Not trying to direct off the site, just trying to share and too tired to repost. (I'll cross post later) http://minionreport.net/forum/showthread.php?p=100247#post100247 ...I need sleep
Leaving shortly, But I'll cut and paste the test: A buddy and I will be building an Ak from a Parts kit over the rest of the weekend. What we did today: Took the handguards off the rifle and field striped the gun. (Torch cut reciever) We Ground off the Rivets on BOTH sides of the rear trunion (It doesn't matter if you nick the metal, all it is is part of the old reciever. Once you do this, take some pliers and bend the old reciever flatish. The trunion will 'pop' off/ out of the old reciever and the stock will come out freely. You need the trigger guard, so reverse the U of the old rear reciever piece and grind down the rivet (From the inside) holding the trigger guard to the bit of the reciever. The trigger guard will fall off. You will be left with a piece of the torch cut reciever attached to the forward part of the trigger guard (Attached to the mag release) From the top grind down the rivets untill you can barely see them against the metal. Then just stick pliers under the metal and lift it off. -There Will be another u shaped piece of metal atop the mag release. YOU NEED THIS, don't take it off. We also ground down the rivets on the forward part of the cut reciever. -We'll take it off tomorrow. I have both a $15 flat from tapco and a No Dac Spud ND-1 complete reciever, and my buddy has a Flat. We'll see what happens. (I have pics, but will put them up later.) I showed up with: 1: Complete reciever 2: Flats 2: Kits, rivets, and compliance parts 1: spair kit. One of the Flats and complete kits/compliance parts was for a guy who didn't make it. So I bent my flat, and dremeled it to fit, and when it became clear he was a no show bent the 2nd and partially readied it (I'll just build 2 AK's this weekend.) It is VERY easy to make the reciever from a Tapco flat (DO NOT BUY IT ELSEWHERE as Copes... have 2nds which are slightly out of spec...) Get the flat with the trunion holes AND bent rails. Today we: Took the barrels off the front trunion, Drilled the old rivets out the front trunion and the rear trunion. Bent the flats (Out of 6 people one guy had a 100% reciever other than me, and I didn't use mine other then for comparason.) Rivited the trigger guard to the reciever, and filed the mag catch to fit and accept mags. Fited the front and rear trunion to the reciever, Rivited everything Spot welded the internal rails to the reciever Pressed the barrel into the front trunion/reciever, and pinned it. Tomorrow we will heat treat, blue them, and do final assembly as well as catching my 2nd AK up to speed and completing it. Then we will test fire. -Mainly the info is in pictoral form. I have 137 pics from the last day and a half. And since I suck at computers and can't resize... I can't post them here...
If you have MS Office Picture Manager, pictures are easy to resize, go to picture / resize and pick the size you want. What type of kit are you building?
Hell, I should have sent my Yugo kit to you, would have been quicker than the three months I am into it for now.
I've built several rifles from kits but have never taken on an AK, not yet anyway. If I come across a good deal on a kit, I want to give it a shot. I have a complete machine shop at my disposal. My personal shop has a small mill and lathe, a drill press, welding machine, metal brake, spot welder. I have rivet tools, barrel vises, grinders, die grinders, and pretty much everything else that I have needed to assemble rifles from kits. I was reading some of Magnus's old threads about builds and looking on weaponeer.net and some of the other build forums. I don't think it would be too much challenge to put a pretty nice one together. What would be the best kit to be on the look-out for?
Magnus pushed Romies, but indicated that Yugos were a bit better. I have not finished my Romi, even after all this time, have been stymied pressing out the barrel. After that, it should be a piece of cake doing a screw build. The custom rivet tool seems a bit much for a single piece.
We (Same group of guys) are talking about building CETME's. A good Romanian kit does the job for me. As to pressing out the barrel: Go to the link I provided and I posted directions and pics.
I would like to see how this was accomplished, as we had a lot of difficulty with ours during the build. I am just too lazy to register. Ultimately, we had to use a air hammer to knock the extremely tight pins loose, then we were able to push them out with a 10 ton press. It was a BIOTCH!
Ours came out easy, but I'm sorry I am too much of a computer moron to resize them. (I'm a mod there and knowing my ignorance the owner gave me a larger alotment.)
Yep, mine will cost about $200 more than a Century built rifle, but then again, I won't have a Century built rifle either!
I ordered a bunch of ammo from Century. I still haven't found a good kit to build from. Will I need any special tools? I have all the tools and gadgets for building FNs and pretty much a complete machine shop in miniature. I found some blue-prints for receivers and am thinking about milling a solid steel one. We have a CNC here in the shop.
