AK Sponsor
Posted: 3/2/2008 8:24:43 AM EDT
| How much harder is it to put a virgin parts kit together compared to a regular parts kit. |
Not drill, ream. If you try to drill it in a drill press or using a mill, the drill will deflect as it leaves the trunion and reaches the barrel, instead of drilling straight down and creating the barrel dimple. It basically bounces off of the round edge of the barrel and you ruin both trunion and barrel in a fraction of a second. Theoretically an endmill would work but none are long enough, so a reamer is the only way to do it right. Also theoretically you could drill the trunion first, then create the barrel dimple some other way, if you wanted to go to the work of assembling the trunion in the receiver, installing the barrel in the trunion, milling the extractor notch in the end of the barrel, headspacing the gun, measuring everything exactly, and then yanking the barrel out again to get to the trunion and barrel dimple seperately. But then you'd still have the problem of how to create the barrel dimple in the right place with the right shape without having it supported in the trunion or anything. Don't forget drilling the gas port and holes for the pins that hold the front sight block and gas block onto the barrel. Then you have to fabricate the pins themselves. We use drill rod. Also, be forewarned that assembling the mag catch assembly from scratch is harder than you'd think. The hole for the rivet the holds the mag catch in place must be located perfectly. If its off you'll either have mags that fail to seat in the gun at all, or they will hang down at the rear and you'll have bolt-over-rim failures to feed. The difference is measured in just a couple thousanths of an inch. Its really a critical part that nobody thinks about that much. I could go on but I think you probably get the point. |
| I don't even try to do the virgin kits myself. I stick to the demilled kits and have a professional builder put together the few virgin kits I've picked up. I bought the virgin M92 kits because I can get them cheap enough that I can pay a builder to put them together and still come out about as cheap as if I bought a demilled krink and put it together myself. |
Maybe this is the reason those pre-built virgin Yugo kits are welded in barrel pin area, at least those that I have seen. Builder must have run into unforeseen difficulty, and fixed it with a weld.  Nevertheless, journeyman Bridgeport machinist has no difficulty with machining any of the virgin parts. He can drill, ream, bore, lap, and mill with extreme accuracy, even the barrel/trunnion area, where Rockwell of two steels may differ. |
Nothing like MIG welding together an area of the gun that has to withstand 40,000 psi every time the trigger is pulled. Oh yeah and if the weld breaks your headspace and therefore the gun will be ruined with the very next trigger pull. Great idea! Oh well, I guess stuff like that keeps gunsmiths in business. Journeyman mill-and-lathe machinists are a great invention, I have two on staff at my shop. Those guys cost money though.  I know a guy who does CNC up the road, now THAT guy and his toys cost some real money! When you are looking at six figures just to replace certain PARTS of your machine, that's alot of drilling gas ports and milling barrel dimples before you ever recoup your investment. I figure if it costs him $100,000 to tool up for virgin AK builds and he charges $300 a build, he only needs to build 334 AKs before he makes his first dollar of profit. Except that even the virgin kits are drying up now, and that figure doesn't include the hours it takes to build the guns which could be used for higher profit production areas. Maybe that's why he doesn't bother to do this stuff. 
|
AK Sponsor