I purchased this rifle a few months ago new, and replaced the furniture with original Polish wood, and Polish grip. After this I heard that some of these were built with cast trunnions. This rifle is one of the nicest AKs that I have owned, and it shoots great. How do you tell if the trunnion is cast rather than forged? The rivets are perfect, and tight.



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look for casting lines or seams. I have never heard they use cast. I have some high quality radom stuff.

I looked, and don’t see any. I don’t think mine is cast.

Which factory is it making these?  There are a couple around those parts.  It seems like FB Radom is the one thats well known and has military pedigree.  Then some other ones putting out shit and trying to ride the coat tails.  They say they're from Radom in Poland and let the buyer assume its FB Radom, when its really not.  Hopefully the "PA" at the start of the serial number is not for "Pioneer Arms".

FB Radom, good
WBP, commercial polish factory and IIRC, they supplied FB Radom with parts
Pioneer arms in Radom: dumpster fire doodoo quality.

Pioneer Arms, Inter Arms, Century Arms, IO, PSA, Ak's

I will never buy, again. Bought two (02) POS's sold two (02) POS's.

For telling if a part is cast, you can look at Rob's videos and see some of the "less important" surfaces of the front trunnion and bolt have itty bitty little craters on them.  Like you're looking at the surface of the moon.  The surfaces that are critical in shape/dimension have been machined.  The part is cast and then machined in some areas afterwards.

Part that have been machined from a forging or a billet will not show the cratery rough surface.  Those less important surfaces will just look machined.  You may be able to see the patterns left in the surface by the cutting tool and is spins around and moves around the part.

I took a few pics of the interior of all three of my AKs. The first one is the Pioneer Arms, and the others are a Century AK-74 that I have owned for nearly 15 years, and the other is a Tantal that I recently picked up.

It does look like the PA has a cast line going horizontal, but the finish is pretty smooth. I have put a out a Hundred rounds through it so far, a d everything looks fine.

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Here is a cast one I have:

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that is a Pioneer Arms AK.. basically the IO of imports. Dumb that thing on Armslist asap and get a real one... FB radom and WBP are the only two polish AK's atm that are worth anything.

I ended up trading it along with a couple other guns for a DSA Izzy FAL.