Returning back to the original (Sort of)

Last week I was sorting out some bins and boxes stacked in the garage since we moved to TN 4 years ago and I found one with a bunch of Balkan conflict AK mags and the old furniture for my post ban WASR 10.

If you don’t remember or don’t know, the post ban WASRs were literally thrown out of the production line of Century Arms and were infamous for having a severely canted front sight among other small maladies like not having the correct thread for the muzzle brake which led to the destruction of the darned things. The people running Century Arms back then also had issues with their version of CEMTES and Saigas which led to certain blogger you should know to come up with a meme celebrating their workmanship.

And to be clear and fair, the people running C.A. back then have been long gone and I believe the actual crowd are not doing a bad job.

Back to my WASR. I guess it was 20 years ago or so when spent all of $320 for the rifle and two 30 round magazines and I was lucky to get one that had no front sight issues and shot AK accurate. Of course, I could not just leave it like it was, so like many others back in the day, I started to screw around with it. The sights suck, so I got a side-mounted Picatinny rail and a TruGlo red dot that are still installed because they worked. Then I perused the TAPCO catalog and a plastic Galil-style handguard and pistol grip. The plastic buttstock was from another outfit that had a better reputation than TAPCO, but the name escapes me.

So, when I found that bin with the old furniture and mags, I thought why not revert it back to almost originally status. And I did.

The wooden handguard with the pistol grip is not original to the gun. I was lucky to bump into somebody selling Polish AK parts online and got me one and after very careful application of Dremel, I rounded it out and added finger grooves.

And, I had forgotten the delight to is working with an AK and its specialized tools included in the bottom of the second picture. Missing is a small piece of 12o grit sandpaper I used to remove a spot of rust on the buttstock sling loop. I re=oiled following the advice of a friend: “AKs are like a kinky girlfriend: Drench in oil and spank them hard.”

You will laugh, but I followed that rule and that rifle has never failed me plus kept me warm and fuzzy through several hurricanes by changing the minds of not-too-smart “yutes” trying to capitalize in a post-storm illegal treasure hunt.

Damn, it looks pretty.