The arsenal grows!

[Uncle Giggles]

Picked myself up a new toy Saturday with some leftover cash from my trip to Florida last week. My latest and greatest weapon

Yugoslavian AK-47 (Century Arms) - underfolding stock, black furniture, 7.62x39mm, 30-round magazine, upper mount thingy for grenade launcher (according to the gun store), stamped receiver.



Tell you what, this thing's got quite a bit more wallop than my AR. I put 100 rounds of Remington FMJ's through it without a hiccup, and had great success (70-80%) hitting clay pigeons at 25-30 yards standing position once I got used to how it was sighted. It appears that at the range I was shooting at, it hits slightly low and right from a table rest, but at 10-15 yards that really doesn't matter at all. I shot maybe 5 rounds with the stock folded in, and it was very strange and difficult to aim, but then again I'm not surprised, it's probably an extremely close-range technique. Overall, it's a great investment. Everybody needs at least one!

And here's a picture of the whole family just for good measure



Top to bottom - Bushmasher AR-15 A3 Flattop Carbine, Century Arms Yugo AK-47, Springfield XD-45 Tactical.

[DanTheEldest]

Very cool. I already had my eye on that same AK over at Aim Surplus--good to hear nice things about them. Fit and finish look good? Any malfunctions?

[einheit 13]

If you want to cut down on the felt recoil and make it even easier to shoot, I highly recommend an AK-74 style brake...you'll be amazed at what it does for 'rapid fire' stability. That is a grenade launching sight...if I remember right, left side numbers are for launching 'light weight' grenades, right side is for the heavies.......same with the SKSs, I might have it backwards though...

[petey1]

I also had my eye on the Aim Surplus Yugos.......but alas, I'm in New York....so no underfolder. If I could find the same Yugo with a fixed stock, I'd snap one up. Nice rifle

[Uncle Giggles]

Originally Posted by DanTheEldest

Very cool. I already had my eye on that same AK over at Aim Surplus--good to hear nice things about them. Fit and finish look good? Any malfunctions?

I give the Fit an 'A', and the Finish I give only a 'C', unfortunately.

The finish on the rifle itself is good at first, but mainly certain areas like where the safety selector tab drags on the side of the rifle and around the mouth of the magazine well get scraped quite easily after few uses and the scrapes don't just rub off or buff out when you clean the rifle, unlike the way minor scratches on our XD's sometimes rub right out. The upper area of the factory supplied magazines also scratch like crazy. Overall, the finish on metallic components is weaker than I expected (not that I expected an inexpensive AK's finish to be superb anyway), but it's not like it's hard or too expensive to refinish a rifle or even send it out to a professional to have it refinished. The finish on the furniture is just fine though, no better but no worse than you'd expect.

When it comes to finish, it depends on your point of view, I suppose. When I see a weapon that has signs of wear and moderate use (even more expensive weapons like those sweet little $2,000 Weatherby or Browning rifles), I look at that as "personality". A brand new flawless-looking rifle is nice and everything, but it doesn't command the same respect and admiration that a rifle that has obviously been used, put through its paces, and proven itself worthy of not being sold to a sleazy pawn shop does. So unless I ended up really hating the finish, I might not have it redone until it gets really bad. Should be plenty of good years ahead of this rifle until it gets to that point.

The fit is actually quite nice. Very little unnecessary "slop" in anything. The underfolding stock has minimal play when extended or collapsed and the trigger has a long but very light and consistent pull and I can barely feel the "break", which might not be a good thing because that means that the break tends to sneak up on you. On a better note, I didn't feel any of the notorious "trigger slap" upon firing. The action was a little rough and notchy at first, though. With the hammer in the un-cocked position, the action was rough to cycle during the phase where it cocked the hammer, but after only 100 rounds that has completely cleared up and now the action cycles as smooth as glass cocked or un-cocked. After a thorough cleaning and a generous application of oil, the motion of the action is nearly perfect.

And as you asked, there have been Zero malfunctions of any kind. Just a little rough around the edges I'd say, but that will improve with time and use. After enough use I expect it will still be flawless. No FTF/FTE, nothing, and very accurate as well.

For a relatively inexpensive semi-auto rifle compared to AR's, it does everything I hoped it would do and more. I'll run several hundred defense rounds through it and as long as there are no glitches, I'll be happy to consider it my main defense rifle.

[Uncle Giggles]

I thought of another very minor complaint I had about this rifle. I'm sure it's not the same case with a fixed stock, but this skeletonized collapsible stock is hard to develop a good cheek weld without practice and sometimes tends to "bite" or "pull" your cheek when you fire. Not a big deal at all, and I'm actually already used to it and have learned to overcome it, but it may be a negative point to anyone who's used to a fixed stock. In the end, I think you can still do just as well with this collapsible stock as you can with a standard stock as long as you are patient enough to re-learn how to "hug" this rifle. As I already said, I've had great success on the first time shooting this rifle shooting clay pigeons at 25-30yds standing, so it can't be that bad.

[Uncle Giggles]

One more thing I noticed on my first outing with thew AK: This weekend I shot both my Bushy AR carbine and also my new AK for the first time, and I noticed something very entertaining. Since the targets I shot at were clays, my AR-15 had a tendency to just punch a little .223 caliber holes in the clays 50% of the time instead of breaking them, whereas the AK with heavy-a$$ 7.62mm bullets would annihilate the clays altogether. It was funny because my father and uncle were watching as my AK destroyed each clay I hit, whereas my AR only knocked off half of each clay I hit and then took my XD-45 Tactical and finished off the remaining half of each clay at 15 yards with 80-90% hits at half of the firing rate of the rifles. That actually shocked the Hell out of me, because at that point I realized that I was MUCH more accurate with my pistol than I was with either of my rifles, and that made me really want to get more practice with my rifles. Is that strange or what?

[Uncle Giggles]

Originally Posted by petey1

I also had my eye on the Aim Surplus Yugos.......but alas, I'm in New York....so no underfolder. If I could find the same Yugo with a fixed stock, I'd snap one up. Nice rifle

Absolutely! It's unfortunate that you can't get an underfolder, but no worries, I'm sure the standard stock is more than enough to satisfy you. After my initial experience with this rifle, I see myself owning more than one AK, and the next will likely be a fixed stock with wood furniture. I'm sure you'll love whichever AK you end up getting.

[Uncle Giggles]

Originally Posted by einheit 13

If you want to cut down on the felt recoil and make it even easier to shoot, I highly recommend an AK-74 style brake...you'll be amazed at what it does for 'rapid fire' stability.

I'll research that and maybe give it a try. Thanks.

[ArmyGuy45]

dont take this the wrong way.. but comp tac.. doesnt make sense