I bought myself a PBS1 silencer from RSOV.com a while back.

Picture from RSOV.com.

The silencer recently arrived, mainly due to it taking time to reach me from my mate who had ordered it as part of a team order.

My initial impression of this silencer was good. It has an impressive weight and I ordered the lighter aluminium version over the heavier steel one. It has an nice weight.

However, when I attempted to attach it to my AK47, I came across my first problem. The small section of the silencer you see above the TM in the picture above is what attaches the PBS to the AK. It screws into PBS at the base of the silencer. The problem is with the attachment to the AK. The AK itself has a small nipple (for want of a better term) that extends out of the front sight that stops the flash hider unscrewing. The attachment on the silencer was to small to allow this nipple to lock into place. I filed this down for quite a lot. This allowed the attachment to to fit.

The second problem was related to the first. My attachement wasn’t quite locked into place and whilst trying to screw it off, the attachment section actually screwed off INTO the silencer, thanks to the attachement screwing onto the AK one direction and into the silencer in the other. However I managed to remove it by unscrewing the thinner front part of the silencer from the fatter rear section.

Eventually I got onto attaching it and test firing. This is were the big disappoint happened. BB’s would not exit the silencer and those that did, exited in pieces, shattering inside. Having gotten into the silencer before, I had another look inside. The sponge rings inside I believe are casuing the issue. It’s low quality foam inside and probably wont silence BB’s much but I’m mainly using this as cosmetic aspect for the AK. That leads me onto my next article where I investigate it further and find out how to allow the BB’s to exit unaffected. I have already found out that the problem is not related to the fatter rear end as I have attached that to the AK and use it without any trouble. So my next article will be how I managed to fix the silencer.

Thought I’d add this post here for anyone that stumbles upon this blog. It’s an article on how to paint your fake wood furniture on AK’s (and other inferior weapon systems like M14’s )

The article was written by a comrade over on the Red Alliance forums and it works a treat. I’ve had it done to my AK47 for the last two years and in my opinion, looks fantastic. Cant remember how many times I’ve had people ask me what wood kit my AK is using.

Here’s the article.

Well final review!

Took it out to Cerberus Airsoft on Sunday for it’s first test fire in anger. Earlier in the week I sorted out a hop problem but I lost the hop bucking. My team mate fixed that with a bit from a biro. Cant really adjust it now but luckily the hop was set pretty perfect!

Dboys 1000 Round AK74 Style Mags Review
Feeding wise, the gun performed admirably. The only let down were the Dboys large mags. I’m not sure as to wether it was the BB’s I was using (ICS white from Zero One) but the mags seemed to be jammed. The BB’s seemed to stick to come almost to the top of the magazine but would not have enough pressure behind them to come out from the mag. Also they were to large to carry about. My M23 Pioneer chest rig is fantastic and that carried them but I have a couple of other russian vests/webbing that they would not fit into thanks to the sheer width of them.

I believe they need further testing to see if it is the BB’s I used or the mags themselves.

The gun managed quite a few kills in the morning and it was easily out ranging the hire guns on the site, which was good because they were mainly on our side and I was glad to provide support. The longer barrel seemed to come in useful, making the gun more accurate.

Unfortunatly, various parts managed to come loose and fall off or nearly fall off. I lost the rear sight. I knew this was a bit riskiy leaving it on but it fell off well before I expected it to.

The bipod screws onto the barrel and I nearly lost the screw to this. I had stuck a piece of electrical tape over it and this kept the screw in place so I managed to resuce that. Also the selector plate rattled loose towards the end of the game and I stuck that in place using tape. I’ve ordered some loctite from eBay so that’ll be sorted out soon and that should also fix the bipod problem.

The battery lasted for the mornings game and began to give out towards the end of that. I used about 4000 rounds in that game so I think that’s a decent enough battery life. My home site in Cornwall, MIA, run a different CQB games in barns in the afternoon so this would be fine for there but up north in Leeds, I play at sites that have woodland  games all day so I might need another battery for it.

I’ve noticed now after leaving the gun for a few days, that some rust patches have appeared on the barrel. I’ve ordered some oil to take care of this.

Overall I’m impressed with it and the problems can easily be sorted out with a bit of effort.

I’ve been reading this free online magazine for a while now.

U.S.A.S.O.C. Magazine

It’s worth checking out, even if it does focus on American airsoft much more than British airsoft. It’s also free which is nice to see! I recommend at least giving it a once over.

I believe they are also trying to come up with a European version of the magazine as well, which is something to look forward to.

Finally finished! Well as a project gun, I reckon it’ll never be finished…there will always something that will need doing to it, but as a skirmish able weapon, it’s now finished!

