The 7.62x39mm cartridge is one of the most common rifle rounds on the planet. If you’ve not heard of the cartridge, you’ve probably heard about one of the rifles that fires it: the AK-47. The popularity of the AK series rifles comes as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the worldwide proliferation of the USSR’s suite of small arms. Today we will be taking a look at this legendary cartridge and what it offers. It’s going to get a bit complex, so let’s dive right in.

The 7.62x39mm is something of mixed bag today. The old days of $300 AK rifles are long gone. They’ve been replaced with a glut of AR-15 rifles that have reached a saturation point unlike anything we’ve ever seen. Good AK rifles are now American made and frequently better in many ways than their commie-made grandfathers.

Not long ago, I never would’ve imagined a day when I had to pay $1,500 to get a good AK. I also never imagined that I would be able to snatch up an AR for under $500, but I find cheap ones for less all the time. This rifle question is an important part of the 7.62x39mm cartridge as it is, even today, tied to the popularity of the AK rifle system. It’s truly a case of ‘for better or worse’.

This strange future we’re living in used to mean cheap 7.62x39mm ammo. In the Time Before, it could easily be found for about $.20 to $.25. No longer. You’ll look hart to beat $.47 per round these days. Buying in bulk gets you down around $.35 per round for steel cased rounds, but it can be hard to find.

So why would a person look at the 7.62x39mm instead of other options today? With .223 being about ten cents a round cheaper and 300 Blackout offering nearly identical ballistics (though at a higher price) in an AR platform, does the old Russian round still have a chance? It sure does, but it’s tricky.

Long ago, I wrote an article here titled, AR vs. AK: Why the 7.62×39’s Time has Come. I re-read it while writing this piece today and was surprised by how accurate my youthful self was. My writing quality was a bit iffy then (it still is according to some of you), but that article is, remarkably, still collecting comments six years later. I like that because I know that people are still talking about it, regardless if they consider me right or wrong

In the time since I wrote it, we’ve seen increased popularity of 300 Blackout, the challenges of foreign import shortages, and a gradual decline in the popularity of the cheap AK rifle…all things I somehow predicted would happen. I’ve made some incorrect predictions before as the sinless people here love to point out, but my first article on TTAG still holds up. So why would I believe that an ‘endangered’ cartridge is worth investing in today considering I felt that its time had come way back in 2012? Keep reading, my friends.

In that old article I theorized that the driving force behind the 7.62x39mm was cost and cost only. I saw it as a cheap cartridge offering good power that could be fired by cheap and reliable rifles. Today the scene has changed.

The quality of the AK rifle has gone up substantially in recent years, with many being made right here in America on precision machinery. The ammo cost has gone up, but it’s still generally affordable.

Today you can get a better $1,000 AK than you can a $1,000 AR. There are, of course, outliers to that statement, but it’s true for the most part. The AR and the .223/5.56 round has become what the AK and 7.62 used to be: the cheap everyday rifle for the Average Joe on a budget. You need to spend more coin for an AK these days, but the gun you get will outlast any $500 AR.

As I stated earlier, the 7.62x39mm is married to the success of the AK rifle. No AK, no 7.62x39mm. Sure, there are other guns chambered for it, but they aren’t in the public eye in the same way as the AK is. Look at what happened to the AK-74. When the import ban hit the 5.45mm ammo, the rifles were all but dumped. (5.45mm 7N6 can still be found out there, but in limited supply, which is too bad. It’s a great cartridge.)

The beginner out there looking at 7.62x39mm rifles has to understand that this relationship is what keeps this cartridge alive. The American shooter who owns an AK rifle rarely fires the good brass stuff through it. There will be some guy reading this who will pipe up to announce that he only shoots $2/round ammo, but he’s crazy. The average shooter wants that $0.30/round ammo and he wants lots of it. Unfortunately that means he’s tied to foreign imports, which can stop with no warning, thus spiking the price and decreasing availability of the ammo.

It’s my opinion that the recent ammo shortages and resulting dry spells have actually improved the quality of 7.62x39mm rifles. With fierce competition in price from .223/5.56 and .300 Blackout, the quality of the rifles simply had to rise to continue to attract customers.

