Boris
Son of Kalashnikov
Warning: the following is for entertainment purposes only. Do not attempt to duplicate or imitate, you may get killed, arrested, possibly deported, don’t try it at home or anywhere else!
After reading another depressing issue of Pravda on all the problems comrade Obama is having with apparatchiks in the congress I passed out and woke up with a burning desire to build an AK. A few swigs of vodka helped with the burning, but desire to scratch build an AK remained. I ordered a few flats with pre-bent top rails. Flats go for about $20 and +$5 gets ‘em rails bent. Considering how much bending and grinding needed to get them done, I figured it’s well worth the $5. The jigs to bend flats are considerably more expensive. Some go for almost $300. You may think that it’s crazy how these capitalist pigs are taking advantage of the proletariat, but I was thinking that for the same money I can order another AK kit. So here I am botching a jig together.
I am starting with hefty angle iron that’s almost ¼” thick. If you think that you can take your bed frame apart to make yours, you are as clueless as Putin reading the Bill of Rights. … unless we are talking about the bed frame of your mother in-law which is reinforced for her weight. In that case, you better have an AK built before she realizes that you sawed her bed in half. I am using 3/8” bolts on each side to control the width of the base. The easy way to accomplish this is to grab scraps of the black iron pipe (from that spare moonshine still) that fits over the bolts and cut them to about 32mm, which should be around the width of your AK trunions. You can use them as spacers to consistently get the desired width.
The bending jig includes two bars that sandwich the receiver flat. I am using Aluminum because it’s easy to machine and cast. Steel would last considerably longer, but we are not setting up an AK factory, eh comrade? Unlike beer cans used to distribute watered down, tasteless beer, some casting aluminum alloys have compressive strength that’s close to steel, however they are as brittle as my balance after Friday’s trip to a liquor store when I’m as high as the sputnik. I’m using my own mix of pistons, lawn chairs, AR lowers and 7 herbs and spices for a custom alloy which is so secret that even I don’t know what it is.
You may also ask, why this comrade having a milling machine, not machine bars from solid Ali stock? Well, it’s almost impossible to find good, hard alloy in billet form. Also, while milling a bar, it’s hard to maintain uniform thickness from end to end. It’s possible if you got an excellent mill with no play, sharp bits and wide clamping setup. If you do, you can probably afford to just buy a good AK.
Before casting the two bars, I grab a thick steel plate and make sure that it’s level on the ground. It helps keeping molten aluminum leveled.
Then I fire up my Siberian coffee maker. If you think that burner is small … it is. I got a much bigger one. However, even this little bugger wolfs down up to 10 liters of kero / hour which is … a lot of gallons. Don’t fret, we won’t use much, little sh1t is quick to produce lots of heat and more noise than me dual wielding Mosin Nagants.
I’m using petrobond foundry sand on either end of the base to keep molten Ali in.
After I cast top bar, I am taking the jig apart and add a washer for each bolt.
Washer adds about 2.5 mm to the width. With Ali shrinking, that will give me a bottom bar that’s slightly wider than the top bar, so that receiver can wrap around it as it plunges into the base. Here is the final bottom bar gravity cast.
After both bars are cast I milled the tops slightly flat to keep it classy, also it helps with drilling straight holes through.
First I put the receiver flat over the top bar and mark where four bolts will go. It doesn’t have to be precise, just as long as you can position the flat perfectly in the middle later.
I drill the holes through the top part first. Because top bar is slightly thinner than the bottom bar, I clamp them in the base jig and use spacers made from scraps of sheet metal to keep them aligned perfectly.
Then I drill in to mark where the holes will go into the bottom bar. Once the holes are marked, it’s easier to drill the holes once the bar is out of the jig. Now we should have well aligned top and bottom bars.
Receiver flats have dimples that will get squeezed against the sides of the bar when we are bending the flat. Thus, I milled the channels so that I can pull the receiver off the top bar. Again, it doesn’t have to be super precise, they could be dremelled out or chiseled out with hammer and a sickle.
Sandwich the flat between the top and the bottom bar. With bolts finger tight, use a caliper to measure how much flat is protruding from under the top bar. It has to be perfectly even on both sides. Use a small hammer to tap sides to get it right. Tighten the bolts and grease the jig up. I’m using whatever heavy grease I found first, in this case black colored Vaseline. Position bar/flat sandwich into the base jig and tighten the bolts so that the bottom bar can still slide down under pressure.
Pressure needed to bend 1mm flat is not that great. Here I’m using 6tonne A press from HF (made with pride by Obama’s friends in China), which is the cheapest press you can get. That’s plenty of pressure and the entire process of going down should take less time than I can wash down a few potatoes down with a bottle of vodka, i.e. under a minute.
One greasy receiver, ready to go.
I have not seen results from other bending jigs of similar design. The bends don’t look super sharp, like you would get on a press brake. They look adequate, so we’ll see how everything else will line up.
Coming up next: spot welding rails and heat treating with vodka!
