AK Optic

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I need an optic that doesn't look out of place on a classic wood furniture AK, possibly something square?

 
... JK, it looks awful.
nearly missed that, thank god I didn't...

what about something like this?

only like £15 my apologies in size of image btw
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No optic looks right on a classic AK, because the lack of any optics is what makes it look "classic" lol.

I think 47s just look wrong with any attachments, unless you're going to clearly modernise it with rails and everything. 74s you can get away with basic stuff added along with classic style, wood furniture, but Russian optics only. Kobras, PK-As, PSOs at a push, perhaps.

 
Been running a BSA red dot for a very long time... doesn't look too shabby. thou I tend tot ake it off before pics :P

10650.jpg


Was just gonna suggest someone should make a PSO red dot.... if that fits AK!! thou the one I have on my rs-svd does not. but it's worth sending them an email asking!!

eeeeew!! and I'm not talking about the optic!!

 
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IMAG2125.jpg
...and fuck you.​
The latest:

IMAG0038.jpg
...which is one of these on an ICS side mount.​

Unfortunately Kobra replicas are OOS everywhere at the moment and have been for a long time. You see real steel ones going for as little as £150 sometimes, but £180-200 is more like it - new old stock/refurbished they are about £280.

 
Slight digression, how would one go about re finishing a CM04 xyz wood? Sand back then...?

 
The way I did the one pictured above was by sanding, then painting on a stain made from 'Van Dyk Crystals' which is a traditional wood treatment made from burnt walnut shells. It's not actually that good at penetrating the wood, although perhaps if I'd used something other than the recommended water as a solvent, it may have been better - petrol for eg. Once dry I sprayed it with 3 coats of Humbrol aerosol satin varnish. This proved insufficient for some areas, but tbh I was so worried about causing drips that I suspect my coats were not as thick as they could have been. Anyway, so far I have decided to let the wear stand and just sprayed a few more layers of varnish on top so it doesn't get any worse.

I think it looks quite good, but I suspect that using Briwax applied with steel wool on the freshly sanded wood may produce better results. One thing you definitely don't want to do is slap some ordinary stain/varnish on there, because the finish is high gloss, which is not only Wrong compared to the real steel, but looks like plastic in photographs.

 
Depends on what kind of AK you want it to look like. Much of the time you can get a bit of a hint at where the AK originated from by the furniture colour, but this is only sometimes true, for example, Bulgarian AKs tend to have wood that looks a lot like a nice mahogany sideboard, Romanian tend to look very orange, Czech ones are often a pale brown, Russian ones are kind of reddish plum coloured, Chinese ones (type 56) use Manchurian Catalpa, but they tend to stain it a reddish orange and shellac the living crap out of it. However, the Chicom Type 56 has quite a few visual differences to proper Russian Kalashnikovs, notably a slightly different compensator and front sight.

To make a proper 'cliche AK' furniture colour, what you wanna do is sand it down, stain the wood a mahogany colour, let that dry and then overpaint that with either Tamiya X-26 clear orange acrylic (for an Romanian type look), or Tamiya X-27 clear red acrylic (for a more reddish, typical Russkie/Chicom look). This will give it the horrendous varnish effect that most real AKs have, believe it or not, that even works on plastic stocks, although it does take the wood stain ages to dry. Here's my old completely plastic CYMA springer AK47 front grip painted up using that exact technique, finished with X-26 acrylic:

2014-10-09191552_zps0f42a7fb.jpg


 
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Ian, I'm not going to lie, that first sight has definitely grown on me. Contradicting my first post, I actually quite like it

 
Ian, I'm not going to lie, that first sight has definitely grown on me. Contradicting my first post, I actually quite like it
I was in the process of building a 'post apocalyptic' AK, from a real steel wooden (lol) stock, G&P ali receiver and CYMA alloy RIS handguards, which I intend the Elcan SpecterOS replica to go on - but the bloke who was drilling the stock for me, so it will accept the lug from the receiver, has disappeared so I dunno what to do now. It's definitely not right for my franken-AK build, as it is a 3.4X scope, not a red dot. I like it on Morena my '74, but she's also the gun to go with my original period Soviet-Afghan War uniform and gear and i dislike taking off/putting on sights all the time, because it loses whatever zero you have.

IMO the C-More style red dot on a side mount isn't a million miles away from a Kobra so it is staying for the time being, but if the replicas do not come back in stock for a while, I may change the side mount to a skeleton one I have and dress the whole thing up more Kobra-esque with some plastic and Fimo.

Another gun I've decided I want to build is a tactical RPK with a D-Boys X47 full body RAS, locked off to semi as a DMR and I think the Elcan would go well with that, or perhaps [heresy alert] put rails on Agnes my L1A1 and use the Elcan on her...

 
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