Hi guys Thanks for tuning in to another video on Forgottenweapons.com, I'm Ian McCollum, and we have a very cool AK to take a look at today. This is a type 1 AK These were only made for a few years before the substantial problems with them lead to a significant redesign of the AK Now, if we roll back the clock here to the original development of the AK, it was in 1947 that the design was finalized and approved and supposed to start production Production didn't actually begin until early 1948, and it began at a factory in Izhevsk Now, that wasn't one of the major Russian arms depots or arms factories. I believe it had been involved in machine gun production Maxim gun production during world war ii and it didn't have in fact The reason that it was chosen for this is it didn't have any really big name Russian arms designers based there So, most of the other big arms factories like Tula or kovrov had kind of in-house designers guys, like egg Karev and fedorov and Kalashnikov was this kind of young upstart designer and it wasn't really all that practical for him to try and Shoehorn his new operation into one of these existing factory bureaucracy Hierarchies so they instead sent him to a Izhevsk there weren't any real Big-name designers, but there were a lot of very good engineers and technical specialists And so it was kind of an ideal location to start production on a brand new weapons family. The Kalashnikov! Anyway, in early 1948, he produces the first 4 pre-production AKs And those each go through some endurance testing Apparently it was like just over 13,000 rounds each, because that was the totality of the ammunition they had available at the time and the guns did Really quite well. These of course are handmade, hand fitted, pre-production guns. And they did well enough that of course full-scale production began and Well by the end of 1949, they'd made something like 80,000 of these rifles Things were going..okay. They had a lot of guns coming out. The problem is QC was an issue: quality control. This rifle has a stamped sheet metal receiver. That was one of the original fundamental ideas of the Kalashnikov Following on several other World War two Soviet designs that did that like the suteyev? submachine gun. The PPS43 They wanted to continue that. It's an economical and efficient sort of production methodology. The problem was, the sheet metal used on the AK is much lighter gauge than lighter gauge and has higher requirements for accuracy and tolerance and clearance It's harder to make--in short--than something like a PPS43, and they had trouble doing it. They weren't able to sufficiently Guaranty the inside dimensions of the receiver. The receivers tended to have a had a tendency to warp when they got hot There was a very high reject rate on AK receivers And this was a problem The whole idea of a stamped receiver is that you can crank out a gazillion of them once you've got the tooling going Well, if your quality control is a problem, and you have a lot of them that you have to throw away that Kind of negates the whole benefit of having that stamping production in the first place. So In 1949, they actually developed an alternative new receiver for the AK. That is known by collectors and historians today as the "Type 2 AK" It is basically what we would know today as the milled AK receiver and so what they did was abandon the whole stamping idea and Instead, drop forge and machine a solid metal block for the receiver of the AK. That worked! Now it had some downsides. It was more expensive. It was substantially heavier But, they didn't have the quality control problems that they had with this first version so For a couple years through the end of 1951. They actually--Izhevsk continued to manufacture these early stamped guns at the same time that they were making--in parallel--the milled receiver guns, and by '51, the milled guns were up and running and everything was working well and they finally shut down production of the original ak-47. So these guns were only in production for three years: from the very beginning in 1948 through about the end of 1951. There weren't a whole lot made in the first place And there are there a few of them surviving today. Now it looks from back there mostly like a normal AK. But there are substantial differences. A few substantial differences, and there are a lot of little minor differences. So, let's pull this guy apart and I will show you what the inside of a type 1 AK receiver actually looks like! Let me begin by pointing out. The magazine that is in this gun is what's called a "slab side" AK mag This was the original design for the AK magazine. 30 rounds that never changed But, it doesn't have the reinforcing ribs stamped in it. Instead, i's made of a heavier gauge steel. So it's a quite durable mag, but it's also a really remarkably heavy magazine. You know, even the modern stamped ribbed AK mag is a fairly heavy piece of equipment, this one is even more so. Anyway, we will set this aside If you look at a type 1 AK, there are really two main things that are visual distinctive visual elements to the gun that allow you to easily identify it. One of them is this Raised section of the stamped receiver here. That looks kind of like what you see in some milled guns, but it's really not the same. The other is the shape of the pistol grip. The rest of the furniture didn't substantially change. There is--it is specific to each individual model, but Really, it's all pretty much the same shape. The pistol grip however did substantially change. You'll notice it has a more rearward slanted angle, and it is Larger front to back then a standard--any of the standard AK grips that would follow. Looking at the other side here You can notice that there is this reinforcing rib stamped into the receiver Which you will not see on any later guns, and you'll also notice that the the rivet well you don't have Spot welds that are nearly as visible, and the rivet pattern is rather different on these than it would be on the later stamped guns. So we'll look at that a little more closely in a moment, but first the markings. Markings on a type 1 are really often pretty crude looking, and this is a good example of that. There was originally an Izhevsk Factory code mark here. That would be an arrow pointing upward inside a triangle You can see the remnants of that but is mostly worn away. The serial number is right here, and that's four digits, four numerals with a two letter suffix. And those are Cyrillic letters. And then the date here: that what looks sort of like a lowercase R is a Russian Character indicating or standing for a year. So this is a 1951 production gun From what I have seen the majority of the surviving ones are some of those later guns That was the last year that these were produced The other typical place you will find markings on an AK are the selector markings and this is no exception So we have our full auto and semi auto selector markings. They're pretty close to the same positions as a later pattern AK, but not quite identical, and you'll notice there is another stamped reinforcing rib right here. As well as one behind the safety. You can see a couple of rivets here that are used to hold the rear trunnion in place And you can see that