The Gun Thread

Which AK? And are we counting the Saiga .308 hunting rifles and shotguns too? They're basically AKs

My guess would be: only on full-auto.

Well they manage to kill elephants with them by spraying them down and letting them bleed out. I would say yes if your set up right. If you want it in as few shots as possible you may want to go with a the full sized rifle rounds. If I wanted to use a Russian made fire arm to hunt bear I would use the Mosin.

SKS, actually, Slovenian so unissued and it's so lovely.

Well there ya go. Have fun with it.

So my AR bolt managed to snap in half. Possible culprits:

1. Gas key was loose (likely not staked properly), causing the bolt carrier group to move back and forth in strange ways, causing abnormal stresses to be placed on the bolt itself.

2. Neglected to clean it for too long (I clean after "several hundred rounds", but I also shoot roughly 100-120 rounds out of it each range trip, and it kind of stacked up), causing abrasion and the same kind of stresses on the bolt barrier group. Possibly both this and 1.

So now I'm debating: buy another bolt carrier group (there's a nice Daniel Defense one going for $150 on joeboboutfitters), or just sell the rest of AR and go back to having SKS as my "battle rifle"?

Current pieces of AR: Aero Precision lower (160), Radical Firearms upper (400 total, although minus the bolt and plus the fact I've been having problems with it should bring it down to like 200 when it comes time to sell), Magpul MBUS iron sights (90), Troy Proctor sling (30), Primary Arms red dot (200). Plus 4 30-round magazines (forgot how much they were, two were free due to doing a pick-up option for the upper) and 1 10-round (forgot how much that was).

Only thing I'd be kind of bummed about is not having gotten much use out of the red dot beyond zeroing it. But real men use irons anyway, right?

Why an AK to kill bears when all you need for that are THESE GUNS!?!??!

-flexes-

-eaten by a bear-

-oh no-

Do you have a picture of the snapped bolt? I had a dude bring in an AR that had blown out on him, seemed like overpressure in the gas system and split the bolt.

Not currently, it split in half where the hole for the cam pin is, so I have a front half with the extractor and a rear half with the bolt tail and the gas rings. Pretty much like this one. The gas key was definitely loose though, it was wiggling visibly.

How does one check for sure if the rifle is overgassed? And if it is, what is the fix for it, generally speaking?

edited 5th Feb '16 11:39:10 AM by PRC4Eva

Oh, that's a different thing then. The failure I saw was the bolt carrier split down the center. This chart: http://epictacticalDOTcom/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/pie-chartDOTjpg has a decent show of what's going on with your gas system, but the failure I saw, and similar ones, seemed to be more of the bullet hanging up in the barrel and not "releasing" the gas pressure quickly enough, so chance are that's not a thing that happened.

How many rounds, about, have you put through it? Not since last cleaning, total?

edited 5th Feb '16 11:58:54 AM by Gjallarhorn

I don't know about the ejection angles, as generally I haven't been keeping track of where the casings are going. In total I'd estimate 1200-1500 rounds? Have had an issue in the past regarding the extractor breaking on steel case, it's since been replaced by a Bravo Company extractor which is supposed to be specifically designed to handle steel.

As far as upper assemblies, do things generally malfunction with the non-BCG parts of it? Kinda debating if I just want to replace the upper entirely, Palmetto State Armory's got some on sale without the BCG for a little over 200 (yeah, I know they're not really known for making the best things, but they're also a pretty big and established manufacturer from what I understand), so if I sell off my current barrel assembly that pretty much covers most of the cost for it. Only problem with that is 1. I'd have to actually find a buyer and 2. the only deals they have come with a fixed front sight which interferes somewhat with the red dot. Alternately, I can keep what I have now, with half of me going "what if it craps out me at some point later" and the other half going "there's no moving parts, it should be fine".

If the rest of the upper fails, then something has gone catastrophically wrong.

That said, Radical says they have a lifetime warranty, that might be your first recourse.

FSP's don't really mess with red dots as much as you'd think, especially if you shoot both eyes open.

Sell it and buy an AK.

Then be content in knowing your rifle will outlive your children's children and will continue to fire reliably until the heat death of the universe.

I'm somewhat less inclined to trust the warranty after the ejector also broke on me once already. At that point the issue is more "sure, it might be free, but does that also mean it'll die on me 1000 rounds later."

Seeing your post example. That isn't likely from lack of cleaning. Something else was very likely wrong with the bolt. It sounds like it had developed some stress cracks possibly from manufacturing flaws and snapped. How many rounds have you put through that rifle? We abuse the shit out of M-16's firing several hundred rounds through them at a time without that happening and leaving them dirty between firings if you are doing rapid field evolution of simulated live combat.

Fuck that. Buy a Lee-Enfield. Or hell, buy an ancient Trapdoor Springfield, that's even simpler. Or stick with a Brown Bess. But that's a bit finicky compared to a decent matchlock. Of course, if you really want reliability, go for a nice crossbow. Or a longbow. Or maybe a fucking rock.

edited 5th Feb '16 2:07:47 PM by Achaemenid

Use your bloody god given hands!

edited 5th Feb '16 2:16:43 PM by AngelusNox

Some time ago, I had mentioned a Remington Rolling Block that I saw for sale, and that I was debating buying it, but then it was gone.

Well, it had been sent to the gunsmith for some needed repairs, before being put back out for sale. So today, I bought it.

Pretty.

I wish I had the money to buy guns.

pwiegle: Very nice. What cartridge is it chambered for?

I still want to get my hands on a .45-70 lever action of some sort. Maybe one of the Marlins or even a Henry if I could find one.

It's an 1879 Argentine model in .43 Spanish. A full-length rifle, not a carbine. The guy even threw in three rounds of ammo that he had for it. They're not headstamped, so I'm leery about attempting to fire them. I'm sure the rifle itself will shoot, but I'm hesitant to try it with ammo of unknown pedigree and age.

I'll probably get a box of ammo from Buffalo Bore. They're newly-manufactured, using modern solid-head drawn brass cases, loaded with black powder, so they ought to be safe.

Neat. An unusual cartridge given the wide array of rounds it can be found in but still interesting. I have to agree with your assessment on the ammo. Almost sounds like they came from a hand loader which is of course all the more reason to be cautious.

My mistake. Buffalo Bore is a specialty ammo maker, offering high-performance hunting and tactical loads. But Buffalo Arms is the outfit that offers black powder loads for obsolete calibers.

According to the reviewers, it works just fine in antique Rolling Blocks like mine, with no signs of overpressure. It's expensive (about $4 a pop), but where else are you going to find factory-loaded ammo that isn't several decades old?

As for the three unmarked rounds I got with the rifle, I think they're original military loads. Which means God only knows just how old they really are... Yeah, no. Not gonna try 'em.

edited 5th Feb '16 5:46:38 PM by pwiegle

That is kind of why I am interested in a lever action .45-70. Some of the lever guns are newer and interestingly there are multiple manufactures for it these days because it is used in hunting and sports in general.

Yeah we usually carry at least three brands of it at any given time. It's pretty popular for bear and pig.