Rebuilding The AK-74

Using American components to improve bulgarian hardware.

- Erik Lund

As beautiful as the English language can be, sometimes words fail us. In some cases, it’s not the fault of our vocabulary. The few words that are reserved for special occasions get overused, and over time, lose the effectiveness of their meanings. Such is the occasion when trying to describe Mikhail Kalashnikov’s Avtomat Kalashnikova, model of 1947, commonly known as the AK-47.

Words like legendary, revolutionary, and iconic are so regularly associated with the AK that they lose their potency, doing a disservice to the worthy recipient. Yet, despite such high praise, the AK rifle has only gained a small foothold of acceptance on American soil. Like a boxer past his prime, is it time for this legend to quietly slip into retirement?

The history and development of the AK rifle is a long and well-documented story, but 1974 was a particularly important year for the AK-pattern rifle. During the Vietnam War, the North Vietnamese captured examples of the new American M16 rifles and 5.56x45mm ammunition. It didn’t take long for the North Vietnamese to pass along the captured material to their Russian comrades for examination and testing. Once the Russians realized the full tactical and terminal potential of lightweight bullets driven at high velocities, it didn’t take the Russian design bureau long to develop their own equivalent cartridge.

In short order, the 5.45x39mm cartridge was born. But the new cartridge wasn’t the only improvement to the new rifle. The new AK-74 would feature a radical (for the time) muzzle brake to reduce recoil and improve accuracy when firing in the fully automatic mode. The Russians have always appreciated compensators and muzzle brakes on their weapons, dating back to the 1930s. Two of the best World War II submachine guns, the PPSh-41 and the PPS-43, both used integral muzzle brakes.