Building an AK sporting rifle Part 2

As I had outlined in part 1, I had left off with prepping the parts for installation on the barrel. But this is a “virgin” barrel, and has no gas port. It’s never been used on any firearm before now.

After fitting the magazine to the magwell and magazine release (which are part of the trigger assembly, I did a quick mock up of where the basic barrel components would be located. You’ll notice in the picture that the gas block has been disassembled. The reason for this is because I’m using the gas block from a Yugoslavian M70 kit. These use an integral gas shut off valve to operate a built in grenade launcher. I’m going to drill through the gas block using it as a guide to port the barrel to vent gas to operate the rifle. But before anything else, I’ll first press the barrel into the receiver and set the head space.

However, before I can get to that, I discovered that a quick search on the internet has turned up that there are no bullet guides available for sale. These are an important part of the feeding system to ensure the cartridges transition smoothly from the magazine and into the chamber. Now there are some Yugo builds that have foregone using one of these, and the shooter reports they have no problem. But since the milled receiver purchased for this build has the recess cut out for the bullet guide and corresponding rivet, I’m not going to skip this step. So it’s back to demilling the old stub to retrieve the part I’m not able to find online currently.

Standard Yugo milled receivers use a threaded barrel. The US made one I’m using needs a press fit barrel. it’s a pain in the butt to tear this thing apart to get the bullet guide, but I managed.

I tend to cheat a little bit. For me the best way to knock out old rivets during the demilling process is an old fashioned car mechanic’s tool…..an air hammer with a fine chisel point. It makes short work of these rivets without smashing my fingers with a hammer and punch.

All that work for a tiny but crucial part. Now onto the next step before pressing in the barrel.