Video: Chinese Type 56 AK-57 (Shooting and History) by Forgotten Weapons

 

This is a cool review of an actual North Vietnamese Army (NVA) Chinese Type 56 AK.  It was a captured rifle and brought back to the US.  Ian of Forgotten Weapons does one of his usual exemplary reviews of the rifle and discusses its history.

 


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.



Blazer GB2001 micro torches are very handy

I work a lot with plastics, paracord and webbing.  Thus, I need to melt ends, heat small tools/probes to poke holes and what have you.  I use lighters for a while but the problem was they didn’t generate very much heat. They were good for searing the end of a paracord but not quickly. Sometimes they quit it heat tools up enough to poke clean holes in webbing.

As usual I did some digging around and came across the Blazer torch as you see in the above photo. This thing is fantastic. I have used it for probably at least two years with no trouble. I bought this in 2014 and after hundreds if not thousands of clicks, the little piezoelectric spark unit is still working just fine – as is everything else.  It’s just plain reliable.

It is refilled vs standard butane cartridges. You can save a bundle by buying packages of them off of Amazon versus from the local drug store, grocery store or whatever. Surprisingly the torch does not use a ton of butane fuel at a time. I think it is because the jet is actually fairly small. You can adjust the intensity and the air:fuel ratio depending on what you’re working on. I bought a six-pack of the few will you see in the photo and I think I have only gone through one and a half cans in a couple of years.

The rubber base is removable if you don’t need it and in the next photo you can see a clear picture of the butane fill port.

So if you are looking for a very portable small torch this Blazer has worked great for me and I recommend it so I am listing it below for your reference.

Update:  7/23/2018:  It still works great.  No problems to report and am still using it regularly for rope and nylon.

Update 11/28/19:  The seals went out last month and it will no longer store butane for more than a day or two.  Based on reviews on Amazon, I am going to try out a Bernz-O-Matic ST2200T and see how it lasts.  I bought the Blazer on 11/29/14 so it almost made it four years,


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.



Video: I Have This Old Gun – Chinese Type 56 (AKM) Rifle

The NRA did a nice American Rifleman TV segment on the Chinese Type 56.   It’s only 5:37 long and worth your time.


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.



I miss the Romy G AKM Kits – They were a great learning experience, reliable and fun to shoot

You know folks, I miss the old Romanian Garda kits.  I literally built about a dozen of them trying different variations on rivets, screws, welding and so forth.  You could get them from $79-119 with the barrel and sometimes even a Tapco G2 fire control group (FCG) included.  Copes, Centerfire, DPH and others had pallets of them.  My wife would give me the eye any time a box showed up from one of them 🙂

That was the good times and then thanks to yet another ridiculous ATF ruling, the kits with barrels were forbidden for import, the well dried up and prices rose.  I actually cut most of the completed rifles up and sold them for parts when kit prices went in the $300+ range.  I sure had a ton of fun with friends and family at the range.  What I personally enjoyed most was making them.  Boy, I made a ton of mistakes along the way but learned too and also learned to respect a lot of concepts that Kalashnikov and his designers put into the rifles including pushing for reliability, simplicity, and so forth.

At any rate, I was going through some photos from January 2013 and thought I would share a few pictures of guns that ran like tops.  These two rifles work great and I learned a ton making them.  The finishes are shades of Minwax stain with hand rubbed urethane stain on top.  I eventually moved to boiled linseed oil but that was long after I built these.  I always liked seing how the stain would take to the wood.  This is also before I started making grips – the wood one is from Ironwood and I don’t recall who made the plastic one.  The finish would have been air dried Duracoat on these.


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.



Video: How to Lubricate Your AKM (AK47) and AK74 Rifles – AK Operators Union 47-74

  

In this video, Rob Ski, of AK Operators Union, does a great job explaining how to lubricate your AK.  Rob is the real deal having grown up around AKs and having also served in the US military.  Be sure to Like him on Facebook.  He’s always posting news and information.


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.



How to cut the folding stock weld on a Vepr IV

Back in 2014 I bought one of the 5.56 Vepr IV RPKs.  Boy was it nice but it had a folding stock that was spot welded.  I installed a Tapco G2 FCG, the appropriate muzzle device and one of my Molot Gen 2 grips and then US mags.  I’d planned to replace the gas piston but wound up selling the rifle to fund other projects.  I did, however, snap some photos.

The rifles were amazingly allowed into the US and were gorgeous but I could not abide by the tack welded open stock or funky US grip.  First, I removed the butt stock to get it out of the way and protect it.  I then used my cordless Dremel with a cut off wheel to slice the tack weld enough to pull it open and then sanded the edges smooth.

 

I then applied Brownells’ Oxpho Blue to the fresh bare steel to blacken it.  The end result – you’d never know the tack was there.

 

To the left is the grip that IO put on the rifle when they imported it.  To the right is my Molot Gen 2 grip and it is in subsequent photos also.  We make each grip by hand here in Michigan so they count as a 922r compliance part.

Like so many of my firearms, it sat in the safe for a year or two and I never hard time to fire it.  Eventually, I decided to sell it to fund other projects.

7/20/19 Update:  This rifle is #1 on my list of “I wish I never sold it”  They are worth a fortune now.


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.



Video: Two Computer Graphic Videos of AH-94 Nikonov Operation

Here are two videos that use computer graphics to demonstrate the operation of the Russian AK-94 5.45mm rifle.0

Here’s the first video that gives more overall information (in Russian though):

Here’s the second video that gives a very clear view of loading:



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.



When Strength and Quality Matter Most