the edge of the rear trunnion right there. These instead of being left domed have been ground down. That's standard. So it makes it a little more... difficult to identify But at the same time, once you know what you're looking at, it makes it a little easier to identify There are some minor changes to the type one, like the gas vent holes up here at the front. You'll notice these are exactly at the horizontal, six o'clock and nine o'clock. On the Type 2, These holes would be moved to be it more like 10:00 and 2:00 o'clock slightly elevated up here These aren't really substantive changes, but they are those little details that let you identify type 1 parts from others. Disassembly is exactly the same as a regular AK. The actual operating mechanism is identical to a more - all of the more modern iterations of the AK However, before we pull this apart, I will point out that the little spring retaining tab back here that holds the dust cover on...a little bit different shape. So, as normal will push that in Pop off the top cover Pull out the spring guide Drop the safety, and then just like every other AK, we can pull out the bolt carrier and bolt Note that the gas piston here is fluted. Again, just a little detail Detail difference from some of the later patterns. The business end of the bolt carrier though is pretty much the same. Certainly is mechanically identical. As is the bolt And yes, this one has been fired quite a lot All right, but the bit you want to see is inside the receiver. So, here we go Couple things to notice: for one there is no center support rivet in this receiver. Normally, with a regular AK receiver, you'd have a rivet right around here that just spans across the receiver and Strengthens it, prevents it from getting dented, holds it in in its configuration That was something that would be added with the AKM, and it is conspicuously absent on these early guns. That's I suspect a substantial part of why they were not so reliable in their shape The front trunnion is somewhat differently shaped If we look in here You can see that the front trunnion comes back a lot farther than it does on a more modern AK. With the AKM, the trunnion pretty much ended at the end of this reinforcement. On this, these are two of the rivets that are holding the trunnion into the sheetmetal receiver. The trunnion also overlaps the receiver up here at the front, so you can kind of see that Right here. So that's the trunnion there, and it comes up and over We have a barrel pin there to lock the barrel in place. On these, the barrels are actually threaded into the front trunnion. On the AKM, they would change that to a press fit, and then a pin to hold them in place The shape of the ejector block here is a little different, and the ejector is actually part of the trunnion Instead of being its own separate welded in rail as it would be on the AKM The rail is just this short little extension right there. You can see the two rivets that hold it in place Those rivets have been round down nice and flush so that you cannot see them The safety lever is from the outside Basically the same as every other AK. On the inside, you'll note that it does not go across, so on an AKM, there is a pinhole over here That is the opposite side of the safety. On the original "Type 1s" The safety is actually a non removable part, so you can see it acting inside there. No way to take it out and Again, like the lack of center rivet on an AKM You have a little bit of support from the safety spanning across the receiver. You don't get that with the Type 1 Now you can see two rivets down there. Those are for the pistol grip I went ahead and loosen this screw. On the modern AKM, the pistol grip just sits up here and then there's a Retaining block and a very long screw that comes all the way down and tightens in the bottom. On the Type 1, Instead they put A tab for the pistol grip, basically a skeleton for the pistol grip is riveted into the bottom of the receiver, much like the trigger guard is so the grips then have a Molded cavity--these are molded plastic may be bakelite. I think they're some sort of plastic fiber Material and they've got anyway a molded slot for that center support to go down right in the middle Fit on Just like that! On the opposite side of the receiver We have another reinforcing rail, there like the later AKM Right side rail, it does go down and it does act to reinforce the hammer pin Of course, the hammer is going to be the part that probably is putting the most Force on the receiver because of you know as slamming back and forth with a pretty heavy spring behind it so using this rail as a second layer of steel to reinforce, its receiver interface is a good idea. That rail is also held in place by two little rivets there, which are also Well you can't see them because they're ground flush up in there. The rear trunnion is kind of a blind socket here. On the AKM, this would be open on this one. It is closed It's held in place by three cross rivets that you can just barely see there one two And three and then it has--the rear trunnion has both lower and an upper tang That come off to secure the stock So when they went to the AKM, they got rid of the the lower tang and just had the upper tang You still have the trap in the buttstock for a cleaning kit, though. Early on there was some theorizing that a lot of this production change had also been due to Problems with the rivets or the welds connecting things like the front and rear trunnions To the sheet metal receiver that appears to not be the case There are some folks who've been able to examine a number of surviving Type 1s, and none of them show any sort of fatigue of that type Instead. It really does appear to have been a quality control issue. So Really the major change that eventually came--there were, by the way, two versions of the milled receiver there was the early Type 2 and Then they kind of standardized...made a few changes and standardized on what's called the Type 3 milled receiver Which is the one that we see produced a lot still...well not still produced today But when you look at milled receiver, AK's from a variety of countries. It's pretty much always a Type 3 receiver that they're using then years later finally in 1959 They were continuing to try and work on the stamping technology And this is the area where I think some of the German expertise that they had Guys like Schmeisser who were interned in Russia after the war and worked for the Russian arms program I think one of the big areas where they were able to actually help the Russian arms industry was improving, you know Figuring out how to do this sort of more complex stamping procedure and finally in 1959 they got it worked out and they Reintroduce the stamped receiver AK as the AKM (or modernized), and that is the standard stamped receiver AK that you see today Hopefully you enjoyed this video Hopefully you got to see something cool that you hadn't seen before If you do enjoy seeing this sort of thing on the Internet, please do consider checking out my patreon page It's folks watching just like you who make it possible for a buck a month for me to continue traveling Finding super cool rare guns like this and bringing them to you guys. Thanks for watching
