Vepr 7.62 in 51 or 54r help me decide

i would go 308

.308 ammo won't dry up, and bullet selection is vastly superior for reloading purposes. It's a fair bit more expensive to shoot than milsurp, but ammo will be easier to find and make. x54r is dear to me, and still the cheapest full-power rifle round you can get your hands on, but eventually the surplus will dry up and you'll have a much harder time with finding ammo. Maybe it won't be all that bad, kinda like .303 British ammo is now, but it will definitely be at least more difficult to get than 308.

I would say, if you can afford a crate or two of x54r alongside the rifle, that will keep you going for a very long time. Supplement that by collecting some brass and bullets for eventual reloading, and you will be in fine shape by going that route. Can't go wrong with good ole 308, but the x54r would be overall cheaper in the medium term, at least till the milsurp runs out.

go with a 308. detail cleaning a semi-auto after shooing old corrosive is a pain. As as been said you'll have a much better selection of ammo to choose from as well.

If you're getting a VEPR, I say go with the 54r. The VEPRs are nice and I would LOVE one, but at the heart it is still an AK. It just isn;t going to be as accurate as an AR10 or a nice M1A. You'll be able to get pretty much the same accuracy out of it with 54r as you would .308. New ammunition is easy to find, I don't know why people complain so much about reloading the 54r. I started recently.
Prvi Partizan makes very good ammo in match, hunting, and plinking varieties, boxer primed/brass cased for around $15 a box of 20. Steel-cored surplus is available extremely cheaply in 148 and 182 grain varieties. The 54r can handle a wider range of bullets than the .308 too, which is important if you plan on hunting with it. I can find 48 grain Czech low-recoil rounds, I can reload with 123 gr .311 bullets, plenty of soft points all across the spectrum, all the way up to 215gr Woodleigh thumper rounds that can take big game like no other.
The biggest drawback to the 54r is magazines. 5 and 10 are your varieties, and since its a single stack, the 10 rounder is about as long as an AK-74 30 rounder. But I live in California, so thats unfortunately all I'm allowed to have anyway though I doubt very many people regularly go through 20 round magazines of .308 though. That would get EXPENSIVE fast.

.308. More transportable and available.

7.62x54r. They're both Russian!

Would certainly be far cheaper in ammo w/ 54R.

Personally, I'd probably get the 51. I already have too many mosins and go through too much 54R already.

Matt

I don't think we're necessarily going to see see x54r dry up since it's a still round issued in the Russian military, ie they're still churning it out. Even the commercial stuff is pretty cheap. I'd go x54r.

What do you want to do with it? 54R has cheaper ammo for now. 308 gives you broader choice of ammo. Which of those is more compelling based on how you plan to use it.

How much 54R can you buy and stock up on? There are a few different cartridges that have made me painfully aware of the fact that surplus can dry up and prices jump.

308 is still a NATO round but surplus for it is not what it once was.

go with a 308. detail cleaning a semi-auto after shooing old corrosive is a pain.

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A vepr is an AK. They come apart very fast and easily and pouring hot water down the gas tube isn't much harder than doing it just down the bore.

I am pretty sure 54R VEPRs have a chrome-lined barrel and port/tube... at least I read that somewhere. Personally, I'd go 54R, but I am a fan of that particular round. However, I'd be willing to bet that magazine options would be better for the .308 version.

I'd be willing to bet that magazine options would be better for the .308 version.

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I know ccspecs has a 308 vepr mag. They have 10 and 20 rounders (mind 922(r)) They don't list any 54R mags. I have seen 10 round mags for the 54R. They appear to be surefires. I have surefire and Csspec mags for a Saiga 308. The Csspecs are much better, and I predict will prove much more durable, magazines. The Surefire 54r 10 rounders are more expensive than the csspec 308 10 rounders and are slightly more than the Csspec vepr 308 20 round magazines. 5 round 54R mags are fairly expensive as well.