In a world where the gun is $300 and the ammo is $0.78 a round, you won’t sell very many guns. People don’t want cheap guns with expensive blasting ammo. What people want is durable, reliable investments that will stand the test of time and can fire ammo of any quality.

Some of the best 7.62x39mm AK-style rifles made today come from Arsenal, Palmetto State, Century Arms, Atlantic Firearms, Rifle Dynamics, Krebs Custom, IWI and many, many more. There is also a market for custom AK rifles, with many being local build clubs.

Popular non-AK rifles chambered in 7.62x39mm include the Ruger Mini 30 (TTAG review coming soon), CMMG Mutant, CZ’s model 527 (a great bolt action rifle), and the SKS. These are all good guns and some are very, very accurate.

While we’re on the topic of accuracy, we need to understand that the 7.62x39mm’s accuracy is in fact, not fiction. The cartridge is quite accurate in an accurate gun. I’ve fired a CZ 527 that thought it was a custom .308 Win at 500 yards. We were using handloaded ammo that day with match brass and it was awesome.

I’ve also fired some junk AKs that couldn’t hold 15” at 100 yards with steel-cased ammo. Today’s milled receiver and custom AKs like the Century C39V2 will hold about 2” at 100 yards with good ammo and about 3-4” with cheaper stuff. It just depends on what quality you want to invest in here.

With regard to power, the 7.62x39mm falls between 300 Blackout and .30-30 Win with some overlap. It’s a very adequate cartridge for deer-sized game and hogs, with ammo like the Hornady SST pictured in the photo above being ideal. This ammo can be expensive relative to other 7.62 offerings, but it shoots great and is very, very accurate in most guns. The Ruger Mini 30 really loved it, but you’ll have to wait to see how it does in the upcoming review.

At the end of the day, I still have mixed opinions about the 7.62x39mm. It’s one of those rounds that has so much going on with it that you may never get the full picture. It’s very popular, but vulnerable to import restrictions. It’s quite accurate, but isn’t often fired from accurate guns. It’s powerful enough for most medium game, but is often a second choice to better-suited cartridges.

To fully grasp the 7.62x39mm is to be a student of history, current politics, mechanical tolerances, and basic economics. It’s a great cartridge and always will be. It has moved and even helped create nations. In a way, it shaped the world map as we know it far more than nuclear weapons ever have. If you pick this as a cartridge, you could certainly do a lot worse.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

67 COMMENTS

  1. There’s something EXTRA confounding about the 7.62Red… I worked up a load that shoots between 1.5 and 2.25 MOA on a really good day through a fire lapped, restocked, trigger-worked Russian SKS with the pushrod taken out so it’s basically a straight pull bolt. I could never get it to shoot under 3.5 MOA with steelcased import ammo nor “good” stuff that hornady used to make. Another shooter at the club can get under 2″ with trashy wolf steelcase out of his CZ, but the bolt closes hard on it with my handloads. I’ve never made a chamber casting for mine, but I’d bet that 7.62×39 foriegn made guns have “generously cut” chambers. Also, what is the bore size of newer mini 30s, didn’t they used to be . 308″?

    • “I’ve never made a chamber casting for mine, but I’d bet that 7.62×39 foriegn made guns have “generously cut” chambers.”

      I don’t know, but I suspect there’s a reason for that – A chamber cut on the ‘loose’ side won’t likely jam up if contaminated with dirt-sand-crap.

      “Also, what is the bore size of newer mini 30s, didn’t they used to be . 308″?”

      The Ruger Mini-30 I handled in the 80s was chambered in 7.62×39, specifically to exploit the vastly cheaper China ammo back then.

      The newer Mini-30 today chambers .300 BLK…

      • Geoff:
        I just checked the Ruger website. They list six (6) versions of the Mini 30 all in 7.62 x 39. I don’t see anything about a .300 BLK Mini 30 chambering.

    • Josh,
      What kind of drivel is this article?
      There are no American companies that make a good AK.
      Go on any AK website or the AK47 Reddit and you will see the universal opinion is that all American made AK’s are inferior to imports.
      And the Century c39 v2 has a nasty habit of self destructing.
      Century imports are ok but DO NOT BUY A CENTURY MADE AK!!!

