Video: Forgotten Weapons Reviews Soviet AK Magazines

In this short video, Ian gives a brief overview of Soviet magazines – notably the slab side, ribbed, waffle and bakelite. As always, Ian does a great job and this is worth a watch!

The first generation was a heavily built (over-built) magazine known as the “slab side”.

After the slab side, they developed the ribbed magazine that was copied by many countries.

To reduce weight they developed the aluminum waffle magazines- so named due to all the reinforcement ribs. It was relatively short-lived because it was not durable enough.

After the waffle mag, they moved to the Bakelite magazine that actually was a glass reinforced polymer. This gave them what they wanted – light weight and durability.

When the AK-74 was developed, they went straight to polymer and never developed steel mags. Note, other countries did build steel AK-74 magazines but the Soviets did not.

The Video

I hope you found that video useful. Ian is a wealth of information and you can learn more about his work at Forgotten Weapons.

Please note that all images were extracted from the video and are the property of their respective owner.

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