RK95: Finland's Ultimate AK

hey guys thanks for tuning in to another video on forgottenweapons.com i'm ian mccollum and i am here today at the sako factory in rihimaki in finland uh this year is the 100th anniversary of the company's existence and they were generous enough to open up their reference reference collection for me to pull out some interesting guns to show to you guys specifically today we're taking a look at an rk95 this is the well as of the current date the final upgraded iteration of what is colloquially in the u.s known as the valmat rifle the velmat ak in finland this started off as the rk60 and then the rk62 as the adopted finnish defense forces standard ak rifle now in the late 1980s the defense forces requested a modernized version the original rk 62s were getting kind of old and they didn't have provisions for a lot of the modern features that we want today especially things like optical sight mounting but also elements like grenade rifle grenade launching so it was actually originally the velmat company the velmat factory that started the development program that would lead to this rifle um however in 1987 i believe uh saco and velmat merged and so the project came over to saco and they would go on to finish it the first prototypes were developed about 1990. interestingly the original design concept got rid of the ak style safety slash dust cover instead had a spring-loaded uh just dust cover on the right side of the gun that would close seal the space behind the charging handle but was spring-loaded to open when the bolt cycled and then a left-side thumb safety lever like you see on a galil was added however that part of the concept was rejected by the finnish military it's not entirely clear why it could be something as simple as training standardization i suspect but that was rejected but the other elements of the gun continued forward there was some more testing around 1993 and the gun was adopted as the rk95 in 1995. so let's take a look at what they actually did to it all right we'll start with markings of which there aren't very many and then we'll just go through the rifle from butt plate to muzzle device the main marking we have here is simply sako the manufacturer and the date of manufacture 1997 in this case a number of parts are serial numbered including the top cover so this has the last four digits of what is a six digit serial number uh production of the rk95 began at nine hundred and sixty thousand and one uh this is nine hundred and seventy six thousand about twenty thousand were made so they'll run to about nine hundred and eighty thousand now starting at the back of the rifle the butt stock was completely redesigned the original rk 62s had a tubular steel buttstock with sort of a hard rubber tube on it so that you didn't freeze your face to the stock in the winter definitely a threat up here in finland they did make some rk 62s with a side folding stock but it used a different hinge mechanism for the 95 we have really a galil style of buttstock with a polymer shell over it there is a space in well we'll get that in a moment uh you can see a flat spring here the hinge on this works by actually squeezing the two parts of the stock together and it then opens up so you can see the lug there where it locks into the back of the receiver this folds to the right so that if you have an optic mounted on the gun it doesn't interfere with it we'll get to the optics mount over here in a minute the top tube is hot while they're both hollow the top tube is specifically used for storing a cleaning kit unfortunately the closing plug on this one is missing but you can see that that hole is threaded for a little plug so you can store a cleaning kit in there for comparison's sake here's the folding mechanism on an rk62 tp the tp and finish stands for folding stock so substantially different the pistol grip remained the same there was originally a plan to develop a storage compartment in here for oil or other supplies but that never actually came to fruition the receiver cover mounting changed a bit first off there is a tab on the top of the recoil spring guide and that is actually basically to prevent uh gunk from hitting the shooter in the face during extended shooting especially in the winter this will accumulate moisture which will freeze and turn to ice and then spit out the back of this little opening in the receiver cover and so this notch is there to deflect it before it gets to the user's eye there was also a reinforced reinforcing plate added here and what this actually does this looks like a lock to hold the top cover in place it's actually a tensioning device so this uh tightens down on these side plates to really lock the top cover uh to hold the top cover in place because of course the rear sight's mounted on the top cover in order to open this you know if it's nice and clean and dry like this you can just loosen it like so the notch in here is specifically sized so that the buckle on the standard military sling can be used as a screwdriver to pop this open if it's too tight so you can see right here that this is pulled under this round washer and that helps to clamp the top cover down so that the sights don't move and speaking of which we have a slightly redesigned rear sight instead of having a ramp out to 600 meters like this original rk 62 the 95 simply has a two position peep we have a 150 meter battle site and we have a long range 300 meter notch or aperture you can see it's marked three now you can also flip this into the middle position where instead you get to view this night sight right down there so that's actually a tritium vial there's a hole in the top where it's installed and that's your your night rear sight it is not adjustable in any way we'll get to the front sight well as we progress down the rifle internally by the way this is identical to a standard rk62 so there's really nothing in there that we need to uh to work on the safety design was slightly modified from a standard kalashnikov gives you good good purchase especially with gloves up here and of course it's still got the same safe full semi-auto settings as a typical ak the charging handle was angled upward at 45 degrees again to make the gun easier to charge especially for a right hander reaching over the top of the rifle and by the way the the way that they did that was to add a block to the basic bolt carrier forging drill it and then thread in the actual charging handle there the receiver itself changed they actually added