New RPD owner here. I picked up an original 1959 Radom from Poland.

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Who has the best prices on belts/drums?
Do you guys prefer the SAW pouch/adapter?

What about optics? I see DSA's railed handguards, but expensive. Is heat a problem there?

I see some guys mentioning spare feed covers to mount an optics rail on, buy haven't seen anyone's pics of a completed project. Is that a viable option?

What about the receiver-mounted side rails? Where could I get a picatinny rail for them? Mine doesn't have a side rail currently.

And finally... barrels...
Does DSA still offer their ~14.5" fluted barrel? Is this a good barrel? Chrome-lined?

What kind of firing schedule can my Polish barrel handle? I've heard the wood handguards tend to char at 150 sustained. If they aren't present, how much is bad for the barrel?

Same question for the fluted DSA barrel?

Thanks in advance for any thoughts you can offer.

eBay is the best place I’ve seen outside of the creek for belts, a friend of mine is working on a modified belt loader for them.

If yours is an original post sample I would leave the barrel alone, they are timed and threaded from the factory... the dsa barrels are pressed in.

Besides a tripod adapter I’d leave it factory, if you want a more modern gun pick up a Pkm, M249 or m240.

Take it easy on the barrel, a long time ago Vector gave me a sample to abuse when they were going to make their semis.  The handguards were the first to go but we destroyed the barrel that trip. This was also a posty and we went belt after belt and had a blast. The barrel was the only piece to fail and Rex swapped it out for me.

On my current one we run a couple belts and let it cool down, without a good belt loader and real tripod it doesn’t get run hard.

Being a fixed barrel it is by far it’s weakist leak, I honestly don’t know if I’d have swapped any broken parts out of the half dozen I’ve owned over the years. Enjoy it, it’s a fun smooth gun.

It sure is! I fired it for the first time yesterday. I got 5 drum/belt sets from DSA, but 3 of them have problems with links and/or wire being malformed. I'm sure that having wire protrude into the cartridge holder portion of the link is bad, so I plan to call DSA tomorrow and see what they can do about it.

I could probably fix the wire with pliers, but I don't know if the links can be bent back into shape.

The gun ran great with the 2 belts that passed inspection.

I went ahead and ordered the DSA quad rail for it, since they were offering 10% off for SHOT.

DSA doesn't offer the 14.5" barrel right now, and you're correct that they're pressed and won't fit my gun anyway. I have a second kit barrel which is also from 1959. Maybe I'm really lucky and it would index and headspace correctly on this receiver. If so, I might try to replicate DSA's 14.5" fluted look. I want to leave the original barrel unaltered.

Thanks for the info. I just checked eBay and didn't find any belts. I'm wondering now if maybe I should've ordered from RTG Parts, which was $10 higher per belt/drum combo (pre-discount). I'd like to find some of the Chinese 25-round belts, since I've read a US SAW pouch only holds 75 RPD rounds.

I would like to find belts period!  I have drums that didn't come with belts from years ago.

I Googled real hard, and couldn't locate any source for solely belts. The online vendors only offer 100 rd (2x 50rd) combos with the drum.

Here they are:
http://www.e-sarcoinc.com/polishrpdkit.aspx
https://www.dsarms.com/p-12021-rpd-100-round-belt-drum-combination-surplus-good.aspx
https://whatacountry.com/polish-rpd-drum-with-100-round-belt.aspx
https://www.apexgunparts.com/rpd-drum-w-100rd-belt-very-good.html
https://www.gunpartscorp.com/products/223310
http://militarygunsupply.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=1000
https://www.centerfiresystems.com/p-3667-rpd-100rd-drum-and-belt-762x39.aspx

DSA is taking real good care of me. I called and told them about my problem, and Ben told me they're sending 3 replacement drum kits with a prepaid UPS label. They don't exchange just the belts, but they're shipping the new sets immediately. Within minutes I had an RMA exchange confirmation email.

THe Saw nutsacks are nice for compact 50 round goodness that don't go clank clank clank when carrying around.
But, if you own other beltfeds, you feel like a retard when you go to the range with your rpd, load up a nutsack and realize its a 223 nutsack......
Anyone successfully suppress these?

The best prices on belts/ drums consistently are from numrich, but if you watch and are patient you can pick up killer deals on gunbroker or ebay occasionally.  A few months ago I picked up a bunch of belts at $13 each on gb.

I do prefer the Saw pouches, but you can't use the 200rd saw pouches due to height if you're running a chopped bipod.

