#Ak

One of the few people I have met in person and trust with instruction on an AK is Rob Ski (it does help that Rob has a real accent, not a fake one like some other infamous YouTuber). Fresh up from his growing comradery of AK operators is a video on the basic AK reloading. I enjoy that he is not focusing on advanced techniques, instead opting to use build-in index points on the rifle.

Ron from the Las Vegas gun range Battlefield Vegas, where, like many Vegas range’s they only allow their rental guns to be used,  shared some thoughts on how different AK rifles fail after tens after thousands of rounds (the above photo shows 30 days worth of 7.62x39mm steel shot at their range, of which 80% would have been fired by AKs).  Ron writes at AR15.com …

Kalashnikov Concern has made an effort to rebrand itself following its consolidation, and spurred by the US sanctions of 2014, that prevent the importation of the Concern’s products to the lucrative American civilian market. VICE News, online offshoot of VICE Magazine, has traveled to Moscow to cover the rebranding, interviewing Alexey Krivoruchko, the Concern’s CEO, as well as Grigor Badalyan, Director of Brand Consulting for Apostol Media Group, which consulted for the Concern’s rebranding effort:

I love bullpup rifles and I really like the idea of AK bullpups, especially considering their construction and lack of a buffer tube. In this round of Forgotten Weapons, Ian (of our own TFB) takes a look at a kit that takes the AK and turns it into a a bullpup. The usual drawbacks to the platform are the usual nasty, gritty trigger, difficult magazine changes, and right-hand only works.

Rob Ski puts the new Magpul AK furniture to the test. The results are thought-provoking:

Ever seen a magazine explode? Lee “The Gun Writer” Williams was greeted by the aftermath of this dramatic failure of a Bulgarian AK magazine, little more than a week ago:

What rifle influenced Kalashnikov’s famous carbine design more, the Garand M1, or the Haenel MP 43? This question was broached by blogger Jeff of TwistRate in a video posted to the Full30 gun video hosting website recently. Readers can follow the link to watch that video before reading my discussion of this question below.

The troubled INSAS rifle has met yet another stumbling block. Calling the rifle “defective, the Delhi High Court questioned the Indian Ministry of Defense’s and the Home Ministry’s issuance of the rifles, late last month, Indian Express reports:

Rifle Dynamics (RD) is one of the top tier custom AK builder in the USA. They are local to me and I was invited for a factory visit. Unlike the popular AR-15 platform with its lego like modular construction, building an AK properly requires a lot of skills and experience in metal working. The emphasis here is building it properly. Each step in the building processes and the careful selection of parts are essential in the safety and longevity of an AK build.

Back in February, I wrote an article about Rob Ski’s unboxing video on the Century Arms RAS-47 stamped American-made AK rifle, as an example of the excellent unboxing videos Rob has been producing for the AK Operators Union. Of course, Rob intended to do more than just field-strip the Century rifle, and late last week he posted his review of the RAS-47 as it endured the AKOU “Kalashnikov test”:

Not being an AK guy, I was surprised to see that it is possible to have a real accidental discharge with an AK-47 (or any number of its variants). The root cause is the possible overtravel of the “full-auto” AK safety/selector when the cover is off, worn, or somehow folded in. MattV2099 breaks it down on his channel. 

I’ve written a lot about the AR-15 and M1 Garand rifles, and after a time I will have written nearly as much about the EM-2, M14, and FAL. One rifle, though, hasn’t been the subject of very much of my writing, in part because reliable historical information on it is difficult to acquire in the English-speaking world, and in part because my focus has so far been elsewhere.

The list of abuses that you can do to an AK just seems to never end. ( Mattv2099 goes into detail in that regard) But, Taofledermaus shows how you can get an AK running without its main recoil spring. Turns out all you need is a few rubber bands connected from the front sight tower to the charging handle.

Last week the AK Operators Union released a teaser video on the new Atlantic Firearms/Definitive Arms AKX-9 9mm blowback-operated rifle. Soon after we ran an article on it, two more videos went up; a new AKOU video and a MAC review, both embedded below:

Slide Fire is a Texas-based company that was started just a few short years ago by a USAF veteran, and in those years they’ve grown substantially. The company is known for their Slide Fire stocks, which are often referred to as bump fire stocks, but they go beyond simple bump fire. The way they’re made allows for significantly greater accuracy and control than with traditional bump fire, something I can attest to having used them myself. A great deal of time and effort went into these stocks, in fact, when Slide Fire was designed by founder Jeremiah Cottle it had to be approved for sale by the BATF. Cottle says the “honor, commitment, and perseverance” of the United States military is something he takes to heart and puts into his products, and in 2015 he has a new stock that promises to go beyond the success of previous models.