Build your own ak 47 pdf

Addicted to drugs? Mentally unstable? The guy in camo looks up and, to much laughter, says, "So it's all 'No,' right? We don eye protection and gloves, and soon the garage is abuzz with the whir of grinders, cutters, and drills. Sparks fly as receiver rails to guide the bolt mechanism are cut, welded into place, and heat-treated.

The front and rear trunnions, which will hold the barrel and stock, are attached to the receivers. Building an AK from parts requires no background checks or serial numbers.

Bryan Schatz Now I need a hand. A stout guy with caramel skin, tired eyes, jet-black hair, and a penchant for peppering his sentences with F-bombs assists me. He starts hammering the barrel into the front trunnion. That's why they're so popular. They began proliferating in the late '50s, when the Soviets permitted "fraternal countries" to manufacture Kalashnikovs at will. Soon they spread from one hot spot to another, their reputation for ruggedness and reliability growing along the way.

Now there are as many as 70 million in circulation. Both Hezbollah and Mozambique display them on their flags. Many kits come from stockpiles in former war zones. It's lined with grit and soot. He tells me some wooden stocks come with tally marks notched in them. We prep the metal components in a sandblaster and submerge them in a phosphoric acid solution to protect the steel from corrosion.

Finally, we grease and assemble them, semi-automatic firing controls included. Owning a gun that can shoot full auto, like these did in a past life, is effectively illegal under federal law.

Adding one would be a simple future modification. The next morning I do exactly that before tossing my AK in the trunk and heading to a gun store so busy I have to take a number. I pick up a barrel cleaner, a round magazine, and 40 bullets before driving out to Jawbone Canyon, federal land northeast of Los Angeles. I park on a bluff, walk to a spot where I can aim at a mountain of scrub brush and sand, and load five rounds.

I empty the magazine in seconds. I'm left wondering: Seeing how easy this is, are build parties monitored? Do hand-built weapons ever surface in crimes? Are the cops worried? But a cursory browse of online gun forums is enough to show that, well, clearly it does.

There seems to be one about every month. Plus, I just attended one less than an hour's drive from his office. I'm reminded of what one of the build party hosts said before I left: "Remember that thing I told you about why people do this: These builds can happen only because they aren't blown out to the public and law enforcement.

In most states, there are no records tracking such private sales. California residents have to go through a certified dealer to sell them legally. But since this AK is untraceable to begin with, who's to know how I choose to unload it?

Between you, me, and Johnny Law, here's what happened to my homemade AK. Back in my garage I use a grinding wheel to cut the receiver in half and the other components into pieces. I put the scraps back in the cardboard box the kit came in and leave it for the garbage truck.

Target Demographics Don't call it an assault weapon! So who owns them? Remove this section of ads by registering. Awesome post! After having a couple front upper handguard supports shift while soldering, I started to put a tiny tack weld on the underside to hold in place during silver-soldering. The red angles are magnetic and make light duty fixturing easy. A small crack from swaging the ribs expanded under heat. This may be weld-repairable. If the gap is too tight for the upper handguard wood, or the retainers are not parallel, you can true the surfaces carefully on the lathe.

Chamfer the back of the tube both on the surface that contacts the rear sight block and on the bottom sides to clear the sides of the rear sight block. Test fit. It is better to have the gas tube too tight than too loose. Lightly sand the inside of the tube to make sure it is round and will match the gas block. Slowly reduce the length of the tube until it will drop into place.

Camming the retainer lever down will push the tube forward slightly and tighten it. The lever is spring steel and forcing it into position may break it off. I have had poor results chemically stripping the upper handguards. They tend to warp and crack, so I recommend against it. Mark upper handguard as indicated and cut. They can be fragile, so a fine-tooth saw works better. Note the 60mm measurement if from the back shoulder, not from the end. I prefer the Japanese style saw because it cuts on the draw stroke rather than the push stroke.