      The jury is still out on the Palmetto State AK

      • Love my Century AK. Nothing fancy, but I’ve shot a pallet of ammo through it and it keeps on trucking with all kinds of mags, zero jams or misfires of any kind. For my purposes as a knock around the farm gun it’s a winner. Don’t believe everything you see on YouTube, well worth the $400 I spent nearly 10 years ago.

  2. I know many with Lee-Enfields converted to 7.62×39 who swear the Chinese copperwash steel case is the best and they pay $2 a round for it.

    I laugh using my 30c .223 reloads.

  3. “Popular non-AK rifles chambered in 7.62x39mm include the Ruger Mini 30 (TTAG review coming soon),…”

    Didn’t Ruger drop the Mini-30 and replaced it with a .300 BLK version? With a threaded barrel would be even more sweet.

    I still think a Mini-30 in stainless with that reproduction stainless folding stock makes for a dandy throw-behind-the-seat of your truck and forget about for a few years rifle…

  4. While I am a great fan of the 7.62×39 and the AK riffle it is not worth $500.
    To pay $1,500 I would get something else.
    Now that theBiden is threatening economic sanctions on China perhaps we will get them NORINCO’s imported again.

    • I’d rather that we import herr Biden to China, via a mysterious looking weather balloon 🎈

      • unicorn:
        You mean “export,” but I get the idea. And… maybe we can get the Air Force to shoot that balloon down once it drifts out over the Atlantic.

  5. The 7.62X39 is a good cartridge. It is also one of those rare cartridges that does exactly what it was designed to do. And does it perfectly. Especially in the platforms it was designed to function in. I prefer the SKS to the AK. If you want a nice AK buy a Valmet, or an Israeli made Galil.

    • Nothing wrong with a good high quality AyK, kind of partial to Rad0m & WB(e)P.

      @JWT

      Since when? Not a single US produced AyK derivative passed a 5k round test without nearing or experiencing a catastrophic failure until the very newest PSA offerings which finally paired S7 hardened steel like it should have since the beginning.

      Given their past history, I still won’t touch a PSAK until a long proven track record since the massive failure rate historically has proven them unsafe. Chamber erosion, out of battery detonations, or just beating their sub-par cast trunnions and poor quality rivets to literal death are the long storied tale of US AyK’s. Trust isn’t regained that easily.

      Century’s own builds are, and always have been a danger filled shit-tastic adventures in crapping their own pants. Only the parts kit builders from imports really are any good.

  6. I do have to ask. When did the Soviets load 7.62X39 with Horrnady Ballistic Tip bullets?

    • ” When did the Soviets load 7.62X39 with Horrnady Ballistic Tip bullets?”

      They haven’t yet (as far as I know).

      Ever since the bans on steel-cased eastern bloc ammo a number of years back, American ammo companies have been producing 7.62X39 brass and loading them. And it damn sure isn’t priced like the old steel-cased stuff.

      EDIT- And I think some American companies (Palmetto State Armory, in particular) are producing new steel-cased stuff.

      “PSA has already made a substantial investment into the project, which according to Atlantic Firearms was used to purchase the tooling and know-how from an unnamed Eastern European ammunition manufacturer. It will be interesting to eventually find out the origin of Palmetto’s new machinery and knowledge.”

      https://gundigest.com/article/psa-tooling-up-for-domestic-steel-cased-ammo-production

        • Hornady USED to load up 125(?) gr. SST bullets (ballistic tip copy) into nice brass, then maybe 10-ish years back changed to load to “black” ammunition line done up in steel cases… wish they’d have left the recipe alone. I originally bought them for around $46/1000, but those days are long gone, I recently saw the new load for $29/50, and that was on closeout.

        • I’m not going to bother with a rewrite, but if my answer to the above reappears, see if you can find the one word that got it sent to moderation pergutory.

        • dammit, I was hoping we’d be starting a new challenge… I was gonna guess that you were disparaging “Soviet”, but that didnt appear, so maybe
          “black”??

