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Is sniping mode real?


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I've heard of some people turning their AKs into basically a straight pull " bolt action" rifle to increase accuracy for long distance shots. Don't yugos have this type of gas shut off feature for grenades? But does this actually increase accuracy? I thought the bullet leaves the barrel before any of mechanicals move. Making a straight pull AK a moot point

Edited by Yugopap4me
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A good part of the increased accuracy you may see by shutting the gas off, is that the action is not moving at all.

 

Think of it this way, the moment the bullet passes the gas port things start to move in the action. Any movement is going to shift your point of aim a little. And in an AK due to the way the gas block is mounted the force of working the action is actually pushing down on the barrel, possibly bending it ever so slightly, which could also throw the shot a little.

 

Several years ago, my brother had thought about plugging the barrel ports and using compressed air to operate the action, and timing it using a optical sensor to watch for the bullet to exit the barrel before cycling. That way you could have zero action movement until well after the round left the chamber... Never got far into that project, but it would be interesting to see.

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Don't yugos have this type of gas shut off feature for grenades?

 

I can't speak for the accuracy comment because I've never tried i... But.. .YEP! Yugo AKs sure do have a gas defeat feature!

 

Here's my M-70 underfolder in normal and "grenade" modes. You can see that the change happens at pretty much the direct beginning of the gas tube. I could believe that it could put more some more guts to the round coming out of the barrel with the gas defeated. Of course, as you mentioned, that makes it a single round rifle. I've never tried it, but I suspect it's even worse than a bolt action because you'll be tossing every other round on the ground from all the feed jams.

 

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I've heard of some people turning their AKs into basically a straight pull " bolt action" rifle to increase accuracy for long distance shots. Don't yugos have this type of gas shut off feature for grenades? But does this actually increase accuracy? I thought the bullet leaves the barrel before any of mechanicals move. Making a straight pull AK a moot point

 

I've got a battery operated drill I want to turn into an air impact....

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  • 2 weeks later...

To those who shoot their SKS that way, it's not good for the gun. Grenade mode was intended for use with blanks, NOT live ammo. It can lock the bolt up very solidly to the point where it can sometimes require a mallet to get the action open. Anything that causes that kind of lockup is going to be peening the metal parts and doing permanent damage.

 

Now, the AK uses an entirely different system, with a rotating bolt and a much tighter lockup. It's functionally much more robust and there's no real difference in bolt stresses whether the gas system is active or not.

 

Back in the days of the AWB, there was an interesting weapon. The Romanian PAR-1, and its .223 brother the PAR-3, PAR standing for Pump-Action Rifle. This was literally an AK with no gas ports, and a pump connected to the gas piston assembly. Reportedly, these were unusually accurate for an AK-type rifle. Judging by that, you likely could get some accuracy improvement. However, with a good AK able to pull around 2-2.25 MOA nowadays, is it even worth bothering with?

Edited by WardenWolf
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That doesn't make a great deal of sense to me.  Since the camming surfaces and locking surfaces are separate, does it even matter that they aren't being worn or peened evenly?  The locking surface of the bolt and its counterpart in the receiver take the full brunt of the pressure curve for as long as the bullet is in the barrel regardless of whether or not the gun cycles, so it seems like rapidly dropping pressure of the vented barrel would be almost irrelevant to it.

 

Have there been any confirmed cases of this peening problem?  I searched for it, but for all the SKS jams I found, none were attributed to peening caused by single-shot firing.

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Have there been any confirmed cases of this peening problem?  I searched for it, but for all the SKS jams I found, none were attributed to peening caused by single-shot firing.

 

The problem is specific to SKS's due to their action design. They use a tilt-bolt with a totally different lockup mechanism than the AK. The jams aren't the result of peening, but rather the forces and movement that cause these jams will also cause peening. Generally, people learn fast after having to force their bolt open that this is a bad idea. It doesn't happen every time or with every SKS, due to differing tolerances and wear, but once it starts happening it will just get worse if you keep shooting it like that. In other words, don't use your gun in a way that it was not intended to be used by the manufacturer.

 

Regarding pump AKs, while they would certainly be functionally sound, they would require a very long pump stroke (as illustrated in pictures of the PAR rifles). I would imagine it would be rather unpleasant in prolonged use.

Edited by WardenWolf
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What gets jammed?  What gets peened?  Why is it unique to SKSes?  I know how the lockup on both the AK and the SKS work, what I don't understand is why the one would jam and the other wouldn't.  Both rifles are designed to not open the chamber until the bullet has left the barrel, as is the case with just about every autoloader on the planet.  The locking surfaces take the brunt from every shot, regardless of if the action cycles or not.

 

I've been looking for confirmed cases of this happening but am coming up blank.  The closest I've found has been this entry.  Some guy at the range told the OP something similar to what some guy on the Internet just told me.  Without any evidence to support it much less a coherent explanation of the theory, I'm inclined to believe it's an old wive's tale.  It may be true for some guns, but that doesn't mean it applies generally or to an extent that is any more than negligible.  For that matter, as problem-plagued as 59/66es are, I'd find it hard to believe any of the well-known and demonstrated problems might not actually be the real culprits.

 

And I don't mean that "some guy on the Internet"-bit pejoratively.  We're all some guy on the Internet.  If I read that someone had experience X, I'm inclined to believe it's likely to be accurate.  If someone says X is true, however (and especially when X is either not intuitive or counter-intuitive), I always wonder how it's known.

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