material down here to increase the amount of support for the magazine so if we compare this again looking at the original rk 62 receiver you can see that there's this sharp continuous slant up here and not that much material around the actual magazine and then on the 95 we have this extension that's been added so not a hugely significant change but something that is distinctly visible when you're looking at pictures and this uh acts as a reminder that these are new production guns these are not updated versions of the original 62. at the front end we have a completely new gas block assembly that now incorporates a gas cut off so this is in the standard shooting position lifting that up cuts off the gas port so the rifle operates as a single shot manually operated gun that's for two reasons one of them is rifle grenades and you'll notice that this has a very foul style muzzle brake on it now which is set up for rifle grenades you can see the wire little spring wires here those are there to put a little bit of tension on a grenade so it doesn't fall off if you point the muzzle downward now finland at the current time as far as i know does not actually issue or use rifle grenades but apparently they have been or are in the process of doing some testing on them and when they developed the rk95 they wanted to have that as a capability going forward hence the gas cut off this is also theoretically usable if you have a suppressor mounted to reduce action noise when firing suppressed one shot at a time close off the gas port and the bolt doesn't cycle so incidentally and interestingly you can actually close the gas port partially by just lowering this level lever a little bit there aren't any other detents or official stopping points but you can use it to actually regulate the amount of gas that the rifle is getting because these tend to be significantly well as our most aks significantly over gassed for general use to make sure that they will be reliable when they are dirty and very cold as can happen up here in finland the front sight hood here is open at the top of course the whole front sight block is adjustable for windage side to side that's actually the same system that they used back on the mohs and the gaunts and then we have a luminous tritium night front sight this is the slightly later pattern of this front sight which is actually adjustable for elevation so your windage adjustment moves both the regular sight and the night sight and then you can actually zero the night sights which is something that's a bit unusual notice that there are two holes visibility holes for that tritium vial there's one on this side and there is also one opposite it so you can adjust the elevation in half turn increments and still be able to see the night sight and then of course we have our muzzle device and the one last thing to point out is that it is threaded on the inside of the muzzle device for use with blank firing devices for training going back to the left side of the rifle we have perhaps one of the most important modifications and that is the setup here for an optics rail so there are two basically locking bar recesses that are milled out in the receiver and three threaded holes when a an optic is going to be used you take these screws out and use them to lock an optics rail onto the side of the gun there are two different types of rails there's a short one and there's a long one interestingly on the semi-auto civilian versions the rk92 these are m6 threads which typically you'd probably want to use a little bit of thread locker on to prevent them from moving under recoil the military versions and apparently a few of the very early civilian ones use an m7 thread which is a little bit faster a little bit tighter pitch and is less likely to come loose under recoil without using any sort of thread locker that was something that the military wanted obviously they don't want the screws coming loose on the optics rail so they specified a somewhat non-standard thread pitch that will accomplish that better money is always tight with the finnish defense forces and there was only one production run of rk95 rifles so it's important to point out these are not modifications of existing rk62s these are all brand new guns and you kind of realize that when you see that the receiver is different substantially different there was about 20 000 of them manufactured with production ending around 1998 that was enough pretty much to equip the active duty finnish army finland also has a significant reserve force but military stocks of military rifles for the reserves were instead of being manufactured new had been purchased they bought aks from east germany when the berlin wall came down and when germany reunited those were really cheap aks and so they bought hundreds of thousands of them to use as a war reserve rather than building all new rifles so unfortunately only a relatively small number of these were manufactured there was an rk92 semi-auto version of basically this with a few differences aside from not being full auto those saw very limited production there are some in finland and private hands as well as a few floating around the eu but they are quite rare they came after the u.s assault weapon import ban and so we really don't have them in the u.s they're probably a couple that snuck in somehow but generally speaking the arcane 95 is a rifle that we just don't see in the united states so a big thanks to saco for giving me the opportunity to come in here and take a look at this one and show it to you guys hope you liked the video thanks for watching

Channel: Forgotten Weapons

Views: 493,664

Keywords: history, development, mccollum, forgotten weapons, design, disassembly, ak, kalashnikov, akm, rk95, rk92, rifle, assault rifle, Finland, Finnish, fdf, sako, finnish defense forces, 7.62x39, ultimate ak, select fire, optics, gas cutoff, rifle grenade, folding stock, rare, unicorn, collector

Id: s5bFJ2bIiJg

Length: 13min 55sec (835 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 13 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Lejonhufvud]

Äh! Tollasii hifistelyrynkkyjä kukaa kaipaa. RK 62 on se ainoa oikea.

[u/Malk_McJorma]

AK-47:aa ja RK-62:ta ampuneena jälkimmäinen on helvetin paljon tarkempi.

(SVD on mun suosikki-torrakko. Sillä ampuu 300m:stä kymmenellä laakilla lähelle sataa kohtuullisen helposti.)

[u/UMIRRRRRIN]

Tahdin toistoja vasemmalla!

ÄRKOO YSIVIIS TEEPEE, MEITÄ TUKEE CEEVEE

KymJP Honor

[u/shoot_dig_hush]

Oispa SAKO RK-22