I visited my local Cabelas today and was a bit pissed. They had very little 7.62×39 ammo. I saw a few boxes of PPU and Herters. That was it. Nothing else. No bulk in that caliber either. That company (Cabelas) is large. It is very large. And it can’t keep stocked in mainstream calibers? I mean, there was 5.56mm and .223, but no 7.62×39. WTF.
I was hoping that Cabelas would be my local go-to, but either someone is purposely buying up all the AK ammo (I hate horders) or Cabelas is having supply problems. I was trying to stay away from Walmart for ammo but I think I might need to keep using Walmart until Cabelas gets their shit together.
As well, it was the same for 9mm handgun ammo. There was hardly any.
I ended up buying some of that PPU, only to find that it was soft-nosed, and it wasn’t marked as such on the box. I opened it up and saw that it was round-nosed with a lead tip. I heard that some people had issues when trying to shoot that ammo through their AKs. I did see at least one video where a guy loaded up this same ammo and shot it through his AK with no issues. We’ll see. I bought 40 rounds of it (2 boxes).
So, I’ve two boxes of the PPU SP RN and a box of RAS (30 rounds). I guess I’ll be using my range’s ammo on my first visit. I want to fire maybe 100 rounds of 7.62×39.
I saw that Cabelas had some frangible ammo that I was curious about. It was Hevi Duty frangible and non-toxic, $15 for a box of 50. I bought 2 boxes. This is multi-purpose ammo: it can be used at indoor and outdoor ranges, on steel, as competition ammo, and as HD/SD ammo. It’s supposedly very accurate too. It is light-for-caliber, as it is 100-grain and has a velocity of 1200 FPS. I will shoot a box of it through my carry gun and then begin to use it as my SD ammo if it feeds without issue.
I also have 500 rounds of RAS coming from LAX. It was $99 for 500 rounds. I almost ordered 1000, but I’ll see how fast of the incoming batch I shoot before ordering more. Shipping was a bit high, though, so I should’ve probably bought the 1000.
In my last post, I mentioned that I’d bought Magpul hardware for the AK. I was able to fit that on the gun with a bit of grinding/filing. The handguard fits well. I can’t fit the gas tube cover since the gas tube on my AK is not standard (it is shorter and has no fittings for covers or handguards. I do want an upper handguard on the gas tube, though, so I’m waiting for M-13 to finish a batch of tubes specifically designed for the AMDs (they are $50 each, though….I’ll probably end up buying two of them). I suppose I could make my own. Apparently its easy to cut down a standard gas tube but heat is needed, as they can crack.
I keep looking over the gun to determine if there are flaws or some things I overlooked. I think I’m obsessing, thinking I went cheap and remembering the “you get what you pay for” mantra. The only thing that might be wrong with this particular rifle is that the barrel’s hole where the gas tube vents from might be large (they’re supposedly all like that). I’ll deal with replacing the barrel when the time comes. I can mitigate the issue by buying a stronger recoil spring and maybe one of those buffer cushions…
So, tomorrow may be where I take the AK to the range. We’ll see.