Mark upper handguard and cut to size. Double check dimensions on your gas cylinder. There may be some adjustment to my dimensions based on how you soldered the upper handguard retainer to the gas tube.

Note the measurement is from the back shoulder and not the back end. I chose dimensions about 1mm long as it is easy to shorten during final assembly. I use a mill to rough out the shoulder. I chemically stripped the lower handguards. I used a table saw to cut off all the Romanian front pistol grips.

The cut is at a slight angle. Note that the underside of the handguard is NOT parallel to the top. Keep the angle on it or you will break through to the cleaning rod hole. Cut as marked. This is a few millimeters longer than the final length for a margin of safety — its always easier t make it shorter than to make it longer.

The lower handguard is more robust than the upper, I had no problem using a box saw. I prefer the more ridged blade than that found on a hack saw. Mark for final length and length of the front lower handguard support step. Mark for the reinforcement metal. This will pass through the existing cleaning rod hole. Drill hole for all-thread reinforcement. I use a Using two nuts on the all thread allows me to drive it using a power-drill or socket wrench.

Screwing the brass all-thread reinforcement into the laminated wood lower handguard. A simple fixture for shaping the lower handguard wood. Lower handguard mounted in shaping fixture showing masking tape wrapped to appropriate diameter.

Mounting fixture in a vise, shape the lower handguard with rasps, files, and sandpaper. Cut front lower handguard retaining profile using appropriate tools. A coping saw and file works well. Finished lower handguard, right side view.

I sanded to , bleached, neutralized in vinegar, and then applied 4 coats of Bullseye Amber Lacquer. The four front and one rear trigger guard rivets get the business. The fit of the trigger guard can affect the magazine release, so carefully test the parts with many different types of magazines. Some filing of the mag well is normal, but ours needed no attention. The rear trunnion is treated similarly as the front trunnion, except we have two long rivets instead of shorties.

Pappas suggests rounding over the end of the long rivets so they come out of mashing process with an aesthetically pleasing mushroom shape. Drop the bolt in, and check the ejector clearance. On an AKM, the ejector is just a protruding tang on the left bolt guide rail.

As the bolt retracts, the brass hits the tang and gets chucked. Childers leaves the rail tang long so it can be filed for a precise fit to the bolt. We were careful to take material off from back to front since we want as much ejector contact at the business end as we can get. Time for the barrel. We grease up the barrel, put it in the AK Builder barrel press and line things up.

A penny protects the crown from the ram as thousands of pounds of pressure force the barrel into the trunnion. As it gets close, we insert the feeler gauges we talked about earlier, taking the guesswork out of finding the stopping point. We pull the assembly, check the headspace, and drive the barrel pin in and, yep, check headspace again.

All good. The handguard and gas tube are installed and we head for the fire controls. Check the feel and, whoa, that ALG trigger is sweet. A lot lighter than we expected. We install the piston, bolt, and guide spring, snap on the cover, and run the bolt carrier, feeling for binding. We chase it with a Dremel and files down until the bolt travels smoothly … or as smoothly as we think it should. After six hours in the shop, we take the AKM to the range and run a few boxes of steel cased, 7. Not bad.

But, not done, either. As mean and hungry as the gun looks in the raw, it deserves a finish. Backus Cerakotes gun parts in the back of the upscale, indoor range. Bakus let us try our hand with Cerakote. We head out for lunch as Backus stays to load the coated parts into his oven; but not before covering up all our sins with his far more skilled hands, we surmise.

The AKM was mint. Spitting aces and looking sharp in its wood-toned commie uniform. Just the way Hughes likes it. We get it. Serendipity struck when it came to the sling; Blue Force Gear had just made a run of its limited-edition AK slings in wolf gray that matches the gray Cerakote. The only gripe we have with the whole build is with the Troy lower rail — installation was mildly challenging, and we found it loosened a bit even after applying blue Loctite to the jam bolts.