    • exactly
      its basically a cheap and effective round
      and it aint going away anytime soon
      so might as well have something decent to run it in

    • And I just bought another 10round Pmag I don’t want. In 556. Boch can claim all he wants the ILLANNOY Dim ban is unconstitutional. No shop will (legally) sell me a forbidden magazine or rifle(there’s quite an underground out there-look at the war on drugs failure). Ak’s will wait. As will semiautomatic shotguns🙄AR’s kill just fine…

      • Can always go for the 10/30’s that are totally not immediately convertible. With any luck we will be buying cheap standard and beyond capacity before the decade is out.

  9. truth be told
    the best part of the ak
    was always the 7.62×39 round itself
    otherwise there wouldnt be the industry that there is
    dedicated solely to making the ak better
    mostly by making it more like an ar
    and now that all of the bugs have been worked out of using the 7.62×39 in the ar platform
    there really is no significant need
    for the ak platform anymore
    except maybe for meeting the needs of certain people
    that insist on paying at least twice as much
    in order to get basically the same thing

    • I had a deposit on a PWS 7.62×39 upper. (They were hard to find at the time. Having a deposit meant you were first in line.) After the Russian ammo ban, I told him I didn’t want it. He was kind enough to refund my deposit.

  10. There are more than a few AR-15 uppers out there chambered for the 7.62×39. They will shoot steel cased ammo reliably, if they have an enhanced firing pin, an extra power hammer spring, and a proper magazine.

  11. “Not long ago, I never would’ve imagined a day when I had to pay $1,500 to get a good AK.”

    American gun buyers fail, repeatedly, to understand that the purchasing power of the US Dollar has been purposely gutted by the Federal Reserve.

    Let’s say that the Fed’s inflation target of 2% per annum is held, consistently, year after year. What would happen? Your purchasing power with the USD would be cut in half in 30-odd years.

    Gun buyers are either going to have to admit that the USD is quickly going the way of Zimbabwe’s former currency, or they’re going to have to start buying guns and ammo with something a good deal more stable.

    In the 1930’s, a man could flip an ounce of gold on the counter and purchase a pretty nice gun or suit for the day. He can still do the same thing today.

    As to the 7.62×39: One of the reasons for the AK’s legendary reliability is this cartridge. Look at how steeply the case walls of the cartridge taper from the base to the shoulder. That aids in extraction significantly, especially in a dirty chamber.

    • Part of this is regulation based though. If you look at what’s happened over times the ATF has made it progressively more and more of a headache to import kits; The receiver cuts have gotten worse and you can’t import barrels and more for semi autos with the kits.

      There’s also 922R, which means you’re having to (re) make parts for a semi auto compliance. I did a CETME C build and it added likely 2-300 bucks to it maintain that compliance.

      That says nothing of the 7N5 ban, the Chinese arms ban and the Russian Arms ban.

      • “…the ATF has made it progressively more and more of a headache to import kits; The receiver cuts have gotten worse and you can’t import barrels and more for semi autos with the kits.”

        We need to attack that using the ‘Bruen’ standard… 🙂

    • “American gun buyers fail, repeatedly, to understand that the purchasing power of the US Dollar has been purposely gutted by the Federal Reserve. ”

      This is absolutely true and the whole issue. 40% of all U.S. dollars in existence were printed by the Federal Reserve in 2020 and is it any wonder that an AK47 has doubled in price since 2012? What was a $500 WASR in 2010 is $950 right now and what used to be a $700 Arsenal in 2010 is $1900 now too. It was even still possible to get a “new” Century parts kit built AK47 like the AK63DS with an actual proper forged Hungarian trunnion for around $500 as recently as 2016. You can apply this basic “PriceX2” formula to most things since 2020 like food and cars as well. The high gun prices we have now are because of a problem with our currency and not because of a problem with our firearms market.

      Also, reading this article was painful. All of the information the author provides about American made AK47’s is completely wrong. American made AK47’s are not good guns and readers would do well to not to buy them at all. Some poor individual is going to read this article and buy a lemon because they don’t know any better.

