AK Sponsor
Posted: 10/19/2007 3:44:37 AM EDT
| I'm relatively new to AKs, and my understanding is based on hearsay rather than experience, so help me out here. If all military ammo is corrosive and destroys your rifle within 8 hours without proper maintenance, how did the AK earn its reputation for rugged reliability? The popular impression of the AK is a rifle that you can fire 20k rounds through without cleaning, leave in a sand pit or mud bog for a few months, then pick up and fire right away with no second thought. But when you enter corrosive ammo into the equation, all those rifles on the streets of Monrovia and in the caves of Afghanistan must have been useless lumps of metal because their barrels weren't flushed out after each use. Yet they still racked up an impressive body count. So one of these legends has to be overblown. Which is it--the toughness of the AK, or the harm caused by corrosive ammo? |
Yup, I hear that pissing in your rifle, then rinsing it with water is/was not uncommon for many a soldiers, especially in the Middle East. The ammonia is apparently what neutralizes the salts left behind from the corrosive ammo. I could do this with a beat up $200 AK, but would find it a little hard to do with a fine piece that cost me a pretty penny. Especially a $1300 Krink. 
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| Not cleaning for 20,000 rounds? I believe the Bulgarian Arsenal Museum has a milled AK that went just over 300,000 rounds- at least I read this on another board. I don't figure the hadji's clean theirs ever so figure the Ak must be the toughest damn weapon on the planet even with a pitted bore. |
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I have no idea if it's true, but I've heard/read stories about people firing corrosive ammo in ak's and leaving them for months uncleaned, then when they go to shoot again, they just kick the rusted shut bolt/carrier/handle open, load up and start shooting with no problems. I have no idea how true that is, but AK's are definitely "built to take it". There are way too many stories like that floating around out there for there not to be at least some truth to it. On a personal experience level, I haven't put one through that sort of thing, but I _can_ say, in a general way, that I've had much less trouble from AK type rifles than I've had from AR's. YMMV, of course. |
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The only thing required to clean corrosive primer residue is water. I use boiling hot soapy water, (Dawn dishwashing detergent, actually), and lots of it. Then clean and oil as you normally do. Yes, urine will work, as will Windex. But the reason that they work is that they are primarilly water. The water flushes the salts away, no ammonia is required. It is a cleaning method that has worked for centuries. I don't understand why it has gone out of style. |
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