AK Rifles banner

Experts! What barrel should I try to find for an IZHMASH AKM build?

17K views 51 replies 9 participants last post by  tanakasan 
#1 · (Edited)
I'm shopping for a barrel to use for a 1969 Izhmash AKM build (Rguns kit). Authenticity is important to me, I plan on getting the 74uLLC receiver based on reviews in this forum. I've heard that virgin Romy barrels are good. Does that just mean an unused surplus barrel? What about the US nitride barrels, or non chrome lined US barrels? I'm not in a hurry, I have the kit and I will shop for the perfect barrel. But first I need to get educated on what the perfect barrel is. Thank you for your educated opinions.
 
#2 · (Edited)
scour the marketplace on here and other forums for a Russian barrel, they are not common at all but pop up once in a blue moon. if the Russian isn't an option get a Bulgarian virgin barrel. If authenticity is important, stay away from US barrels.

Romy barrels for sale on the Files. these are not mine by the way
http://www.akfiles.com/forums/showthread.php?t=190808
 
#4 ·
I think your best bet would be one of the virgin Romanian barrels, preferably one with this stamp -



(pulled that from google, sorry if I stole someone's pic)

The Russian's proofed their barrels with that same stamp generally, so a lot of people think they were supplied by Russia. Every time I've seen the topic get brought up though no one really knowledgeable has confirmed it that I've seen. Either way, they are pretty much the best alternative barrels for a Russian AKM build IMO. They run about $200-$250.

Apex is currently selling pulled/used Romy barrels - https://www.apexgunparts.com/product_info.php/cPath/57/products_id/4440 but it sounds like this is an important build to you, so I'd wait for a virgin one to come along. I don't know of anyone in stock with them at the moment but keep checking the WTS. Hope that helps
 
  • Like
Reactions: Tantal
#6 ·
I think your best bet would be one of the virgin Romanian barrels, preferably one with this stamp -



(pulled that from google, sorry if I stole someone's pic)

The Russian's proofed their barrels with that same stamp generally, so a lot of people think they were supplied by Russia. Every time I've seen the topic get brought up though no one really knowledgeable has confirmed it that I've seen. Either way, they are pretty much the best alternative barrels for a Russian AKM build IMO. They run about $200-$250.

Apex is currently selling pulled/used Romy barrels - https://www.apexgunparts.com/product_info.php/cPath/57/products_id/4440 but it sounds like this is an important build to you, so I'd wait for a virgin one to come along. I don't know of anyone in stock with them at the moment but keep checking the WTS. Hope that helps
Yeah that is what I am leaning towards. Thanks for the info.
 
#7 ·
Keep in mind that's an AK-47 Type 3 barrel and will not work on any AKM unless you have the means to recontour the every step and journal to AKM specs, so AKM barrel parts will fit it. Being cold hammer forged, be ready to buy some now lathe tools when you get done.
 
#9 ·
Welcome to the forum BTW, and keep us posted on the build... sounds like you are going out of your way to make a great one. The only ones I've done that I'm really proud of are the ones that I took my time researching and waiting for the best stuff to show up (like the 74U's for example).
 
#11 ·
Some of jtscuba02's Romanian barrels had the Russian Cyrillic (y) proof marking - I don't know if that last one he has for sale does, but if it does you definitely want it. Even if it doesn't, that's a good price on a very desirable barrel that is definitely one of the top choices for a build like this.

The $150 APEX pulled better-grade Romanian barrels might be an option - I don't know if they could look through them to see if there are any nice ones with the (y) marking. I'm the kind of person who usually likes to buy as many of something like this as I can, to increase my chances of getting a really nice one. Any decent Romanian barrel, even if it needed a little clean-up work, would be light years ahead of any U.S. barrel as far as originality, authenticity, and desirability for a collector build.

As stated above, none of the barrels KVAR currently offers will work on an AKM without doing all kinds of stuff to them that you just don't want to do.