      For example, the whole reason there is even a “C39V2” in the first place is because the original “C39” kept shearing the locking lugs on it’s cast bolts and exploding. Also remember that the “RAS47” AK rifle that Century Arms made was so bad that even a “V2” couldn’t save it so they just renamed the “improved” version as the “VSKA” which is still made and sold by Century to this day. It was really telling when I started to see never assembled RAS47 front trunnions with the locking lugs milled off being sold for $19 at APEX Gun Parts as a “project part” because Century needed to get their money back somehow on all the failed cast trunnions and the lugs had to be milled off in order to sell them because they knew that they would fail if used to build a normal rifle.

      In fact, Century is still torch cutting their failed U.S. made AK receivers and selling them to APEX who will then sell them to you for $59.

      https://www.apexgunparts.com/ak-trigger-guard-w-rear-trunnion-demilled-receiver-us-made-as-is.html

      If you, dear reader, want a good AK47 your best bet will be to just pay the full price for a WASR 10 or Zastava. Zastava even has a growing variety of 5.56 AK’s if you want to completely avoid all of this authors speculation on the 7.62×39 cartridge entirely.

      For the truth about American made AK47’s with data to back it up, please refer to this link:

      https://thinlineweapons.com/wiki/index.php/USA_Made_Issues

      -anonymous

  12. ppsh, Tokerav, Mosin, AK, SKS.
    All using the same barrel borer.
    Pretty neat idea in times of War.

  13. Although more and more states are banning the use and sale of lead wheel weights there are still a lot of them around for sale. You can make good low cost bullets out of them if you know how and blend the wheel weights with tin or old linotype metal.

    When the first Finnish Valmet AK 47’s came into the U.S. ammo was almost impossible to find in any quantity or reasonable prices. I immediately had a custom mold maker make me a mold for the AK 47 and I deliberately (after an argument with the mold maker) had him make the mold oversize because I planned on using it both in the AK and on other caliber military rifles. The man who made the mold was a mold maker not a shooter like myself and he believed the old wives tales from no nothing gun writers that casting a bullet to bore size or a maximum of 1 thousandth oversize gave the best accuracy. BULLSHIT. I had my mold made 3 thousandths oversize as I have found that no bore is uniform , they all have loose and tight spots and when gas escapes around the sides of the bullet this is what causes leading not the melting of the base of the bullet which can also even be gas checked to stop any lead from melting at all at the base.

    Unfortunately the days of casting cheap lead bullets are all but almost over as lead wheel weights are not only being banned in many states, but linotype has also become a thing of the past which is necessary to keep the lead thin enough to fill out the bullet grooves in the mold.

    I have not checked recently but at one time one could even order hard lead in bars for bullet casting. It was a mix of lead, antimony and tin. Of course this was way more expensive than using your own wheel weights and tin or linotype metal.

    The other gun writer myth is that you cannot expect as good of accuracy as you can with jacketed bullets. This is only partially true. If shots are limited to 100 yards lead bullets in rifles can be as accurate as match jacketed bullets but velocity with lead bullets has to be much less , usually under 1900 fps.

    I have used lead in the .223, 22-250, 220 Swift, 222 Rem, 222 Rem Mag, 7.62×39, .308, 7×57, 7.7 Japanese, 6.5 japanese, 6.5 Swedish, 6.5 Mannlicher, 7.65 Argentine, 8mm Mauser, and 8mm Siamese and 7.5×55 Swiss. I am sure I left some of them out. But all shot well with properly made lead bullets.

    One interesting story was making lead bullets shoot out of my German Luger. I played with lead bullets in the pistol for around 20 years before I got serious in making a load that would work as well as jacketed bullets. I found out my problem was the correct amount and type of powder (Unique) as well as using a non sticky lube. Using Alox 50/50 was a disaster as the sticky stuff would jam up my Luger in about 4 rounds. I finally used the old and now defunct Red Rooster Rifle plastic Lube on the 9×19 lead bullets which worked like a charm. It worked well in all the other military pistol calibers as well.

    The AK and SKS both work well with properly made lead bullets.

    The AK’s like the older Finnish Valmet and Chinese Polytech had forged receivers (not the more common stamped sheet metal receiver) and they gave outstanding accuracy.

    Strangely enough the most accurate factory ammo I ever used in 7.62×39 was Chinese Yellow Box non-corrosive ammo. No factory ammo I have used before or since ever equaled it except of course my own jacketed handloads.

