AK mags milsurp Polish or Yugo BHOs -- thoughts?

They should be good to go. Personally I look for the Croatian "maple leaf" mags that show up from time to time in the $12-$15 range that are top quality and run on the tight side (which I like). They tend to show up at AIM or APEX from time to time.

http://www.aimsurplus.com/product.a...+Steel+AK47+Magazines+30rd+7.62x39&groupid=15

They have a little more meat at the back of the mag and can be touched up with a file to fit your gun perfectly with no rattle (image stolen from net):


Mike

I stocked up mainly on East German AK mags some time back. All have a decent blued finish and are very well made.

The new Croation BHO AK mags need filing in some cases to get them to fit properly. I bought these 5 Croatian AK mags that hold the bolt open on the last shot in anticipation of Hillary winning.

I received them in the mail in November after the election and after you-know-who won. At any rate went to fit them into one of my AK's (Chinese) and either it was such a tight fit that it was tough to get them in and out and have the latch actually click or they were too large altogether and I couldn't get them in at all. The SAR-1 was a bit better, still tight.

I compared them to my sole original Yugo mag and the latch lug that stuck out seemed longer on the Croat mag than on the Yugo, so I filed them with the Dremel and a flat file. Helped a little, but not enough. So I used the Dremel to hit all the obvious points of wear on this AK mag that were shiny. Finally hit it on that back lug piece that was supposed to do down to a slant to where the back of the follower/back of the rounds are ... Bingo. That loosened things up, but where the mag was still seated tight without any wobble.

Before using the dremel - Original Yugo bolt hold open mag (top) & New Croat mag (on bottom)


Before filling - In this pic it's switched, original Yugo BHO mag in front and you can see how the slope of the catch of the Croat AK mag behind doesn't slope as gradually which led to it sticking or in 1 out of the 5 mags not being able to fit in the mag well and have it latch close period.


After


That did it. Took them to the range, functioned 100%. I personally like the BHO feature instead of waiting til that 31st trigger squeeze to be a 'Click' instead of a 'BANG' to let you know that you need to do a mag change.

I got these from Robertrtg, but just be forewarned that if you buy these Croat AK mags they might need some fitting. So that's where they need to get hit with a file or a dremel. Just go easy. You can always remove more material, but you can't put it back on.

Browning, many thanks for your post. I bought 10 Croatian mags, and not a single one locks into my Chinese T56. I knew I was going to have to fit them, but your post just gave me a good place to start!

Not a fan of the BHO mags. They make extracting a magazine considerably more difficult because the bolt drags on it.
I do not like how the bolt flies forwards when the mag is ejected. Coupled with the awkward mag release and stiff ejection, I've gotten tagged by the charging lever while trying to change mags and could see your fingertip getting chewed up if you weren't paying attention.
The only thing they do for me is add one more complication to a mag reload. I have four or five I never use that I'd love to trade for any decent surplus 30rd metal mags.

akarguy:
The question at the end of your original topic description was "What would folks recommend for milsurp steel AK mags"? You won't like my answer.
Quite frankly, I'm insane. My favorites, out of about seven total AK metal mags, are the four Hun. Tanker 20-rd. mags.

I'm insane because I paid about $35 each just a few months ago (got the 'AK bug' less than 2 yrs. ago). They have better ergos than 30s, are rock solid reliable, and were designed by this former Warsaw Pact country for their tank crews.
They are Not 'BHO', but with just a few at that really high price, a few are certainly worth the money. And I only load about six-ten rounds at a time, followed by cooling, to avoid excessive ammo consumption and unnecessarily high barrel/bore temps.

Second option: the much lower-priced, newer Korean 20-rounder "Tankers", according to a Mod at SKSboards, are just as reliable.

Actually I love me some Hungarian 20 rd Tanker Mags. I have around the same number of those mags that you do and they're my most used AK mag besides the Yugoslav BHO mag.

•Can fit in the rifle while still in the case.
•The reduced length allows you to go prone easier and the same thing applies if stuck going to a regular range where you have to shoot off of a bench.

satexas said:

Browning, many thanks for your post. I bought 10 Croatian mags, and not a single one locks into my Chinese T56. I knew I was going to have to fit them, but your post just gave me a good place to start!