Screw parking and duracoating these Russian kits. That's a cheap, sloppy, lazy, clumsy, nasty way of crapping all over them that really kills their value and desirability as far as collectors are concerned. These have their beautiful original Soviet arsenal finish, which is one of the things that accounts for their price/value and desirability. The thing to do with these is park the receiver you are going to use, assemble the rifle, and then carefully paint ONLY the barrel (an original Euro/Comblock barrel should already be blued or parked) and receiver to match the finish on the kit.


Here is another barrel option for anyone who wants a nice, top quality, original Euro/Comblock military production cold hammer forged/hard chrome lined AKM barrel:

http://www.theakforum.net/forums/35...ed-cold-hammer-forged-barrel.html#post1593711
 
#12 ·
Screw parking and duracoating these Russian kits. That's a cheap, sloppy, lazy, clumsy, nasty way of crapping all over them that really kills their value and desirability as far as collectors are concerned. These have their beautiful original Soviet arsenal finish, which is one of the things that accounts for their price/value and desirability. The thing to do with these is park the receiver you are going to use, assemble the rifle, and then carefully paint ONLY the barrel (an original Euro/Comblock barrel should already be blued or parked) and receiver to match the finish on the kit.


Here is another barrel option for anyone who wants a nice, top quality, original Euro/Comblock military production cold hammer forged/hard chrome lined AKM barrel:

http://www.theakforum.net/forums/35...ed-cold-hammer-forged-barrel.html#post1593711
Thanks Marcus. That is what I was thinking as well, it would be awful to ruin the finish on those pieces.
 
#13 · (Edited)
Look for an early Romanian (1960's) kit and pull the barrel. sell the kit. I pulled what i fully believe is a Russian barrel from a 1964 and 1966 romanian AKM some time ago.


If you can stay away from the "virgin" Romanian barrels. They are made at a later date (in the 2000's) and have weird journal stampings, as well as tend to have the journals for the front end parts turned quite non-concentrically. They also have quite heavy/coarse lathe lines and light to non existent proof stampings.
 
#14 ·
#17 ·
I got my parts kit in and it's awesome! Rguns leaves a lot to be desired in the packing job. You'd think for 650 they'd do more than toss a bunch of pieces into plastic bags together so the precious finish on the parts can get all fucked up. Oh well, by dumb luck there are few dings. Big thumbs down for the dumbasses that packed my kit up though. Anyway, I ended up buying a complete Romanian barrel assembly with trunnion and what looks like East German bakelite handgaurd a for 200 bucks. Good deal? Now just have to get it demilled. Kind of tempted to build it into a rifle instead. I may keep shopping, I'm not going to get the receiver until November.
 
#18 ·
It sounds like you did real well on the Romanian barrel. Sell the Romanian trunnion - if it is in good shape it's worth around $75 by itself - and any other barrel parts like front and rear sight assemblies, gas block, and handguard retainer if it has them.


Post a photo of the handguard if you can. East German ones aren't that expensive, but some of the other bakelite handguards, like Romanian, are pretty desirable.
 
#20 ·
You scored on that one - the parts are worth a significant part of you paid for the whole barrel. Selling them off will really lower your total investment in the build - I would recommend checking over on the AK Files and with some of the parts sellers to see what the current value on the handguard set and the barrel parts is. I think the gas tube by itself is worth around $15-$20, the barrel parts in the $50 to $65 range, the and trunnion $75.
 
#21 ·
Marcus is right, you really scored man!

I personally could never pull that barrel though. I realize that a virgin Romy barrel is going to cost you pretty much the same amount as that complete barrel did... which sucks. But if you decide to use that barrel, it's going to cost you a really incredible Romy AKM build. I totally understand if you want to lower your costs (significantly), but if I could afford it, I'd build em both!
 