    And I might add that the other myth is that the AK never jams. Again pure myth. I once tried some Ball C2 powder in my Ak and used 150 grain surplus bullets and I got only a partial powder burn that jammed the gun up after the first shot proving that a contaminate in the chamber jams up the AK as quick as it does any other military rifle.

    I saw one interesting video of an AK stomped in the mud alongside an AR15. The AR fired off the entire magazine and the AK jammed up after 1 shot. The AR’s smaller ejection port and dust cover sealed out the mud while the AK’s dust cover did not keep enough mud out of the action. Again another myth broken as seeing is believing. This is one I hated to report on because I have always hated the AR with a passion. Yes the AR works well when it is clean but gets dirty way too fast when firing it, then it does jam, especially in the rain. I fired enough NRA “across the course” matches in the rain to make this statement. Although liberal doses of LSA fluid certainly did help the AR in the rain. Break Free CLP was also good. The AK had no such problems in the rain and needed no such exotic fluids to keep it running. And no, I did not use the AK in NRA across the course shooting.

    Lets face facts do you really need a jacketed bullet traveling at 3,000 fps to punch a hole in a paper target at 100 yards when a lead bullet traveling slower will do the same and with very good accuracy and be way cheaper as well.

    One side bar. I was sitting at a gun show one afternoon back in the dead hand of the past when a plane load of SKS rifles landed in Columbus, Ohio and later we bought these SKS rifles for only $60.00 each. That was the lowest price I ever paid or saw for an SKS rifle. Certainly the good old days.

    The nail in the coffin of military surplus rifles came when Nato demanded that all European surplus military rifles be destroyed so they could not be sold to civilians. A friend of mine said “We will never see low cost surplus military rifles again as those days are gone with the wind”. He died a few years later and since he only lived to buy military surplus perhaps it was probably all for the better for him.

    As for myself I now shoot .22 rimfire. Strange that when you are young your first rifle is a .22 rimfire and when you get old and no longer enjoy being belted in the shoulder by a high power rifle you come full circle and return to shooting the lowly .22 rimfire, only the prices have changed. A box of .22’s that I once bought for .50 cents is now $20.00. I sometimes think I had more fun as a kid when I did not know the more expensive ammo shot so much better but back in the day even the expensive stuff was not $20.00.

    • Does anybody believe any of this ‘experience’ was lived by dacian? Anybody?

      • Hey Jethro the Moron we “real Americans” need our guns to protect ourselves from racist, jackbooted stormtroopers like you. We will never let you establish a one party jackbooted state with your lord God Herr Drumpf (the Donald) as dictator for life. Your assault on the Capital failed miserably didn’t it.

        • 2 points dacian. Or rather 3. 1. You were doxxed. If you were born before 1980 it would surprise me. I’ve seen your facebook, jerry p. of canton ohio.

          2. You’re the fascist storm trooper, dacian. Why aren’t you in Atlanta being arrested for domestic terrorism like your fellow ss/antifa?

          3. I was no where near DC on 1/6. Had I been things well may have ended differently.

        • to Jethro

          quote———–3. I was no where near DC on 1/6. Had I been things well may have ended differently.———–quote

          Oh tell us another one Jethro this is hilarious. Jethro now claims he would have single handedly stormed the capital and won and established a 1 party state. Thanks for being honest about what kind of guy you really are. Again now you know why we “normal Americans” need guns to protect ourselves from people like you. Remember the FBI stated quite correctly guys like you (far right wing stormtroopers) are the greatest danger to American freedom and democracy.

        • dacian. Again. Your goebbels school of propaganda degree is showing. All I said was things may have ended differently. You pissed yourself in excitement and made up another, in a long list of, lie.

          And again. You are the storm trooper. You are the fascist. If you represent ‘normal’ then there is no hope for America.

        • He’s been reading his NKVD interrogation handbook and is trying to tease information out of you. He tried it on me a while ago but his methods are really ham fisted. I’ve had better people than the little commissar try.

        • Totally unnecessary and out of the bounds of rational discourse! What is the matter with you???

