Category Archives: AK & Related Rifles

Used to discuss AK-47, AK-74, and related rifles

AK & Related Rifles, Gunsmithing

Added RS Regulate Mount and Vortex HS-T Scope to the Zastava M77

I installed the RS!Regulate AK-310 base and AKR top rail in preparation for the new beautiful Vortex HS-T 4-16x44mm scope the folks at Vortex helped me select.

The RS!Regulate system is genuinely impressive. By installing the bottom rail, you then have options about the front to back location of the AKR rail as well as left to right. If you wanted to, you could install a shim if you needed even more vertical adjustment on one end or the other to compensate for a poorly placed side mount on the rifle.

The only hangup installing the AR-310 base was a poorly formed rivet with a protruding portion of the head that the base was hanging up on. I ground that portion flush and then used Brownells’ Oxpho blue to touch it up. When steel is freshly ground, I apply the Oxpho cold bluing liquid with a Q-tip and the steel instantly turns black. I let it sit for about 30 seconds and then wipe it off and apply oil.

The AK-310 base slides on like any other ComBlock side mount but it has a very nice cam lever and an adjustable bolt on the bottom to get the cam lever nice and secure. Once I got rid of the protruding rivet, it slid right on and then I adjusted to bolt until it was nice and snug when I flipped the lever.

The AKR looks like a reverse picatinny rail on the bottom and interlocks with the rail top of the AK-310. I had to move the AKR all the way to the front to compensate for the M77’s rear mounted rail. The AKR is held to the AK-310 by 4 screws in grooves. The beauty of this is that you can really dial in the centering of the scope. I was able to get the AKR exactly centered over the M77. Now, once you have it located, they give you two staking pins to drill and install to permanently locate AKR. I have held off doing that I may need to move it around some but went ahead and applied blue Loc-tite on the screws.

With the rail centered and ready to go, I turned my attention to the HS-T scope from Vortex. This is one heck of a nice scope. I opted for the MilDot reticle and a 44mm objective to ensure I cleared the rear sight leaf. In hindsight, I could have gone with a 50mm objective as there was plenty of clearance.  I own a Vortex Sparc II red dot and liked it.  This is my first actual Vortex rifle scope and I am very impressed.

I used 30mm medium rings to mount the Vortex. They are extremely beefy tactical rings from UTG. You may laugh but I have had very good luck with their rings. The only shortcoming this time is that they were so long (from front to back) that I ate up some precious real estate for sliding the scope forward. It all worked out in the end but for awhile I wasn’t sure if I could get the eye relief right but I did.

There was some give and take as I moved the scope rings and the AKR around. The photo above shows the AKR sitting in the last groove.  I wound up actually having it overhang by one by the time it was all set.

So, the scope lines up beautifully with the 1″ cheek riser on my Ace skeleton stock. I have heard that the Vortex scopes have good optics but that is an understatement – you have to look through one to realize how good it is – very bright and clear. Couple that with arguably one of the best no questions asked warranties in the industry and now you know why I bought it. I did a ton of research before doing so as well.

Now, the Yugo M77 is complete. It has our traditional front handguard set plus our custom Bulgy ARM-9 grip that I really like.

Only one more thing to do now … find the time to take this hammer shooting with multiple brands and loads of good ammo to stretch its legs.

In the very near future, I will swap out the medium rings for a low offset AR mount so I can get the scope closer to the center of the bore plus move the scope just a bit more forward and that will be a post for another day.

One final comment, Ace Riflestocks emailed me the other day and their modular Zastava adapter is back in stock.  If you are looking for one, I would recommend checking them out as well as Desert Fox.

If you find this post useful, please share the link on Facebook, with your friends, etc. Your support is much appreciated and if you have any feedback, please email me at in**@ro*********.com. Please note that for links to other websites, I may be paid via an affiliate program such as Avantlink, Impact, Amazon and eBay.

AK & Related Rifles, Gunsmithing, Serbia

Converted a Base Zastava M77 .308 DMR

I purchased a base Zastava M77 rifle from Bud’s Guns and had the rifle sent to my good friend and FFL, Scott Igert over at http://www.migunexchange.com. To be imported, the rifle was pretty neutered with a thumbhole stock and a tacked on muzzle nut.  We then went to work – the result has our M70 traditional handguard set (the same handguard style is used on the M70 series, M76 and M77 rifles), one of our Bulgy ARM-9 custom grips (my favorite grip hands down right now), Tapco G2 FCG, US Phantom brake, a Desert Fox PK1025 adapter, and an Ace skeleton stock with a 1″ pad.

