Mike at Cheaper Than Dirt's blog has a good article about the experience he had at a class went to a couple of weeks ago. He is normally an AR shooter classes but decided to run his homebuilt AK for a class. He has some great observations of checking gear, going to classes to test gear, and the platform in general. With ARs failing around him mostly due to the muddy conditions, he finally had stuck case in his Romanian kit AK. There were a couple of ARs that made it through the case malfunction free.
My Monday morning quarterbacking points. One is that you need the jag or the brush buttstock tool kit to make the cleaning rod long enough! I always either have it in the stock or in a pocket when I have a folding stock. Second, have a broken case remover as well in case you tear of the case head which can happen too. If you do things right you can often squeeze those removers in the buttstock kit. Third, do you know all the amazing things that little kit can do to an AK? Jim Fuller's Armorer's videos describe a lot of things they can do as does the Romanian AK reference site (review coming soon on Panteao's Fuller Armorer DVD) Fourth, I wonder if he would have been using gear more designed for AKs like a US Palm chest rig or even their MOLLE shingles if this could have been avoided. He had to switch mags with the rounds up to avoid the mag latches from dragging, which then exposed the magazines to the mud. I don't know if the mud on the top rounds then junked up the chamber enough to cause it or it was enough build up of lacquer and polymer in the chamber to make it stick. (UPDATE: Mike replied to my comment saying that he thinks that they used the same magazines over and over without retaining them, just dropping them to the mud is what got everything so dirty, says the cleaning afterwards was "epic") Lastly, make sure you do give the chamber a good brushing from time to time to help prevent these malfunctions!
Hat tip to Say Uncle for linking it!
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