Tag Archives: MagPul

M85 PAP, the Steel-Cased Solution

November 25th, 2015 0 comments

“If you do not own a rifle that will reliably cycle steel-cased ammunition, you had better get your hands on one.” Those words of advice were offered by my original firearms training mentor, John Farnam, nearly ten years ago. John saw the ammo crisis of 2013 coming a mile away. Russian/Soviet arms, particularly the AK, were built around a lacquered steel case cartridge. Lacquered steel cased ammunition is much less expensive to manufacture and that has always been the model for Russian arms; make as many as you can, at the lowest cost, thereby equipping as many soldiers as possible. In the USA we like to shoot steel-cased ammo because it gives us more bang for the buck. When it…

Century AK63D: Classic Upgrade

October 28th, 2014 3 comments

If you have been paying attention the Kalashnikov world and the numerous configurations available, you should know that Century Arms has been building 100 percent Made in the USA AKs for several years. During the first year or so, the new Century guns with machined receivers were flying under the industry radar and did not really get the attention they deserved. Recently there was an infusion of fresh blood in the marketing department at Century and they have not only been promoting the guns heavily but they’ve done something almost unheard of in the gun world. Century put C39 rifles and pistols into the hands of hard corps firearms instructors and told them to run the gun hard and fast.…

AK Pistol Follow Up

September 25th, 2014 1 comment

We’d like to take a moment to follow up two previous articles “Best of Both Worlds” and “The Ultimate Truck Gun”. Both of these firearms are Kalashnikov style pistols available from Century Arms. The M85 PAP is imported from Serbia and the C39 is made in the USA. C39 After the original article was published we changed out the stock pistol grip for a new one from MagPul. The MagPul AK grip is hard plastic and has a small accessory or storage area inside of grip much just like their AR-15 grips. I was a bit disappointed that the hardware shipped with the MagPul grip did not include a lock washer as most do and the screw seemed to be…

The Other Black Rifle: Accessorize Your AK

April 24th, 2014 6 comments

“One size fits all” was once considered the perfect solution for manufacturers who wanted to minimize their number of SKUs (Shop Keeper Units). Rather than stock numerous varieties of a product, you come up with a happy medium or “one size fits all”. If you consider firearms today, the vast majority are built with the one size fits all or happy medium concept. Military battle rifles are designed to fit the body size of the “average soldier”. Whether we are discussing the M-16, AK-47, or G3, these rifles were sized for what was considered “average” and that concept has worked very well in practice. Americans, however, are quite fond of personalizing their property. Whether we are discussing cars, trucks, motorcycles or…