I wanted to share my experience building my own AK-47 at the Rifle Dynamics AK Build Class on Oct 16-18, 2015.  Rifle Dynamics is one of the top custom AK builders in the country, and for the past few years they have been offering an AK Build Class on the side.  Most of their AK Build Classes are at their shop in Las Vegas, but for the first time they partnered with a gun club in Texas, so I jumped at the chance.  So I made my way down to the Arena Gun Club in Laredo to build my very own AK-47.

When I arrived, I was handed a bag of parts, containing a Polish AK parts kit, a Green Mountain nitride barrel, a Morrissey stamped receiver (Morrissey makes NoDak Spud receivers), an ALG trigger, and various other small parts.  To meet U.S. law (922r compliance), you need 6 U.S. parts on an AK-47 of this type (stamped receiver), and for this build my 6 U.S. parts were the receiver, barrel, trigger group (counts as 3 parts towards 922r compliance), and slant muzzle device.  Rifle Dynamics stripped and parkerized the parts, so they had a good finish on them when I received them.  The Polish AK parts kit came from a 1969 Polish AK-47 that was de-milled and sold to a U.S. importer.  Poland made some of the best AK-47 rifles, and it's pretty cool making a new AK-47 out of some historical communist parts that are almost 50 years old.

During the first two days of class, we completely assembled the rifle.  First, we riveted the trigger guard, front trunnion, and rear trunnion to the receiver, using a 12-ton hydraulic press.  We then pressed the barrel into the front trunnion using the hydraulic press, followed by pressing the barrel pin into the front trunnion.  Then we assembled the bolt and the recoil spring assembly.  Next, we installed the trigger group and safety into the receiver.  Lastly, we installed the furniture on the rifle (stock, handguard, and pistol grip).  At the end of the second day, we had a fully assembled rifle ready for testing.

On the morning of the third day, we all lined up to break-in our rifles with a 30-round mag dump (pulling the trigger as fast as possible), to look for any problems that needed to be addressed.  It sounded like a war zone.  Unfortunately, I only got one round downrange, and that was it.  I had built a single-shot AK-47!  Turns out that this was due to the barrel assembly I received in my bag of parts.  Before the AK Build Class started, Rifle Dynamics installed (drilled/aligned/pinned) the front and rear sight blocks, and the gas block, on the barrel.  This assembly was done ahead of time, because it would have otherwise added another couple of days to the AK Build Class, due to the complexity of this drilling and alignment process.  Unfortunately, they accidentally misaligned the gas block with the barrel, which wasn't allowing enough gas through the system to cycle the action.  We didn't have the right equipment to fix this problem in Laredo, so Rifle Dynamics had to take my rifle back to Las Vegas with them to fix.

Since they had to take my rifle back with them, I decided to get some Rifle Dynamics upgrades while they had it in their shop.  You get a pretty fat discount on any Rifle Dynamics work that they do on a rifle that is built in one of their Build Classes.  So I got their Rifle Dynamics Custom Front End, which includes shortening the barrel and pinning/welding a PWS FSC 47 muzzle device to bring it to 16", as well as their Bolton combination front sight base/gas block, which I got pinned in place.  This made the rifle lighter and moved the center of gravity rearwards.  I also got an UltiMAK scope rail, Krebs safety, Magpul furniture, and a Grey Moly Finish, which is similar to CeraKote.  

For my optic, I installed a Leatherwood/Hi-Lux Micro-Max B-Dot on the UltiMAK scope rail.  I read about this red dot on The Firearm Blog, and I really like it.  I also have a couple of Aimpoints, but I decided to go with this red dot because of where the controls are located.  On an Aimpoint Micro, the controls for adjusting the dot brightness are on the right side of the optic, and since the optic is so far forward on the AK, you can't adjust the optic while you're holding it in a firing position, like you can on an AR with the optic more rearward.  On this Leatherwood/Hi-Lux red dot, the controls are on the top, so in a firing position I'm able to use my left hands and reach the controls to adjust the dot brightness.  I've got the rifle so hot, that this Leatherwood/Hi-Lux red dot was too hot to touch, but it still worked just fine, so I've been very happy with it.  Here's the article that introduced me to this optic: http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2015/04/21/hi-lux-optics-micromax-b-dot-mini-red-dot-sight/

In addition to building a rifle, we were also able to spend a lot of time talking with the crew from Rifle Dynamics, and absorbing all of their years of experience.  Jim Fuller is a legend in the AK world, and he is a really cool guy to meet and work with.  Rifle Dynamics brought several AK variants from multiple countries, and we had some hands-on history lessons with the different types of AK rifles and AK magazines.  I also had the opportunity to shoot my first fully-automatic rifle, which was pretty awesome.

All in all, I couldn't be happier about my experience with Rifle Dynamics and the AK Build Class.  It was truly one of those unique experiences that I'll always remember.  After the Rifle Dynamics custom work they they did, my AK now weighs right at 7 pounds.  I've put about 1500 rounds through it since I've received it back from Rifle Dynamics, and I haven't had any failures of any kind.  It's a pretty accurate shooter for an AK, and I love shooting it.  I'm an AR guy, but this AK is the favorite rifle that I own.  If you ever get a chance to do a Rifle Dynamics Build Class, you won't regret it.  It is definitely pricey, but a lot of that cost goes into the highly unique 3-day experience that you get.

Thanks for the write up.

nice write up. Just out of curiosity, what does a class like this cost to do? Ball park is fine.

Nice stick!

The AK build class was $2100 when I took it.  That included all the parts for the AK, plus the class.