  • Like
Reactions: John Rambo
#26 ·
They definitely are EG buddy. And good for you man, I wish I could say the same but I have so many half complete projects that it is embarrassing! haha. Every single time I declare to my friends that I am done buying anything until I finish my current projects................ I buy another kit :goof:

I mean absolutely no disrespect in saying this, but I'm going to have to disagree with what Type56-1 said for now on the subject of virgin Romy's (and I sure hope he shares with us any information he has that we don't). While we aren't 100% sure of the story about them, I believe Doug's 5th post in that thread I linked to be the best *theory* of their origin. It just makes the most sense to me. Using an early Romy kit as a donor for the barrel might increase your odds of getting a real Russian barrel... but with the value of original barreled kits these days + the fact the early Romy's are sought after/much more rare, and you're talking a pretty significant amount of money over just getting a virgin (y) that at the very least was built under very close specifications/proofs to the real deal. Nothing wrong with going that route obviously, but I'd make damn sure that it is worth spending the extra money first is all.

Congrats again man, you really scored on that barrel. Now when in the hell am I gonna find a friggin sale like that?!?
 
  • Like
Reactions: John Rambo
#24 · (Edited)
Not sure if the handguards are East German or Romanian. Looking at some of the photos at weaponscache.com, it seems they may be Romanian Bakelite...if so, they are worth a lot more than East German handguards. I haven't yet had the opportunity to seriously get into East German AK's so I can't really comment too much on them, but as I recall East German handguards are more of a brownish color plastic without the marbling effect.



It is a nice Romanian front end, but unless you already had a Romanian kit without a front trunnion or enough Romanian parts to put a kit together, AND DIDN'T HAVE A REALLY OUTSTANDING AND MUCH MORE SCARCE AND VALUABLE SOVIET KIT THAT NEEDS A BARREL, I don't see any real point in using it to build up a Romanian AK. Nice matching Romanian kits with original barrels have been showing up at very good prices lately on the various AK boards Marketplace forums, and right now for about the same price as a barreled Romanian kit you can get one of those WASR-10/63 rifles that were used by SOC's Ugandan mercenary guards in Iraq and Afghanistan. And since you don't have the matching bolt for the trunnion, you would still have to headspace this barrel if you used it for a Romanian build, same as with using it to build the Russian.

I just see no good reason not to pull that barrel, sell the parts, and use the barrel for the Soviet AKM build. A matching Soviet AKM is way more desirable and much rarer than a mismatched Romanian.
 
#29 ·
Yes, handguards are East German. It is a nice Romanian front end, but unless you already had a Romanian kit without a front trunnion or enough Romanian parts to put a kit together, AND DIDN'T HAVE A REALLY OUTSTANDING AND MUCH MORE SCARCE AND VALUABLE SOVIET KIT THAT NEEDS A BARREL, I don't see any real point in using it to build up a Romanian AK. Nice matching Romanian kits with original barrels have been showing up at very good prices lately on the various AK boards Marketplace forums, and right now for about the same price as a barreled Romanian kit you can get one of those WASR-10/63 rifles that were used by SOC's Ugandan mercenary guards in Iraq and Afghanistan. And since you don't have the matching bolt for the trunnion, you would still have to headspace this barrel if you used it for a Romanian build, same as with using it to build the Russian.

I just see no good reason not to pull that barrel, sell the parts, and use the barrel for the Soviet AKM build. A matching Soviet AKM is way more desirable and much rarer than a mismatched Romanian.
I agree Marcus, there's no reason not to pull the barrel if he doesn't want to build the '72 up as well. My apologies if it sounded like that's what I meant. I'm just an AK addict who wants more more more more :)
 
#31 · (Edited)
Maybe if you are "buying 2 winning lottery tickets" lucky, when that Romanian AKM front half (that will end up costing you around $40 or less if you sell the other parts off) shows up, it will have one of those Cyrillic letter (y) proofed Soviet barrels. Hell, if those are Romanian bakelite handguards, you basically bought the barrel parts and got the barrel for free.


