Love my Styer Maadi. Most accurate Ak I had. Will stay on a coffee cup at 100 and 1-1/2 inch gropus from 1st shot to the 30th shot, barrel just warm under rapid fire. Had all kinds and have not seen similar performance even in high priced guns like Robinson Armament Vepr and Arsenal. In fact one Arsenal SLR model was the worst in my opinion. With steel jacket ammo will overheat just as bad as the mini 30 and the groups will open up into a shotgun pattern. I have seen a lot of junk guns that look like AK's starting with the home built and modified "Bubba" tacticools that can fire as many as 5 rds out of a full 30rds mag before getting stuck. One had a broken shell case welded into the chamber. I have seen a lot of people at the range pulling their hair with a confused look on their face attempting to figure out what the heck did I just spent over $1000 for. Many more are out there waiting to find out. They have rushed to buy during the panic without doing any research, could not buy ammo to test fire and just fixing to find out the hard way. The AK reliability is based on the ORIGINAL military specs rifles not "sporters". Calling the sporterized commercial rifles AK's is like calling the multitude of AR-15's as M-16's. Very few AR-15 like the AK's based actions are close to mil-specs but not true mil specs because of the limitations imposed on commercial market.
Your opinion Ranking AK-47(Semiauto version)
- Thread starter ECJ62
- Start date
They Russians quickly went to the stamped receivers because the heat build up in the milled receivers was to much. Thus, part of the "fire under any circumstances" myth surrounding the AK stems from the use of stamped receivers, not milled. Otherwise, your post proves my point, stamped is the most widely used receiver BY FAR. Even if some stamped receivers are a bit thicker. Still stamped.
Arsenals are probably the nicest non Russian AKs. The Arsenal SGL series, which are Arsenal converted Saigas are perhaps the best deal going for an AK.
sad but true.
Quickly is a relative term. AKM did not come out till 1959, so it's 8 years for the milled receiver.
That's a first time I heard about heat built up in milled AK as a reason for switching to stamped receivers. Cost savings was one, and the ability to handle physical stress from full-auto better was another. That's the story told in Russian army.
As far as the "myth", I've seen an AK-74 dragged thru thick mud, tied to UAZ, it was shaken afterwards to get rid of the biggest chunks of mud, mag inserted and gun fired until the mag was empty.
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while not everybody likes them, my personal fave are the yugos. Ive run mine hard. zero issues. Like anything you get what you pay for.
I'm with Taticalmountaineer, I love WASRs for what they are intended to do. never had any accuracy or reliability issues in any of mine 
