First, I got to thank for all the support during the build and especially to comrade Flintoid who inspired me to expose my credit card number on the AK-builder site. When I got the kit, it was similar to what’s pictured here, except more peeling laquer and teeth marks on the buttstock. I couldn’t friggen believe that I just spent all that cash on a plate-load of worn metals bits floating in cosmoline.
Building an AK was a fantastic and the most meritorious endeavor. Some people enjoy the journey and some destination. Building is more of a journey. You’ll need lots of tools you may never had, various jigs and tons of research. It’s fun, very addictive and it’s a joy to see how ordinary bits of metal gradually become a firearm. It takes time to figure everything out on the first build, it’s helpful to have a pair of extra hands or someone who have done this before. Another really cool part is that you may know how to take apart an AK and put it back together, but after the build you’ll know every crevice, hook and bulge on your AK and know exactly why it is there.
I am building a RomyG – Romanian Guard AK. Originally, it had its auto parts temporarily removed, since their guardsmen were not awesome enough to handle dual wielding AKs on full auto. All original receivers were marked S, FA and FF. FF stands for Foc cu Foc (not sure if double f**k or f**k squared) but it’s still not as bad as FA – Foc Automat (automatic f**k) which aptly describes what happens to about quarter million people who are dispatched to pearly gates, Buddha or planet Xenu via Kalashnikov systems, annually.
A bit of history.
Romanians are well known for being the Harbor Freight of Kalashnikovs and having the same word for toilet paper as for a hand (joke) Let this not deceive you to think them as weak. Vlad Dracula the Impaler was a Romanian, and just for the record, most Westerners, to this day, can not wrap their naïve, puritan minds around that “impalement” had actually nothing to do with impaling. This is how they imagined Vlad “impaling” thousands of Muslim invaders with his “chianti and fava beans” for dinner.
The real “impaling” was just an insertion of a stake into one’s already well formed rear orifice and raising said stake perpendicular to the ground. Here are a few screenshots from Polish classic Pan Wolodyiewski demonstrating the proper technique of “to sit on a stake” – as impalement was incorrectly translated. This is how Polaks used to deal with AlQuida before Gitmo.
So imagine this times tens of thousands and you now understand why Romanians were considered a bit eccentric, even by medieval standards. Whatever you feel, just don’t ask them for a refund on your WASR. You have been warned!
Unlike once great Romans and Greeks, Romanians, to this day, continue to demonstrate the depths of depravity and wanton disregard for human decency. A few decades back, before joining NATO (and getting a bunch of ARs) pissed off Romanians shot chairman Chaushesku and his wife without any trial. The dude had a toilet cast from solid gold but the country had zero national debt!
I have documented removing barrel pin, bending the receiver and heat treating it in these threads. Those were projects in their own right and I hope to update more info relevant to the topics once I do more .
http://www.northeastshooters.com/vb...AK-–-remove-your-worst-barrel-pin-(pic-heavy)
http://www.northeastshooters.com/vb...ent-Russian-technologies-revealed-(pic-heavy)
http://www.northeastshooters.com/vb...eating-your-receiver-with-vodka-(picture-fat)
Once the receiver was ready to go, I cleaned and sandblasted it together with other small bits like I do with powder coating. I used DuraBake to paint and bake the paint. I was thinking that it would be similar to powder coating. Plus I have no patience so there is no way I would wait 3-4 weeks for the paint to fully cure per DuraCoat instructions. Well, honestly, I’m not too happy with durability so far. The paint is not much different durability wise from regular HomeDespot paintcan, after full bake at 380. May be they meant 380 Centigrade or Kelvin, who knows?
I made a special jig to do the front trunion rivets. It’s not as nice as the one on AK-builder, but it works very well. I am using 20 tonne press and for the jig specifically it’s a bit of cold chisel ground with an angle grinder to assume shape and position. Chisels are not very expensive and are a good source of heat treatable steel, if your scrap heap runs dry. You have to be careful as some cold chisels may shutter.
Another thing that I found to be incredibly useful is to have handy various scraps of aluminum alloys as mini anvils. Virgin aluminum is too soft, but many alloys from pistons are great for hand riveting. Aluminum will deform just enough to keep rivet’s head in immaculate condition no matter how much you hammer the rivet with extreme prejudice on the other end.
