Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian, I'm here today at the James Julia auction house, up in Maine,
taking a look at some of the cool guns they're going to be selling
in their upcoming October of 2016 firearms auction.
And we have one here today for machine gun enthusiasts,
this is an AK-47. And it really is, it's not an AKM, it's not a semi-auto.
... Specifically, it's a Type 58 North Korean Kalashnikov rifle.
This is a pretty scarce version of the AK,
the North Koreans didn't make all that many of them, and of course
not a whole lot of stuff from North Korea has ever gotten into the United States.
Well, in the case of their AKs, their Type 58 AKs,
which is by the way the designation because they were
formally adopted by the North Korean military in 1958,
well, a lot of those guns were actually given as military aid to some other countries, most notably North Vietnam.
And that's how most of the ones in the US got here was through combat capture in places like Vietnam, or Cambodia, or Laos.
I believe these have also shown up in Africa, so they do get around. However, they're one of the lowest production
AKs out there. My understanding is only about 50,000 of these were manufactured,
which is a lot for most types of gun, but it's actually a fairly small number for an AK variant.
Now we would describe this as a Type 3 AK-47.
The AK of course was originally adopted by the Russians in 1947,
and the Type 1 version of the gun was only manufactured for a couple years from '47 until '49.
And this very first version of the gun had a stamped receiver with milled front and rear trunnions that were embedded into it.
This is how the gun would eventually be made, but at this early stage
the Russian manufacturing capability had a lot of trouble making these guns well.
The Russians had done a lot of stamped guns, but they were fairly simple stamped guns,
things like the PPSh front end was all stamped, and the PPS-43 submachine gun was an all stamped gun.
The Germans on the other hand, had a lot of expertise with very complex stampings, as you can see primarily in the StG 44 assault rifles.
And it's very likely that some captured German engineers and scientists had a definite hand
in helping to improve Russian stamping technology to allow them to manufacture the ultimate AKM rifles.
Well, stepping back here to where we were, the original AK-47 Type 1 stamped receiver, couldn't really make it work,
just not reliably and repeatably. You have a lot of quality control problems and fitment problems.
So what they did was in '49 they scrapped that stamped idea, or they put it on the shelf, they said,
"Fine, we can't make the stamping work, forget it. We'll make it out of a giant block of steel, because we know how to make that work."
And that was the next development, was what's called the Type 2 AK, and that looks a lot like this but not exactly.
... The receiver is one giant block of metal. These are heavier guns as a result,
2 to 3 pounds heavier than a stamped AK would be.
But it was easy, well-known technology and they were able to manufacture them.
In 1953 or '54 they made some improvements, kind of tweaked the design, made it a little more efficient,
and that became the Type 3 AK-47.
And that's what the North Koreans built here is a Type 3. These are recognisable from the outside by this lightening,
fairly shallow but lightening, cut on the receiver. That's on both sides.
The Type 3 is also identifiable by these tangs top and bottom on the stock.
The Type 2 actually had a metal sort of boot holding the stock.
That's the easiest way to differentiate between the 2 and the 3.
Now ultimately by 1958 the Russians were able to get their stamping technology up and running and on-line
and good enough to make stamped AKs. And they called that the AKM, or the modernised AK.
And that's when production really took off from the Russian perspective.
Now, they were using the AK as military aid to other countries during this time,
and for example the Chinese built them, adopted them in 1956.
The North Koreans were a little bit later, adopting this in 1958.
The North Koreans would update their guns, well they would start manufacturing stamped AKMs in 1968
as the Type 68, so these North Korean milled Type 3 AKs are, like I said, really quite rare.
We'll take a closer look at the markings on these, because there aren't a whole lot of differences between
AKs from different countries. And the markings are of course the most interesting one.
So we'll take a look at those and we'll pull it apart.
So the main set of markings on these is on the left side of the receiver up at the front,
which is where you'll find AK markings in general.
This 5 pointed star in a circle is the standard North Korean national mark, you could say.
You'll find that on all the North Korean AKs. And then this here is our serial number,
2 L (or that may be a Korean character) 7952.
And this is actually almost a completely matching gun. Everything, except the bolt, that is numbered
has that same number. So we'll see it a few more times.
Then of course the other typical markings that you'll get on AKs are the selector markings,
which are all going to be a little bit different with different countries. Here of course we have Korean language markings.
This is in the safe position where it blocks access to the receiver,
when we flip it down to the middle position that is fully automatic, and in the bottom position is semi-automatic.
We have a few little inspection stamps there, including another five pointed star in a circle on the right side.
And that's pretty much it for markings on the gun, other than a few serial numbers that we'll see inside.
This is going to disassemble like any other standard AK, so I'm going to push
the recoil spring in, we'll pull the top cover off, and by the way on the top cover
right there, 7952, same serial number.
We can then take the recoil spring out.
Cock the hammer, the bolt carrier comes out the back,
and the bolt comes out.
7952 there again on the bolt carrier.
And then the bolt itself is a slightly different number, it looks like we have 15473.
But that does appear to be a North Korean bolt.
And that's really pretty much it for disassembly.
You can see the stock tangs back here, that's indicative of a Type 3 milled receiver rifle.
There's one on top and one on the bottom. Have a wooden pistol grip, it's a solid piece of wood.
Probably not the greatest kind of wood, if you look at the inside of it here it looks kind of porous,
feels a little bit light, and of course it has already been chipped once at some point by someone.
All these features which on the later stamped guns would be riveted in place, those are
integral to the receiver because of course this is milled out of a big 'ol block.
This does actually make the milled receiver guns a little bit stronger. The stamped receiver AKs
ultimately, after 10,000s if not 100,000s of rounds, will tend to crack just behind the ... front trunnion.
Of course that's not going to happen on a milled gun.
Got a gas block out here, we've got the...
These ports are there to vent the excess gas. The gas piston is going to go up to about here,
and then when it cycles back by the time it's gotten this far it's got all of the momentum it needs to cycle the rifle.
So at this point whatever gas pressure is left is vented out these two sets of holes on the top.
By the way, this is also a way to distinguish between the Type 2s and the Type 3s.
The Type 3 here, these holes are kind of pointing upwards. The Type 2 they're horizontal, right on the side.
Got our cleaning rod there, which is actually not quite as far in as it should be. And then just a standard
muzzle nut on the end of the barrel. These are chrome lined barrels, which is kind of nice.
Rear sight markings there are in typical numerals that we're familiar with as is the serial number.
So like the Japanese, the Koreans would use Korean script for some markings
and they would use western-type numbers for others.
Thanks for watching guys, I hope you enjoyed the video. These North Korean,
well, North Korean guns of any type are pretty unusual to find.
And live, transferable, registered, NFA, North Korean machine guns are substantially scarcer than most.
So I'm sure this will be of interest to a bunch of people.
If you're the sort of person who really wants to have just a different kind of AK, a very historically interesting AK,
well, take a look at the description text below. You'll find a link there to Julia's
catalogue page on this rifle, take a look at their pictures and their description.
And you can come up here and participate in the auction live, or place a bid remotely by phone.
Thanks for watching.