.

There is some rubber here.

I don’t so much like it because it doesn’t really help with recoil because this gun doesn’t have much thanks to its weight but what I do like is that it helps stick to your shoulder.

So that’s the SAM7SF side folder.

– Alright guys so there’s our overview on the SAM7SF series of AKs from Arsenal.

As usual I was impressed.

I’ve shot these a few times over the years.

They really are one of the best off the shelf AKs that you can get.

It’s really exciting to see Arsenal offer the factory SBR option in the United States right now.

You’re talking about, you guys saw the trigger, very light weight.

That translates into pretty good accuracy.

You saw we’re shooting about two-inch groups at 100 yards using shitty steel Russian ammo.

I’m glad that Arsenal could pull two of these out of the warehouse for me to bring out here in the Nevada Desert just to run through the ringer.

We shot, I don’t know, what guys a case of ammo through this, we shot a case of ammo through these guns while we where here.

Of course it’s an AK, no failures, flawless performance.

So again thanks to Arsenal for letting me shot these and thank you to you guys as usual for watching.

Thank you to Ventura Munitions, our sponsor.

Those are my boys.

I will see all of you next week, take care.

(soft music)