On the one hand: 7.62x54R is pretty widely available and cheaper. On the other hand, surplus is corrosive and you do NOT want to put that stuff through a gas-operated firearm; trust me, I own a PSL. I also do not know if it shares the PSL's problem of not being able to handle heavy ball ammunition (I would assume it does, to some extent, because they're both AK actions and heavy ball would cause greatly accelerated wear).

Using .308 also has the advantage of not suffering from rimlock, though this is rarely a problem. Additionally, cheap commercial .308 is available from the same manufacturers as 7.62x54R. Brown Bear, Silver Bear, and Wolf. And the pricing is comparable if not a little better.

Overall, I have to agree: go .308. The options are just much better there.

you do NOT want to put that stuff through a gas-operated firearm; trust me, I own a PSL.

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Ak 74 shooters have been doing it for a long time with no real issues other than the standard changes to cleaning procedure for corrosive ammo. I fail to see how the gas operated action of an AK is sooo much harder to deal with than a bolt gun. Other weapons I could see more of an argument.

I also do not know if it shares the PSL's problem of not being able to handle heavy ball ammunition (I would assume it does, to some extent, because they're both AK actions and heavy ball would cause greatly accelerated wear).

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You know what they say about assuming. This is a letter from Molot, who makes the vepr. It states that the gun can handle heavy ball, well to be a bit more precise it says the gun can handle the entire range of ammunition for the cartridge. Everything else I have read indicates they can as well.

If you intend to hunt with this rifle, then probably the 308 would be a better choice. Anything else, I would choose the 54r. The 54r is easy to load for, but I would spend the extra coin and get C&H Tool and Die to make my full length sizing die. The cases headspace on the rims, and the chambers tend to have quite a bit of room at the shoulder. If you set back the shoulder each time you shoot the rifle, your brass will not last too long. However, if you reload for this cartridge with the custom dies to fit your chamber, so the shoulders are only set back a couple thousandths, you can make it last longer.

The reason I suggest 308 for hunting is the broader selection of game getting bullets available in that diameter.

YMMV.

One thing about reloading for AKs is they tend to be hard on brass. There are fixes for some of this.

7.62x54 was designed for use in a 28" barrel, and consequently the surplus ammo uses powder with a very slow burn rate. Using it in a 20" barrel (or thereabouts), like the Vepr has, produces a massive muzzle blast/flash, as any owner of a Nagant carbine can tell you. This is because so much of the powder is being burned after the bullet leaves the muzzle.

I would go with the .308. It is a better suited round for that rifle's barrel length, and it gives you a lot more options if you hand load, which you said you plan on doing.

On the other hand, surplus is corrosive and you do NOT want to put that stuff through a gas-operated firearm; trust me, I own a PSL.

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I guess I've been doing it wrong with my AK74...

i would prefer the 54r but the fact of the matter is the maximum mag capacity you could obtain with one of those is 10(and they are long goofy looking magazines and expensive to boot) while you can get 20 rounders(even some metal 20 rounders are being made i believe) for the 308.

If it were me id go 308 just for mag capacity(always a plus) and amount of match ammo made for it in case you want to push the weapons limits or hunt.

id go with 54r, its a Russian rifle it ought to shoot a Russian round. also for me, the square box style of the 308 mags just looks odd. plus with the 54r version if you wanna get crazy you can open them up a bit to accept real dragunov mags

Personally, I'd probably get it in 5.45x39 like the Russians intended it to be..........

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vepr

Personally, I'd probably get it in 5.45x39 like the Russians intended it to be..........

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That's an entirely different rifle. What you linked to is a Ukrainian military bullpup AK variant. The rifle being discussed is just a beefed-up standard AK/RPK, designed for civilian use.

Are the Vepr's gas tube chrome lined or just the barrel and the gas block?

i have had my veper in 762.51 for a while now and its one relieable rifle with any thing i have fed it. out to 300yds it will carry the mail,maybe farther with a better scope. eastbank.