A real Soviet barrel, for about half what it takes to fill up the gas tank on your car or about what you'd pay for 2 lunches and a couple beers at a decent medium grade restaurant, would be like Christmas in July.
 
#34 ·
Maybe if you are "buying 2 winning lottery tickets" lucky, when that Romanian AKM front half (that will end up costing you around $40 or less if you sell the other parts off) shows up, it will have one of those Cyrillic letter (y) proofed Soviet barrels.

A real Soviet barrel, for about half what it takes to fill up the gas tank on your car or about what you'd pay for 2 lunches and a couple beers at a decent medium grade restaurant, would be like Christmas in July.
Hell yeah it would.
 
#36 ·
The BIG Guide To Romanian AK Variants And Accessories! - Weapons Cache Forums
There is some info on it here. Here's an excerpt on barrels...
"...Another good indicator of the quality decrease is on the barrel. If you run your fingernail down the exterior of a late gun's barrel, little rings are evident all the way down, whereas the earlier guns were almost smooth. The acceptable specs for the barrels quality was lowered in order to have less waste, so a barrel that would have been rejected in the early days and re-smelted was ok to use again."
 
#38 · (Edited)
The BIG Guide To Romanian AK Variants And Accessories! - Weapons Cache Forums
There is some info on it here. Here's an excerpt on barrels...
"...Another good indicator of the quality decrease is on the barrel. If you run your fingernail down the exterior of a late gun's barrel, little rings are evident all the way down, whereas the earlier guns were almost smooth. The acceptable specs for the barrels quality was lowered in order to have less waste, so a barrel that would have been rejected in the early days and re-smelted was ok to use again."

It's an interesting site, but I would be careful of accepting everything there as gospel. This little section is to me suspect and something that I would disregard unless some kind of specific original source documentation could be provided. There are differences in the exterior machining on Romanian and Polish barrels that are with in acceptable limits and tolerances, and don't indicate any difference in the quality of the barrel as far as the steel or the bore. Not having any original barreled Soviet kits or intact Soviet AKM's to examine I can't comment on their barrels, but if you look at Soviet Mosins there is a lot of minor variation in the exterior finish machining of different parts, including barrels.

Not knowing where various Soviet (y) marked barrels were made or when, all one can really say about them as well as Polish and Romanian AK barrels is that the machined finish does vary some, and some are smoother than others and some are rougher with the "rings".

The various Comblock/Warsaw Pact nations did buy, sell, and trade a lot of stuff - including weapons, parts, and accessories - among each other, and sometimes one communist nation would get something from another, and then buy/sell/trade/give it to another. Items from the more modern and industrialized nations like the USSR, East Germany, Poland, and Czechoslovakia tended to make their way south, ending up in the poorer, less developed countries like Romania, Bulgaria, and finally Albania. Also, sometimes it's easier, quicker and cheaper to produce certain items yourself and buy others from countries who have existing stock piles of them or who can make them good, fast, and cheap. Manufacturing capability and allocation of materials and resources also have to be factored into this - if you look at U.S. M1 Carbine production in WW2, besides the several primary producers, there were numerous sub-contractors for the various parts, and the primary manufacturers often supplied parts to each other.
 
#39 ·
  • Like
Reactions: John Rambo
#43 ·
Ok guys, I will snap some pictures later. But Tantal, most all (all that i have) Romanian barrels have this stamp at least in part, usually pretty poorly struck. Its not rare to find a Romanian barrel with the y stamp, its just rare to find it very well struck and obvious.

I have this stamp on a 1966 Md.63 take of barrel, a 1979 "G" build civil guard pull barrel, a 'virgin' romanian barrel with the trunnion journal stampings and partial y stamp that everyone thought were soviet barrels. And most conclusively of all, a Romanian AIMR/AIR carbine barrel in 7.62x39 that was a take off from a 1994 dated AIR/AIM carbine kit.