After reading another depressing issue of Pravda on all the problems comrade Obama is having with apparatchiks in the congress I passed out and woke up with a burning desire to build an AK. A few swigs of vodka helped with the burning, but desire to scratch build an AK remained. I ordered a few flats with pre-bent top rails. Flats go for about $20 and +$5 gets ‘em rails bent. Considering how much bending and grinding needed to get them done, I figured it’s well worth the $5. The jigs to bend flats are considerably more expensive. Some go for almost $300. You may think that it’s crazy how these capitalist pigs are taking advantage of the proletariat, but I was thinking that for the same money I can order another AK kit. So here I am botching a jig together.
I am starting with hefty angle iron that’s almost ¼” thick. If you think that you can take your bed frame apart to make yours, you are as clueless as Putin reading the Bill of Rights. … unless we are talking about the bed frame of your mother in-law which is reinforced for her weight. In that case, you better have an AK built before she realizes that you sawed her bed in half. I am using 3/8” bolts on each side to control the width of the base. The easy way to accomplish this is to grab scraps of the black iron pipe (from that spare moonshine still) that fits over the bolts and cut them to about 32mm, which should be around the width of your AK trunions. You can use them as spacers to consistently get the desired width.
The bending jig includes two bars that sandwich the receiver flat. I am using Aluminum because it’s easy to machine and cast. Steel would last considerably longer, but we are not setting up an AK factory, eh comrade? Unlike beer cans used to distribute watered down, tasteless beer, some casting aluminum alloys have compressive strength that’s close to steel, however they are as brittle as my balance after Friday’s trip to a liquor store when I’m as high as the sputnik. I’m using my own mix of pistons, lawn chairs, AR lowers and 7 herbs and spices for a custom alloy which is so secret that even I don’t know what it is.
You may also ask, why this comrade having a milling machine, not machine bars from solid Ali stock? Well, it’s almost impossible to find good, hard alloy in billet form. Also, while milling a bar, it’s hard to maintain uniform thickness from end to end. It’s possible if you got an excellent mill with no play, sharp bits and wide clamping setup. If you do, you can probably afford to just buy a good AK.
Before casting the two bars, I grab a thick steel plate and make sure that it’s level on the ground. It helps keeping molten aluminum leveled.
Then I fire up my Siberian coffee maker. If you think that burner is small … it is. I got a much bigger one. However, even this little bugger wolfs down up to 10 liters of kero / hour which is … a lot of gallons. Don’t fret, we won’t use much, little sh1t is quick to produce lots of heat and more noise than me dual wielding Mosin Nagants.
I’m using petrobond foundry sand on either end of the base to keep molten Ali in.
After I cast top bar, I am taking the jig apart and add a washer for each bolt.
Washer adds about 2.5 mm to the width. With Ali shrinking, that will give me a bottom bar that’s slightly wider than the top bar, so that receiver can wrap around it as it plunges into the base. Here is the final bottom bar gravity cast.
After both bars are cast I milled the tops slightly flat to keep it classy, also it helps with drilling straight holes through.
First I put the receiver flat over the top bar and mark where four bolts will go. It doesn’t have to be precise, just as long as you can position the flat perfectly in the middle later.
I drill the holes through the top part first. Because top bar is slightly thinner than the bottom bar, I clamp them in the base jig and use spacers made from scraps of sheet metal to keep them aligned perfectly.
Then I drill in to mark where the holes will go into the bottom bar. Once the holes are marked, it’s easier to drill the holes once the bar is out of the jig. Now we should have well aligned top and bottom bars.
Receiver flats have dimples that will get squeezed against the sides of the bar when we are bending the flat. Thus, I milled the channels so that I can pull the receiver off the top bar. Again, it doesn’t have to be super precise, they could be dremelled out or chiseled out with hammer and a sickle.
Sandwich the flat between the top and the bottom bar. With bolts finger tight, use a caliper to measure how much flat is protruding from under the top bar. It has to be perfectly even on both sides. Use a small hammer to tap sides to get it right. Tighten the bolts and grease the jig up. I’m using whatever heavy grease I found first, in this case black colored Vaseline. Position bar/flat sandwich into the base jig and tighten the bolts so that the bottom bar can still slide down under pressure.
Pressure needed to bend 1mm flat is not that great. Here I’m using 6tonne A press from HF (made with pride by Obama’s friends in China), which is the cheapest press you can get. That’s plenty of pressure and the entire process of going down should take less time than I can wash down a few potatoes down with a bottle of vodka, i.e. under a minute.
One greasy receiver, ready to go.
I have not seen results from other bending jigs of similar design. The bends don’t look super sharp, like you would get on a press brake. They look adequate, so we’ll see how everything else will line up.
Coming up next: spot welding rails and heat treating with vodka!
![[rofl]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/013.gif "ROFL [rofl]")
this is by far the best thread I've ever read on this forum.
![[grin]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/041.gif "Grin [grin]")
![[smile]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/001.gif "Smile [smile]")
![[laugh]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/012.gif "Laugh [laugh]")