    • I’ll take ‘shit that never happened for $1000.00 Alex’
      Jesus dude – stop making up shit

      • “Remember the FBI stated quite correctly guys like you (far right wing stormtroopers) are the greatest danger to American freedom and democracy.”- Dacian
        If the FIB wants to find the greatest danger to American freedom and democracy, they need only look in a mirror. Their long record of political thuggery speaks for itself.

  14. I would be very interested in purchasing a high-quality, US-made AK-47, and I’d be willing to pay good money for it, too… but only if it’s in 7.62×35.

    If someone builds it- I’ll buy it.

  15. Yes. Price was the driver of the success.

    However, the complicated beginnings of the M16 gave the AK a boost in publicity. As Ian McCollum has observed, the AR15 has had 60+ years of development and refinement. It is now the best standard issue rifle in the world for trained militaries. The AK legend came about because of McNamara’s accountants screwing around with weapon designs and the Army absolutely botching the training/implementation. Former Soviet Bloc countries have tried and failed to improve or update the AK. Tightening up the tolerances takes away the maintenance-free cache. You cannot take away the one thing that makes something special and still think it is special.

    In 1988, my unit got our first rotation through the opponent weapons training. I could not believe how bad the AK grouped. It could not hit a barn wall from the inside.

    • “Tightening up the tolerances takes away the maintenance-free cache. You cannot take away the one thing that makes something special and still think it is special.”

      Exactly. Kalashnikov valued reliability above all else. The typical village kid had to be able with nearly no training, to keep it functional.

      And that’s where the slightly-oversized chamber comes into play…

  16. A well built $1,000 AK is designed to fire 25,000 without maintenance. Just saying.

    As soon as the Biden administration is dethroned cheap AK ammo will be plentiful, they banned it’s importation from Russia which was a decent chunk of the market. They claim it was to punish Russia but we all know it was to further harass gun owners.
    I would much rather spend $0.25 per round than $1 to shoot 7.62×39 than .300 blackout

  17. i have a cheap Optics Planet Trybe AR upper in 7.62×39. shoots 2 inches at 100 yards with Winchester Whitebox. My handloads with Hornady SST and Interlock shoot sub-moa. I have a Century Zastava m70. The whitebox shoots closer to 4 inches usually at 100 but I occasionally get 2 inches. I havent fired my handloads out of it yet…the AK beats up brass.

  18. Never been a fan of the AK. But I’ve got a boat load of SKSs and love them all. I have not found that accuracy to 100 yards is problematic. I don’t expect the round to do much after that anyway; so managed expectations. Both the SKS and the 7.62×39 are “bullet proof” and make a really good SHTF platform and you really got to love that humungous gas tube! The darn things will run for ever; Energizer Bunnies they be.

  19. To me, one of the hidden gems about 7.62×39 is the efficiency of the round when fired from short barrels. Like 300BLK, it seems to fair quite well when the tube is shortened considerably in comparison to 5.56.

    Apologies if posted elsewhere….

  20. I was fortunate enough to load up on 7.62×39 for my two SKS rifles when both the rifles and ammo were still affordable. Love the round, but it’s now too expensive to add to my inventory for just those two rifles. My focused has now switch to stocking up on .223 while it’s still well-priced.

  21. I have a 10.5″ ar pistol upper from BCA chambered in 7.62×39 that has run great with 20 round cmags. They use the feedramp design for 300 black out which seems to be the key. The gun puts a smile on everyone’s face when they shoot it. The float rail is much better than typical wood ak style furniture and allows a modern c clamp. It is the poor person’s 300 bo and I have been able to find steel cased for .30-35 cents still. Got a bunch of Global Ordinance steel from PSA for $7 a box in December in fact.

  22. I think it is hilarious, in the last few months I’ve seen dozens of sites claiming their 7.62×39 Russian made ammo they had “CURRENTLY IN STOCK” was the last “OF THE RUSSIAN” available..

    Lone behold they run out and within days, they have more listed for sale!!!

    Russian ammo is still being brought in!!!!

  24. 762×39 vs 300 blackout energy’s
    Blackout is in the 1300 range and 762×39 is in 2000 range. A lot of people over look the 762×39 for the 300 blackout But unless your shooting suppressed I think it’s a missed call.

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