The original muzzle nut was tack welded on. I removed it with a Dremel and touched up with Oxypho Blue from Brownells.

The original gas tube cover did not use a handguard retainer spring/clip. My gas tube covers really need them to stabilize so I dug around in my parts bin and used one.

The Phantom brake is one I had handy and rather than bother with the detent pin, I used a crush washer.

The FCG retaining wire self destructed as I pulled it out (I hate those things) and replaced it with a plate.  [We have a new fire control retaining plate that is the proper dimensions for all AKM style fire control groups.]

The fixed stock was secured via a long wood screw that went though the integral Yugo grip nut. I was impressed that they did this without harming the 6mm threads in the nut. I just used one of our full length screws and away I went.

Our next post will show the RS Regulate mount and Vortex scope we bought for the rifle.

If you find this post useful, please share the link on Facebook, with your friends, etc. Your support is much appreciated and if you have any feedback, please email me at in**@ro*********.com. Please note that for links to other websites, I may be paid via an affiliate program such as Avantlink, Impact, Amazon and eBay.

AK & Related Rifles, Reference Books

Best AK Reference Book – AK-47: The Grim Reaper 2nd Edition

Folks ask me what is the best reference book to learn more about AK rifles and the variations that are made all over the world. The Grim Reaper Second Edition book by Frank Iannamico is, hands down, my number one recommendation and I say that based on owning somewhere over a dozen books on the AK rifle.

The first version of the book was very good and with the second he improved the guidance and increased the number of photos.  In it, he provides:

  • Development of assault rifles
  • Production facilities in the USSR/Russia
  • The Russian AK-47 – Production, Type 1, Type 2, AKM and AKS
  • The Russian AK-74 – including the base AK-74, AKS-74, AK-74N, AK-74M, AKS-74U
  • The AK-100 series and AN-4
  • Related Russian AK designs including the RPK
  • AKs produced in Warsaw Pact and other countires – the coverage by country is something I find very valuable
  • AKs in America
  • Accessories including magazines, bayonets, optics and more 

This is definitely a book you will want to add to your library.  I literally keep it on the right side of my desk for quick access when I need to look something up. 

The bad news is that the price of these books always go up. The first edition did and the second has as well. As of 2/19/2024, the second edition is going for around $364 in new condition and the first edition is going for around $330. Why? Simple – supply and demand. With both books they produced a limited number and then everyone wants a copy because they are that good.

There are some good alternatives but they do not have the sheer breadth and depth of coverage that the Iannamico books do:

There are plenty of other books including user manuals, technical manuals, buyer guides and how-to building books that I’m not listing. The above is really to give you historical information to better appreciate the design.

If you find this post useful, please share the link on Facebook, with your friends, etc. Your support is much appreciated and if you have any feedback, please email me at in**@ro*********.com. Please note that for links to other websites, I may be paid via an affiliate program such as Avantlink, Impact, Amazon and eBay.

AK & Related Rifles

How does Ronin’s Grips’ polymer handle high heat?

I  regularly get asked about how well our handguards will withstand heat and why we don’t have a heat sink.  I have class III SOTs building with my handguards and haven’t had complaints.  Some of them have told me that heatsinks are over rated and once they are hot then all bets are off.

The Yugo M85/M92 handguards we sell are made from molds cast from the originals, which are very thick and our traditional M70 handguards are the same way. You have to shoot a firearm quite a bit to heat the barrel up and then heat the special high-temp urethane and glass fiber composite all the way through before it will soften.  From a technical specification perspective, the manufacturer says the base urethane, without the glass fiber reinforcement we add, has a technical temperature deflection spec of 257F, meaning it will not deform until past 257F.

To test this, I took one of our black gas tube covers, a digital IR thermometer and the oven we use for curing plastic.

