#Ak

The number of accessory mounting options for AK owners continues to grow; UTG has announced new 13″ AK handguards compatible with Vltor’s KeyMod rail/accessory mounting system. From the press release:

Atlantic Firearms and Definitive Arms have partnered to create a US-made 9mm AK rifle for the US civilian market. In January, a video was uploaded to YouTube showing testing of the rifle, and its bolt-hold-open feature:

Taofledermaus, master of unconventional (and some would argue unsafe) ad-hoc gun modifications has taken the Kalashnikov hobby to a new level.

UTG/Leapers announced they are now selling an AR-style stock with adapter for stamped AK-style rifles. The kit includes an aluminum extension tube with a permanently attached stamped AK receiver adapter. The adjustable stock has six different length adjustments.

The Sturmgewehr is a rifle that will never lose it’s place in history; it is one of the single most influential weapons of the 20th Century. It is not the first of its kind, however, and we at TFB have previously taken a look at some of the rifle’s predecessors that it has since overshadowed. Larry Vickers has come at it from the other end; he and his signature StG-44 have been the subject of three shooting videos so far, each one well worth watching:

I doubt that any of my readers have never seen a film in which a suitably menacing-looking Kalashnikov rifle was used this way: With the sling over the shoulder, stock folded, pointing from the hip:

Brandon ( @visceral_malice) send us a photo of his folder collection …

After sending his MK 47 Mutant back to the manufacturer following its failure in a previous 1,000 round shooting session, Mrgunsngear has gotten the rifle back from CMMG, with a new locking compound applied to the gas block. Naturally, it’s time for another 1,000 round test, to see how the new setup holds up:

Heizer Defense have announced that their PAK1 “Pocket AK” will debut at the NRA Show. Pricing has not been annoucned, but I think it will probably have the same $450 MRSP as the Pocket AR (.223) model (pictured above). What I can say for sure, is that this no doubt will be another hand-held firecracker!

Brian, a photographer and graphic artist, sent us this nifty photo of his AK47 Yugo Zastava N-PAP. He is using a Midwest Industries optics mount with a Vortex Strikefire scope. Thanks Brian.

The AN-94 was developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s to replace the AK-74M. Like all contenders for Russia’s next-generation assault rifle it has faded into obscurity. It features a novel delayed recoil mechanism called “blowback shifted pulse.”. I have never read a satisfactory explanation of how the “blowback shifted pulse” works, but from what I understand the entire barrel action moves inside the stock and somehow a pulley system is employed during recoil. In the photo you can see the barreled action and pulley.

Short Barrel Shepard was informed of a new ATF opinion letter making the rounds, this time focusing on installing a tube to facilitate the attachment of arm braces. The questions and their answers are found in detail, with the ATF basically holding that the installation of a tube itself is indicative of a manufactured firearm, but one with the arm brace is legal.

The constant bugbear in Soviet small arms engineers’ sides after 1950 was the poor performance of the AK rifle in fully automatic. The rifle was for decades very inaccurate in fully automatic fire, owing to its vigorous action and relatively (when compared to pistol rounds) powerful round. A wide variety of approaches were taken to try to mitigate the dispersion in the automatic firing mode, and a Russian blog post covering some of the earliest experiments has been translated by Ensign Expendable of the Soviet Gun Archives blog:

In preparation for an upcoming article about “light rifle” development (i.e., full power automatic infantry rifles), I have been reading the excellent Collector Grade Publication three-part volume on the FN FAL rifle. In it is contained the transcript of the 1950 Light Rifle trials, which pitted the American T25 design (a rifle that was at once a hybrid of the M1 Garand and BAR, but at the same time much more than that) by Earle Harvey, the Anglo-Polish EM-2 design by Stefan Janson, and the Anglo-Belgian FN FAL design – by none other than Dieudonné Saive, John M. Browning’s Belgian protégé – against the Second World War veteran the M1 Garand. The tests were comprehensive, but not all included the “control” rifle – the M1. Why this was so is not clear to me. In the rain tests, the M1 beat the EM-2 and was not so far behind the FAL and T25, and in the cold tests the M1 was a clear winner, functioning flawlessly (this would be echoed later when the T44E2 would beat the FAL in trials in Alaska, preventing its cancellation and eventually leading to the adoption of its descendant, the T44E4 as the M14, in 1957).

… and a few AR-15s and one M1A thrown in for good measure. Torey wrote …