1st WTF moment
This was a royal WTF moment. Picture doesn’t really shows it too well. I have followed many AK build guides and I thought I had it all figured out. I just spot welded the rails that came from AK-builder and thought that everything was fine. When I went to insert a magazine, I realized that there was something terribly wrong with the rails. For a second I thought that I welded the rails wrong and the entire process: drill out, clean, fit, re-weld just flashed before my eyes. Actually, I just needed to grind down the bottom “rails” It’s good thing that I have another AK, I just poped the dust cover and realized what was wrong. It would be frigging good to know, so I can do most of the grinding of those rails before I weld the rails on. It did not take long but it required dremel time while being mindful not to grind anything else around.
Here is the complete receiver with all trunnions mounted. I did not do the artsy, domed rivet heads. This is a man’s tool, so I just hammered the crap out of the rivets to get them boringly flat. One thing here will come to haunt me later. That center support rivet.
To insert barrel, I have came up with my own jig again. I think that it is more stable since it rests on three solid parts of the front trunnion. The treads are ¼ inch and I don’t think that they are in danger of being ripped apart.
Barell pin.
WTF moment #2. I ordered a new pin from AK-builder. It did not fit. Going back to the site I realized that it’s “oversized” so I need to enlarge the hole by re-drilling it, then rimming it. The more I read, the better the old pin looked to me. I pushed it in with a 20 tonne press and it went in like a champ.
Shepards spring. Trigger group.
WTF moment #3 and #4. Putting the trigger group in I realized that the shepards pin was not going to fit. While d*cking around I realized that it’s impossible to insert existing Romanian fire selector after Tapco’s trigger group was in. I still don’t know what the middle thingie does, it seems totally useless. I also had to fashion my own shepard’s spring from an old spring.
I did not refinish the original Romanian wood furniture, you may call it cheap spa treatment. Just a quick sand down, fake mahogany alcohol stain (they were out of cheap red varnish) followed by Danish oil and Poly. Most dings and marked were left where they were.
from here on things started to accelerate, I forgot to eat and instead of cleaning shop wanted to finish the build ASAP as I was so close and it itched like crazy. Also, at this time wife finally found out why I moved to the basement and offered to help putting it together (she used to have the fastest time in school for AK tear-down/ assembly) You got to love hot chicks who know their way around an AK.![[smile]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/001.gif "Smile [smile]")
Building an AK was a fantastic and the most meritorious endeavor. Some people enjoy the journey and some destination. Building is more of a journey. You’ll need lots of tools you may never had, various jigs and tons of research. It’s fun, very addictive and it’s a joy to see how ordinary bits of metal gradually become a firearm. It takes time to figure everything out on the first build, it’s helpful to have a pair of extra hands or someone who have done this before. Another really cool part is that you may know how to take apart an AK and put it back together, but after the build you’ll know every crevice, hook and bulge on your AK and know exactly why it is there.
I am building a RomyG – Romanian Guard AK. Originally, it had its auto parts temporarily removed, since their guardsmen were not awesome enough to handle dual wielding AKs on full auto. All original receivers were marked S, FA and FF. FF stands for Foc cu Foc (not sure if double f**k or f**k squared) but it’s still not as bad as FA – Foc Automat (automatic f**k) which aptly describes what happens to about quarter million people who are dispatched to pearly gates, Buddha or planet Xenu via Kalashnikov systems, annually.
A bit of history.
Romanians are well known for being the Harbor Freight of Kalashnikovs and having the same word for toilet paper as for a hand (joke) Let this not deceive you to think them as weak. Vlad Dracula the Impaler was a Romanian, and just for the record, most Westerners, to this day, can not wrap their naïve, puritan minds around that “impalement” had actually nothing to do with impaling. This is how they imagined Vlad “impaling” thousands of Muslim invaders with his “chianti and fava beans” for dinner.
The real “impaling” was just an insertion of a stake into one’s already well formed rear orifice and raising said stake perpendicular to the ground. Here are a few screenshots from Polish classic Pan Wolodyiewski demonstrating the proper technique of “to sit on a stake” – as impalement was incorrectly translated. This is how Polaks used to deal with AlQuida before Gitmo.
So imagine this times tens of thousands and you now understand why Romanians were considered a bit eccentric, even by medieval standards. Whatever you feel, just don’t ask them for a refund on your WASR. You have been warned!
