I have a kit built 1984 vintage AES on a nodak reciever. There isn't a side plate scope rail on the reciever. I wanted it clean at the time. Ut now I want to put optics on my baby.   Other than riveting on a scope rail what are my options out there?  I don't mind making modifications to the parts to make something fit if necessary.  My personal preference at the moment would be a new forearm with rails if possible.  I have one on my M70 (made by UTG?), I wonder if that would fit on my AES?  Just screw on some rail pieces to the existing hand guard?

Thanks,

Indy

Bump.

I don't know if the Ultimak will clamp around the heavier RPK barrel.

TWS top cover is an option.

Also I suggest you check out the Master Mount, which is a side rail mount that anchors to the receiver via custom axis pins. In fact they have an image of one installed on an RPK on their site: https://nebula.wsimg.com/e28dfd5956a73d105b83882abff8e74a?AccessKeyId=C22C2BC2C6B3A592637B&disposition=0&alloworigin=1

Ultimak has a Vepr model which would likely have the correct size barrel clamps

I tried for a long time to find an AK scope mount that I liked, and after accumulating a shoe-box full of various mounts landed on the AK rear-sight replacing mount from scoutscopes.com as one of my favorites.  I've had poor luck with a wide range of side mounts and some of my AKs didn't have a side rail anyway.  After putting the scoutscopes.com on a couple guns I recently started looking for something smaller and just tried a rear sight rail from Strike Industries - in addition to being smaller it was a fraction of the price too, Primary Arms had them on sale recently.

Here it is.

How has that setup worked so far?   Any reason you chose Strike over other brands?

Looking to put optics on my Yugo and not a big fan of the side rails (lefty shooter and so is my kid).