Hi 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 Riihimäki in Finland.
This year is the 100th anniversary
of the company's existence, and
they were generous enough to open up
their reference collection for me to pull out
some interesting guns to show to you guys.
Specifically today we're taking a look at an RK 95.
This is, ... as of the current date, the final upgraded iteration
of what is colloquially in the US known as the Valmet rifle, the Valmet AK.
In Finland this started off as the RK 60 and then the RK 62,
as the adopted Finnish Defence Forces standard AK rifle.
Now in the late 1980s the Defence Forces requested a modernised 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 ... rifle grenade launching.
So it was actually originally the Valmet company, the Valmet factory,
that started the development program that would lead to this rifle.
However, in 1987 I believe, Sako and Valmet merged.
And so the project came over to Sako 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 / dust cover.
Instead it had a spring-loaded just dust cover on the right side of the gun
that would ... 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 standardisation 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 RK 95 in 1995.
So let's take a look at what they actually did to it.
Alright, 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.
Production of the RK 95 began at 960,001.
This is 976,000, about 20,000 were made, so they'll run to about 980,000.
Now starting at the back of the rifle, the buttstock 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.
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.
... 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 RK 62 TP.
The "TP" in Finnish 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 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 ... 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 tightens down on these side plates
to ... hold the top cover in place, because of course the rear sight's mounted on the top cover.
In order to open this - 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 metres, like this original RK 62,
the 95 simply has a two position peep.
We have a 150 metre battle sight,
and we have a long range 300 metre ... aperture, you can see it's marked "3".
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 night rear sight. It is not adjustable in any way.
We'll get to the front sight ... as we progress down the rifle.
Internally, by the way, this is identical to a standard RK 62.
So there's really nothing in there that we need to work on.
The safety design was slightly modified from a standard Kalashnikov,
gives you 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 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 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 FAL-style muzzle brake on it now
which is set up for rifle grenades.
You can see the ... 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 RK 95, 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, ... as are 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 Mosin-Nagants.
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 ... 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 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 RK 92) these are M6 threads,
which typically you 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 ... 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 Defence Forces,
and there was only one production run of RK 95 rifles.
So it's important to point out, these are not modifications of existing RK 62s,
these are all brand new guns.
And you kind of realise that when you see that the receiver is ... 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 ... 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 RK 92 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 in private hands,
as well as a few floating around the EU, but they are quite rare.
They came after the US assault weapon import ban, and so we really don't have them in the US.
There are probably a couple that snuck in somehow, but.
Generally speaking, the RK 95 is a rifle that we just don't see in the United States.
So, a big thanks to Sako 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.