Unlike once great Romans and Greeks, Romanians, to this day, continue to demonstrate the depths of depravity and wanton disregard for human decency. A few decades back, before joining NATO (and getting a bunch of ARs) pissed off Romanians shot chairman Chaushesku and his wife without any trial. The dude had a toilet cast from solid gold but the country had zero national debt!
I have documented removing barrel pin, bending the receiver and heat treating it in these threads. Those were projects in their own right and I hope to update more info relevant to the topics once I do more .
http://www.northeastshooters.com/vb...AK-–-remove-your-worst-barrel-pin-(pic-heavy)
http://www.northeastshooters.com/vb...ent-Russian-technologies-revealed-(pic-heavy)
http://www.northeastshooters.com/vb...eating-your-receiver-with-vodka-(picture-fat)
Once the receiver was ready to go, I cleaned and sandblasted it together with other small bits like I do with powder coating. I used DuraBake to paint and bake the paint. I was thinking that it would be similar to powder coating. Plus I have no patience so there is no way I would wait 3-4 weeks for the paint to fully cure per DuraCoat instructions. Well, honestly, I’m not too happy with durability so far. The paint is not much different durability wise from regular HomeDespot paintcan, after full bake at 380. May be they meant 380 Centigrade or Kelvin, who knows?
I made a special jig to do the front trunion rivets. It’s not as nice as the one on AK-builder, but it works very well. I am using 20 tonne press and for the jig specifically it’s a bit of cold chisel ground with an angle grinder to assume shape and position. Chisels are not very expensive and are a good source of heat treatable steel, if your scrap heap runs dry. You have to be careful as some cold chisels may shutter.
Another thing that I found to be incredibly useful is to have handy various scraps of aluminum alloys as mini anvils. Virgin aluminum is too soft, but many alloys from pistons are great for hand riveting. Aluminum will deform just enough to keep rivet’s head in immaculate condition no matter how much you hammer the rivet with extreme prejudice on the other end.
1st WTF moment
This was a royal WTF moment. Picture doesn’t really shows it too well. I have followed many AK build guides and I thought I had it all figured out. I just spot welded the rails that came from AK-builder and thought that everything was fine. When I went to insert a magazine, I realized that there was something terribly wrong with the rails. For a second I thought that I welded the rails wrong and the entire process: drill out, clean, fit, re-weld just flashed before my eyes. Actually, I just needed to grind down the bottom “rails” It’s good thing that I have another AK, I just poped the dust cover and realized what was wrong. It would be frigging good to know, so I can do most of the grinding of those rails before I weld the rails on. It did not take long but it required dremel time while being mindful not to grind anything else around.
Here is the complete receiver with all trunnions mounted. I did not do the artsy, domed rivet heads. This is a man’s tool, so I just hammered the crap out of the rivets to get them boringly flat. One thing here will come to haunt me later. That center support rivet.
To insert barrel, I have came up with my own jig again. I think that it is more stable since it rests on three solid parts of the front trunnion. The treads are ¼ inch and I don’t think that they are in danger of being ripped apart.
Barell pin.
WTF moment #2. I ordered a new pin from AK-builder. It did not fit. Going back to the site I realized that it’s “oversized” so I need to enlarge the hole by re-drilling it, then rimming it. The more I read, the better the old pin looked to me. I pushed it in with a 20 tonne press and it went in like a champ.
Shepards spring. Trigger group.
WTF moment #3 and #4. Putting the trigger group in I realized that the shepards pin was not going to fit. While d*cking around I realized that it’s impossible to insert existing Romanian fire selector after Tapco’s trigger group was in. I still don’t know what the middle thingie does, it seems totally useless. I also had to fashion my own shepard’s spring from an old spring.
I did not refinish the original Romanian wood furniture, you may call it cheap spa treatment. Just a quick sand down, fake mahogany alcohol stain (they were out of cheap red varnish) followed by Danish oil and Poly. Most dings and marked were left where they were.
from here on things started to accelerate, I forgot to eat and instead of cleaning shop wanted to finish the build ASAP as I was so close and it itched like crazy. Also, at this time wife finally found out why I moved to the basement and offered to help putting it together (she used to have the fastest time in school for AK tear-down/ assembly) You got to love hot chicks who know their way around an AK.
![[wink]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/002.gif "Wink [wink]")
![[rolleyes]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/042.gif "Roll Eyes [rolleyes]")
![[laugh]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/012.gif "Laugh [laugh]")
![[cheers]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/018.gif "Cheers [cheers]")
![[grin]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/041.gif "Grin [grin]")