DSC_0880

At 70F, our cover was rigid and the East German cover could flex a bit.  I started the oven off at 200 degrees and kept checking every 15 minutes and the East German cover started to soften first. At 250F, the East German cover was very flexible and at 300F I could almost get it to touch its sides together.  Our’s was starting to bend some.

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By the time we reached 437F, the East German cover was melting like a stick of butter while our’s was very soft but did not melt.

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At 437F, notice how the plastic knife melted when I touched our gas tube cover – it couldn’t penetrate it:

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The cover was soft but it then hardened again as it cooled off.  I then sprayed the oxidized looking urethane with WD40 and it brought it back to more of its original color.

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Maybe the best answer I can give to folks asking how our handguards have held up – we’ve sold hundreds of the M85/M92 handguards and we haven’t had any complaints that they melted or did not hold up.   If you search on the Internet, I don’t think you will find any reports either.  But with that said, I do have to remind folks that all materials have a limit. If you start dumping drum after drum while bumpfiring or going full auto and the barrel is literally red hot, no handguard is going to survive that without being damaged or even destroyed.  That is the only reason we do not warrant our handguards against high-heat – we know there are limits and we know there are guys who will push past those limits.  For most people, our handguards will work just fine.  I use them myself and have never had a problem with my family and friends at the range doing target shooting.

If you find this post useful, please share the link on Facebook, with your friends, etc. Your support is much appreciated and if you have any feedback, please email me at in**@ro*********.com. Please note that for links to other websites, I may be paid via an affiliate program such as Avantlink, Impact, Amazon and eBay.

AK & Related Rifles, Gunsmithing, Shooting in General

What we believe in

Hello everyone,

I’ve had a few guys ask about how Ronin’s Grips started over four years ago. Basically, I needed a grip for a Yugo M70 and I couldn’t find one. It’s as simple as that. Some guys were talking about casting them and it dawned on me that I knew how to make them but just had to figure out the materials and best process that I could do in my small shop. Needless to say it has grown on me. I am deeply indebted to the guys on www.AKfiles.com for helping me get started and I sold grips on the Marketplace subforum for the first year or so before I started the website. It has been an amazing four years and I can honestly say that overwhelming majority of American gun owners are awesome people – smart, honest, want to help and so forth.

Once I realized that I actually had a business running – it kind of hit me one day that it was no longer a hobby -I knew that in order to compete that I had to stick in a niche where the big boys couldn’t play – that of specialized AK grips and furniture to help guys with 922r compliance. I understood the market, believed in the reliability of the rifles and just found the engineering around them fascinating in general.  With this said, our furniture for AK rifles serves as the core of our business.

As Ronin’s Grips grew, I realized that there were three key ingredients we needed to never lose sight of: to turn out the best products we can, always stand behind them and take care of customers. I know a lot of groups make comments like that but let me explain.

First, we make every product by hand for each order. We aren’t some big company with an injection molding machine cranking out thousands of identical parts per day. Instead, we mix the plastic, add the coloring and pour the liquid into the molds. We then drill, sand and polish all by hand. Nothing fancy – just plain good old fashioned hard American work and pride. It takes time and every product we produce is as unique as the guys that use them. In short, our products have “character”.

Second, we stand behind our products. It’s amazing to look back at the thousands of products we have made over the last four years to almost as many customers. Whenever there is a problem with a product, we strive to make it right. We really believe it is only right to stand behind what we make. We know guys are using our products with their families and their friends. We know they want to use them hard and hand them down. We try really hard to do things the right way and we are still learning about how to do things better.

Third, to us, the customer really matters – you really matter. We know that you work hard for your money and are proud of your firearms. We must earn and keep your trust and that only happens through delivering excellent customer service made up of honesty, respect and perseverance. We take to heart the old saying that one should treat others how they want to be treated. Mistakes happen but more than anything, I want you guys to know we will make things right – we will take care of you.

I would like to think the three beliefs I just listed are what make us different.  We are growing largely though word of mouth plus we have a ton of repeat customers.  To me, that must mean we are doing some things right but I also know we must continually try to improve and not sit on our laurels.

I hope this gives you a bit of insight about us – that there is a lot more than just products on a web page for sale — that we really believe in providing you with value.

From me and my family to all of you – thank you very much.

Sincerely,
George Spafford
Owner, Ronin’s Grips
www.roninsgrips.com