Tag Archives: AK

Our New Polish Beryl Gen 2 Grip Model

The karabinek szturmowy wzór 1996 Beryl rifle is manufactured by the Łucznik Arms Factory in Radom, Poland and is the successor to the Tantal.  The first versions of the rifle had a rather typical AKM style grip.

With the kbs wz. 1996C Beryl variant, an ergonomic grip appeared that looked very similar to what the Israelis developed for their Galil Ultra.

So, after doing some digging, I tracked down a brand new copy of that ergonomic grip and made our version.  Note, I am simply calling it the second generation or gen 2.  That’s my naming and not the Pole’s.

You can see this is like our other grips – it is cast as a solid block and then a hole is drilled for a grip screw.  It is sized to fit a normal 100mm long screw like you find with most AKM grips.  “US” is cast into the back.  If you look at the throat, this ought to fit most rifles but some final fitting/fine tuning may be needed.  I have not tried putting this on a Yugo with their unique grip nut strap.

The original has grooves on the back but we will need to sand there so these ridges/lines on the backstrap will not be there.  We will sand and blast the grip so it evens out with the surrounding surfaces.

Here is the grip mounted on a Romy G AKM.  No fitting was needed – it went right on.

I wear size XL gloves and the top where the web of my hand from the index to the thumb would sit is just a tad small for me.  The grooves and thumb shelf are very comfortable and could be used with either hand.  For me, I prefer the Russian AK-12 grip or the Bulgarian ARM-9 grip.  I’d recommend this for folks who wear Medium to Large to sized gloves.  If you wear XL or bigger, you may find this a tad small at the top but it is very doable.  I hope to build a Beryl later this year and still plan to use this grip for myself.  I also left it on the Romy for further testing.  I think folks will like this grip regardless of whether they are building a Polish rifle or one from another country.

Click here to go to our online store if you are interested in learning more and/or buying one.

Please note the opening photos of the Beryl rifle are from Wikipedia.  They have a nice basic introduction to the Beryl if you’d like to learn more. 



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The Custom Yugo M72 Carbine and Vepr FM-AK47-21 Meet

Okay, I had them both out to shoot photos so I had to take some side by side photos.  In case you want to read the blog posts about each rifle, click here for the Yugo M72 Carbine or here for the Vepr FM-AK47-21.



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Video: Building an AK-47 (AKM) with Definitive Arms by AK Operators Union, Local 47-74

          

Back in 2015, Rob Ski went to Definitive Arms to build an AK.  In this video, they really get into the details of building an AK and anyone regardless of experience level is bound to learn something.  You can watch in this 36:13 video as Rob builds his AK under the expert tutelage of the guys at Definitive Arms.

There are some great tips in here for riveting, getting the barrel blocks on square, etc.  Definitely worth your time.  After watching all these build videos, I really wish I had the time to build another.



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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.

 



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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.



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Video: Brownells’ Four Part Series on AK 47/74 Firearm Maintenance

  

Brownells has turned out a nice for video set regarding AK 47/74 Maintenance.  Here they are:

AK 47/74 Firearm Maintenance: Part 1 Disassembly

AK 47/74 Firearm Maintenance: Part 2 Cleaning

AK 47/74 Firearm Maintenance: Part 3 Lubrication

AK 47/74 Firearm Maintenance: Part 4 Reassembly



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Post It Note Trick for Locating Front Trunnion Holes On An AK Receiver

Back before I had the AK-Builder trunnion drilling jig, I needed a quick and easy way to locate where to drill the holes for the front trunnion.  A fellow showed me the PostIt note method and boy was it simple and it worked.

The front trunnion is drilled for the rivets from the first kit so those holes need to be located and drilled on the receiver.

Simply take a standard PostIt Note, stick it to the side of the clean receiver and then rub a dirty finger or pencil lead over the PostIt to see the outlines of the holes appear.  By the way, if the trunnion and receiver are clean, your Post-It adhesive will hold the note in place, which is what you want.

So line the PostIt note up on the receiver’s top and right edges.

Center punch the holes.  I like using an automated punch so I have less to juggle.

You then have your holes to locate your drill.

Use a hole finder to be more accurate and/or start with a small bit and work your way up in case you need to move a little bit one way or the other.

That’s it.  Easy as pie and pretty fool proof.  Lessons learned for me was to clean the parts to protect the adhesive, make sure the edges are aligned and then that nothing moves when you punch each hole.  You do one Post-It note for each side and you can write the trunnion serial number on it and safe the Post-It for future reference.



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Gasp – not another weld build Romy G

I get one or two emails a year from a purist telling me that what I did was evil, that I am a clueless half-wit, etc. Folks, innovation happens by trying new things. I have built more AKs than most – using rivets mainly because they do work best. There are a ton of reasons why rivets are best for joining forged blocks to sheet metal.

In terms of welds, do I understand the risk of destroying the heat treat in the locking lug area, the risk of causing embrittlement around the plug welds, that the Soviets explored this and dropped the idea due to cracking? Yes, I do and tried it anyway because I wanted to explore how to compensate. So, don’t send me hate mail me because I will not bother responding.

If you want to try and experiment, go for it. Should you do this with an AK build that you want to be historically accurate or plan to use heavily perhaps even under full auto, then the answer is “no – don’t do it”.

Yeah, these things were like $79-99 in June 2006 so I did a lot of playing around including experimenting with weld builds.  I still have this one and it runs just fine.  The welds were done with a HF 120 Volt MIG welder running an ArC02 shielding gas.  Basically I did plug welds in place of rivets but did some extra welding on the back trunnion as I expected more stress there.  The lower rails were installed with a 120 Volt Harbor Freight Spot Welder with an AK-Builder tong installed.

My basic conclusion is that welding is fine for casual use rifles but rivets are the way to go with hard use.  The tricks are to take your time, do plug welds and watch your heat.  Your not trying to weld the heck out everything – just to get a decent plug weld to lock the parts into position in place of a rivet.  You’ll notice that for the critical front trunnion, I actually drilled the holes in the receiver and plug welded into the trunnion that had the rivets drilled out.

I use a flap sanding wheel on my angle die grinder to smooth everything down.

A drill bit with the right diameter to line the lower rails up with the front trunnion is used to position the lower rail for spot welding in place.

I went for overkill welding in the rear and put in a few extra beads to take up stress.

Welding in the center support and sanded it down too

This is the rifle ready for testing.

I did Duracoat on this build and two big recommendations I would make to folks who choose to use the air dry Duracoat are to at least abrasive blast the surface and absolutely wait the full amount of time indicated for curing, which is 1-2 weeks or something like that.  If you don’t do these two things, when you move the selector lever, it will scratch the finish off right to the bare metal.  I only use bake on finishes now.  I’ve had great luck with blasting, parking and then applying Molyresin on top but this last step could be whatever finish you want.  The parkerizing is a terrific surface for a finish to really grab a hold of.  A bake on finish is really the way to go with the top coat.

If I new they were going to go up so much in value, I would have done rivets.  Heck, I would have done all the rifles using rivets had I known.  I was just having a lot of fun and learning a ton.



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