As you can see, it’s missing a furniture retaining part but I have that on it’s way to me now. it’ll be field tested at Cerberus Airsoft near Leeds this Sunday.

I’m also missing an RPK flash hider but I’ve been unable to find one. I’ve found real steel ones but only in America and they wont ship to the UK so I’m on the lookout for someone to act as third party if I decide to purchase one. For some reason, my standard Mauri flash hider wont fit. I will give that another go.

As my first airsoft conversion, it’s been a learning experience. It’s been good and bad and at times stressful. As a first attempt, I also believe I’ve done a good job. The gun could never be 100% accurate to the original RPK74 due to the body not being available so I took it upon myself to keep bits I prefer, such as the top cover. (An RPK74 has a smooth one, similar to the AK47 but I’m using the AK74 one because I think it looks meaner and meatier!)

It’s not put me off conversions, but has given me an insight into what I should have done first, such as more research into the parts I needed to start with. This would have saved some hassle and if I’d have know it would have been trouble to get some parts etc, I would have used an AK as the base of the conversion. I do now have a collection of parts that I can possibly put together at a later stage to form a small CQB AK similar to a folding stock Beta Spetz. Though I may just purchase a Kalash AK74SU for that. Even though my Scorpion is great for CQB.

I’ve stayed clear of the side of conversion I don’t want to touch quite yet and that’s gearbox upgrades. I’ll leave that for the time being.

In total (so far!), my RPK has cost me £232. And I’m still thinking of re staining the wood. No doubt it’ll make an appearance later in my blog as well. I’ll field test it on Sunday, so it should be mentioned then as well.

The rear end is done!

I re wired the AK today when my wire arrived and it now fits the 9.6v PEQ box battery in the stock with no trouble what so ever. It’s a bit of bodge job inside with the wire so I didn’t get any pictures. It’s the first time I think I’ve played with wire since secondary school! Which is a good 6 or 7 years ago!!

It all works (I tried it before reassembling!) which is good. To complete the front, I’m having to wait until the weekend where I’ll meet a team mate and he’ll hopefully have the parts I need to finish the conversion off by adding the front furniture.

I need to add some weight under the top receiver I think. Add a little more heft to the gun. The AK74 metal body is ok but I have to drill some holes in the front to allow the metal body to screw into the barrel assembly. The screw holes in the mag well are fine and allow the rear part of the body to attach to the body fine. I also need to re drill some holes in the barrel. Either the barrel I bought off the Red Alliance is to short or my bipod is to long, which to be honest, I’d say the bipod is to long as I know the chap on the RA forum made it upto exact RPK specifications. That also explains why I had to file it down a bit at the front so I can affix the foresight and the bipod.

Overall there’s a few gaps between furniture etc but for my first conversion and first time doing any kind of work on an airsoft gun, I feel I’ve done quite well and I’m quite happy with the results at the minute. Yes, at some point I’ll re stain the wood as I think it’s a terrible colour but that can wait for now.

Well a load of stuff arrived today for me to get on with my conversion.

That’s the Dboys large mags (and they ARE large), AK74 metal body with extra bits, the brown pistol grip, an RPK barrel and cleaning rod (and an AK47 metal body for a team mate)

Now to get to down to seriously converting! Or so I thought!

The barrel fitted fine. Except that the inner carrel rattled around inside so I took the plastic tube out of the SVD barrel and no it’s nice and snug. Unfortunately, the RPK barrel is shorter than my long inner barrel but with luck with the fore sight on and a flash hider, it should be OK but we’ll see later. Also the JG bipod is to small to fit onto the barrel but that can be sorted. The gas assembly blocks fits where it’s supposed to but the hole to screw it in isn’t in the right place. On the plus side, I can sort these problem out a lot easier than using the JG barrel.

The body required some filing down to get the gearbox to fit. The hole for the fire select is slightly out of place so you have to file that down a bit. The rear stock mount was quite tight on the mount so that got filed down as well. The pistol grip required cutting down of some nobbles on the top to allow it to sit flush against the body. Once I did that, that fitted fine and it allowed the trigger guard to be seated properly as well.

When I came to try and re wire it, I found my wire was far to thick! I had 4mm silicone wire and that just couldn’t fit anywhere, especially in to the batter connectors. I’ve ordered myself some 1.5mm wire to see if that works instead but I’m a bit worried with the current it will carry and if it’ll be fine. I’m assuming it will be because the current wiring in the gun is quite thin and has worked so far.

So at the minute I have a half assembled RPK but at least it’s some progress! Even if I wont be able to use it this Sunday! There are still a few parts I need like the furniture retainers for the foregrips but hopefully I’ll get a spare from my team mate this weekend.