For optics the best is the factory polish swing away mount. They are very hard to get and kind of a pain to mount. I run a posp scope from kalinka but it has to have an ak mount, the svd mount is too low to clear the top cover.

You can't really put a optics rail on the top cover unless you mount it with screws and then the feed components get in the way. The top covers are stamped and when you weld them the tension of the stamping causes them to deform and they don't feed right afterward and are almost impossible to get to latch. (I've tried a few, they all came out bad even with very very low heat and light welds). There's a reason you haven't seen a completed project. .

There are no picatinny side rails for the receivers.

The dsa handguards look very out of place to me, but they are very solid and well made.

Barrels... DSA barrels aren't chrome lined. The original factory barrels were and the ones project guns had made a few years back are.  The dsa barrels are good enough, the sarco barrels shoot well but are very prone to rusting in the bore.  I think the sarco barrels were the only us barrels made that had the threads like the original design did.

If your gun is a factory built machine gun you can use the original barrel from another kit to re-barrel it but I'm not sure how many rounds it would take to burn it out. You'd just need a new set of bolt flaps to set the headspace with.

The original barrel is good for around two belts and then you should let it cool some. I've had a postie with an original barrel hot enough to smoke the cosmolene out of the wood before but didn't char the handguards. The only one I've seen really char the handguards was from an individual who ran around 800 rounds through one without a break and basically killed the entire gun.

Basically, if its hot enough that you're worried about the handguards you should also be planning to let it cool a bit so you don't burn the barrel out. If you do treat it with a bit of respect it'll last a long long long time. The postie I talked about before has probably 8-10k rounds through it now and still shoots as accurate as it ever did for me.

They very rarely break. It would be worth buying a kit while they are cheap so you have spares though. Over many years of dealing with rpd's I've seen a couple recoil springs collapse  and require replacement, a few safety springs break, one bolt carrier actually broke (looked like a defect in the metal and cracked in two where the spent case ejection hole is). I've broken a few extractors tuning the gas for a suppressor(there is a spare in the tool kit).

I've worked on two that are owned by a shop as post sample rentals and they were choked with carbon (not sure what kind of ammo they were running but it was nasty crap). They were crapped up so bad that the carrier was being held out of battery by the piston.

You'll almost never find anyone selling the belts without the drums. If you do it'll be an individual on ebay or gunbroker. Load the belts from the end of the belt to the beginning. If the bolt closes on an empty link it'll mangle the belt.

As far as suppressing them, yes its doable. I have a gas regulator I welded up and then ground out just enough to run suppressed. There was a run of thread adapters done years ago for these to mate a 5/8x24 suppressor to the factory metric threading. They don't suppress that well but they aren't unpleasant to shoot either just a bit loud. I'd be very weary of putting a suppressor on an original barrel. Some of the original barrels have the bores pretty far from concentric to the threads.

Good dope there, thanks.
I have the dsa carbine, I believe its threaded 9/16x24 left hand like the FALs, which makes sense as the brake they welded on only comes in that thread pitch, and not the 16x1 that traditional RPDs do. Being an aftermarket barrel IM hoping its a bit more concentric than factory commie barrels.
When you said you  made an adjustable gas regulator, was the factory one not sufficient enough? I figure putting it on the lightest setting would work ok. I was also planning on using a dead air sandman or wolverine, which have minimal gas blowback compared to other quiet counterparts.

@jsbsmarine

the gas regulator is going to be different depending on your particular gun. If it only runs on a "3" setting without a can then it'll probably be fine.  If you can turn it down to a "1" without a can then you're probably going to be over-gassed when you do put a can on it. You really only want enough to reliably cycle the action as too much will beat the lower (trigger group) and the bolt carrier all to hell. Also too much gas WILL bend the takedown pin and can make getting it apart to figure out what happened a royal pain.

Think of it like a car engine. If you run it at idle or part throttle it'll last a whole lot longer than if you run it wide open all the time.

Typically you want to run 3-500 rounds through it for break in and then try moving to a lower gas setting and see if it still runs reliably. If it does then try the lowest setting. Most of the semi-auto's won't run on "1" unsuppressed even when they are really broken in. Its nothing wrong with them, its just the extra spring, mass of the striker, and over-running the sear to overcome with the semi parts that takes a bit more oomph. Some of the guns have pistons that fit really tight into the gas blocks, some are looser. This gives each gun its own signature and why they need tuning.

Just be sure its not over-gassed. The dsa carbines use an aluminum lower that tends to wear some under general use compared to the original steel lowers. Over-gassed I'd imagine its lifespan would be drastically shortened.

@al525i

Thanks much sir. Ill post a pic some day when I figure it all out