I highly doubt that the short, proprietary Romanian carbine had a soviet barrel. It has not been cut down from an AKM barrel, rather manufactured as is due to the obvious chrome lining of the crown area that would have been faced off in a cut/re crown. I encourage all of you to look really closely at your Romanian barrels, as i have not persoanlly seen one without at least a poorly struck partial of this y stamp. I believe it is simply the same stamp the soviets gave them to signify final proofing, and that the Romanians, all of their AKM equipiment/lines being soviet and all, are still using this soviet pattern stamp as well.

I believe that the "virgin" barrels are late/relitivly current (post 2000) due to a few things. One is the way in which they fit with the timeline of Romanian barrels. First came the standard Romanian AKM barrels from built military rifles. They have the same 'y' stamp, and usually no heavy lathe lines, and generally have journals that are not all out of spec with their concentricity like a lot of the 'virgin' barrels i have seen. These same barrels were used on the late WASR-10/63 rifles, having been pulled down in Romania from military AKM's Next came the strange semi-virgin barrels that were imported as usually complete units with a strange flaired muzzle nut installed, with virgin trunnion journal area. I believe these were overruns from the WUM series of rifles, as they fit with what these were made with. Next came the SAR production/take offs that matched the WUM barrels in all aspects of the barrel itself, save for the fact that the muzzle was never threaded from the factory, and is the propper dia or larger to be threaded 14mm, not turned down (these were made new for the SAR series and early WASR-1) Then finally, came the late 'Virgin' barrel, which had never been spotted or seen before the 2005 barrel ban, and i believe were made or imported strictly because they were only importable in that virgin configuration, to be sold as such and skirt the 2005 barrel ban on completed 'machine gun' barrels. The quality and construction of these barrels is also new to this post 2005 time frame, as well as the style of markings especially with regards to the journal number stampings at the rear trunnion location usually filled with white paint, roughness of handguard retainer broaches. These are the lowest quality Romanian barrels generally encountered, and have never been spotted in any actual AKM builds built in Europe, or at all anywhere prior to about 2005. If these were Russian, they would have other proofs that Russian barrels have, would not be of such poor quality (jacked up journals and things would have never made it to final y proof stamping/acceptance in any Soviet AK factory IMO), would not be blued identically to late Romanian Cugir products, and we have never seen a russian barrel with those strange journal stampings. The Romanians have not used theese on WASR-10/63's because they can use otherwise non importable pulled AKM barrels and parts on theese guns due to the configuration (sporting) that the rifles as a whole are imported in.

That is in long form, why i believe these to be late Romanian produced barrels. I will later snap some pictures of the above mentioned proofs, and check a Romanian 5.45 AIM-74 barrel that i have for that proof as well.
 
#45 ·
Most all (all that i have) Romanian barrels have this stamp at least in part, usually pretty poorly struck. Its not rare to find a Romanian barrel with the y stamp, its just rare to find it very well struck and obvious.
My observations are just the opposite. Very few Romanian barrels I have examined - these are all pulled, with various kits, or on WASR-10/63's as I haven't had any of the virgin barrels cross my path yet - have this marking. Some have it perhaps a little lightly struck on one edge, but still very distinct and very visible. There are sometimes other small, sometimes very lightly struck, on barrels without the (y) marking, but upon close examination they are definitely Romanian proofs and not light partial (y) markings.
 
#44 · (Edited)
Deductive reasoning would suggest that a barrel with a worn or fading Cyrillic "y" stamp with prominent and newer looking Romanian markings was approved and proof stamped long before the Romanians got their hands on it. So even if the Romanians used the same proof stamp, I would think an older looking proof stamp with newer looking Romanian stamps is more likely to be a Soviet barrel, whereas a crisp and clear Cyrillic "y" stamp matching the clarity of the Romanian markings would more likely be a Romanian proofing, based on type 56s post. I would think the older proofing would be more desirable.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top