Well the conversion isn’t going well. The gas assembly wont fit over the rear of the barrel as I mentioned in post 2. My original plan was to cut down the barrel to the width of the gas assembly unit. As it turned out the outer barrel is metal and it would have taken ages with the tools at my disposable. With a lathe, it would have been simple.

Plan 2 was to then file down the inside of the gas assembly chamber. This I did. I’ve taken it down as far as possible before I think it’s got to thin. And that’s still to small to fit on the barrel. At this stage I was willing to give up until I could find someone with a lathe that could have cut the barrel down for me which is a shame because I now have most of the parts.

Luckily, I was helped out on the Red Alliance forums by a member who was selling various RPK bits and one of these was a full length barrel which I promptly bought. This barrel also has the benefits of having the cleaning rod and the retaining caps for the furniture and cleaning rod on so it’ll look better. All I have to do now is wait for that to arrive from the US.

As I mentioned, most of the parts are now ordered and arrived. I have the wire to rewire the Dragunov to have the battery in the stock. I ordered on Monday from Overlander and I got the wire the next day! Top service chaps!

As for the battery, I bought a second hand, barely used, 9.6v battery from Warrior on ASCUK. Again, I bought that on Sunday evening and it arrived on Tuesday. In the RPK, it has to have a custom battery to fit it. A standard large battery like that which an AK uses wont fit. It’s just to long. Even an 8.4v wont fit. A small battery can fit but you wont have the capacity. Luckily after some measuring by me and Warrior, we found that the PEQ box battery I bought can just fit in. Like it was especially for it. PEQ boxes are those horrible thing on the front of Armalites that look terrible but at least the batteries can fit the RPK stock! So now I have a 1700mA 9.6v battery that fits.

I placed my order with RSOV on Monday as well. RSOV is quite busy and they’re only processing my order today according to there website. I believe it’s run by one chap and maybe a couple of workers but I’ve heard good things so I’m not to worried.

I bought an AK74 metal body for the gun. I’ll just whip off the current plastic TM AK47 body I put on to test if I could do it and it all fit and whack on the AK74 metal body. I also ordered a AK74 plastic pistol grip. This will make the RPK look more like an RPK74 than if I was to use the wooden grip that the RPK kit came with. And because I felt like trying something else, I bought some cheap Dboys hi cap mags. These are double stack type mags and can carry a hefty 1000 rounds each! For £9 for 2, I thought they were worth trying out, even if they turn out to be terrible. I’ll do a review on just them when I get them.

My list of stuff so far I’ve bought is:-

Well it seems the RPK is a big gun in the UK at the minute. With very little in the way of ready made ones, after market kits and conversions are the way to get these in the UK.

Clone Ranger over at Milgeek has a nice article on RPK’s in the UK here.

It’s a nice article and I must admit, I estimate the amount of RPK’s will increase in Britain with the release of an affordable RPK. Kind of annoyed I missed out on the SRC RPK’s at Red Wolf Armouries as that is actually a good price but on the other hand, my RPK will be “my” RPK as I’ll have built it from a Dragunov. Mine will also be an RPK74, not an RPK47.
It’s also a nice feeling to be able to actually open up the gun itself and mess with the internals.

Anyhow, read Clone Ranger’s post. Tis a good one.

Well the RPK furniture arrived and it’s very nice.

Here’s where some problems started. Because the JG Dragunov is based on an AKS body, there is nowhere to mount the rear stock. Not a huge problem because I was eventually going to buy myself a metal body and thus I could just buy a full stock AK body. Until I bought it, my mate was kind enough to give me one he had spare. Thus I took the AK apart and fixed that. Having never taken apart an airsoft gun before, it was bit of a learning curve. Luckily google helped and I found this fantastic guide from Classic Army.

After some messing about, that was done. Whilst it was also taken apart, I added a longer barrel my housemate no longer wanted.

The furniture will now fit the rear stock and the grip but the front furniture wont. It will but there’s a problem. The gas block assembly is stuck about 3 inches from the furniture because the outer barrel is 2 different lengths as the pictures below show.

As you can see, it’s going to need some work. I’ll be buying a Dremel next week and will be grinding the outer barrel down to a size where the gas assembly block can fit.

Here’s how the gun looks at the rear now.

Well that’s it as it stands. Until I can get the Dremel and grind that down, I’m stuck.

Below is a table of what I need and what I’ve already got and what it cost.

I’m after AK74 parts because I’m turning the RPK into an RPK 74 over the older RPK47. Slight difference between them but not huge differences. Simpilly put, the RPK47 is based on the AK47 and the RPK74 is based on the RPK74. Easy enough