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Cool. Glad I could help. If you want I can pull out the calipers so that you could mark it off or tape it off and have an approximate place to start that ramp.

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I'm not sure how you could get your fingers or hand or anything else caught when the bolt goes forward on the BHO Mags. Firing hand (for me it's my right) is on the pistol grip to hold the rifle steady for the mag change and off hand (left for me) has to be on the mag to operate the mag catch with your thumb, to pull the mag out, dump it and get a fresh one. Unless you have a third hand or the flexibility of a yoga instructor I'm not sure what's getting caught in the open bolt.

I'm kidding, I guess you could brace the stock against your body (like say a leg), dump the mag with your left and then have your right hand out to hold the bolt handle and ease it forward (which is an awkward as hell method of changing a mag unless up against a table). On that method if you grasp the bolt first or put the edge of your hand in front of it (like an M1 Garand) rather that waiting for it to fly forward then it's still hard to get your fingers to go in front on the bolt. I'm genuinely stumped as to how your fingertip could potentially get chewed off.

I like the Polish mags... But I have a Polish rifle. I also really like the 20 round tanker mags.

I bought 10 of the Polish mags and they are finished very well and haven't developed any rust issues living inside a house that runs a swamp cooler from April to early November. That's more than I can say for all of my blued guns. They fit my AK tight, but not excessively. Many have reported that they are too tight fitting though. Not recommended for guns that have tight magwells.

Ignition Override

Thanks for the info; I want to get some of those 20 round "Tanker" mags for my SA-85M underfolder! Which is kind of funny because with my ARs I have always preferred using the 20 round mags for pretty much the same reasons you listed for the AK mags.

The BHO is a useless PITA since the bolt will go forward once you take the mag out. Also AKs don't have bolt releases like ARs so you are going to have to crank it back anyways.

I like the magpul AK mags because they are thin. Yugo and Bulgarian metal mags don't fit in all my AKs (I don't know the procenance of others) Since the internet got its panties in a twist about "mag wobble," more recent AKs have tighter magwells. Even if your mags fit now, you might have to file them down more if you make a new addition to the family. I don't care if my mags wobble- I do care if they don't fit in my guns.

I don't like BHO's.

((10)) waffles for me.

Another one who doesn't see the point of the BHO. IMHO the 31st click and eject is faster to reload from than the BHO and you still have to charge it as the bolt slams forward once you've removed the magazine. All you gain is charging with the hammer cocked vs not.

Here is how Russian recruits are taught to run their AK:


At about 4:30 into is the magazine change.

Here is another with the AK-74:


At about 1:30 in is a "tactical" reload with magazine retention, about 3:30 in are two fast change techniques without retention.

I have about 75 AK magazines from various countries. I use my Hungarian tankers primarily in my M92 SBR, no particular reason, It's just what I do. I have found that all the European magazines work excellent as do Chinese mags. I like my Russian bakelites the best, but mostly I like them because of the looks not that they are work any better than the metal ones.

As for the relative difference between Polish and Yugo mags, you really can't go wrong with either one. I think the argument against the BHO feature of the Yugo is somewhat specious as with a minor amount of use you get used to it and if you have any dexterity at all, you would only have to get tagged by the bolt handle once to learn how to avoid it in the future. Now that I think about it, I am not sure how you would get your hand in the way when doing a mag change. I personally like that my rifle locks open on an empty mag as it lets me know instantly that I am out of ammo and didn't just click on a dead round.

I say buy as many as you can while they are still reasonable. Recently AIM had refinished Polish 30 rounders for $9.95 each if you bought ten at a time. That was a great price as the shipping adds to the cost and it helps to amortize it over a larger quantity. I bought a couple of hundred dollars worth and sold half of them locally for $14.

Forgot to add in my earlier post that the Chinese mags that I have are comparable to most of the Eastern European blog mags. They are fairly decent in the materials used and in their overall build quality.

My 0.02$
The Yugo military surplus mags fit without modification. The Croatian mags look pretty but may require fitting and are tight to the point that they slow me down on reloads. Not a huge deal unless you do some kind of 3 gun.(most people don't run AKs anyway) Both mags are blued. The BHO changes the annoying AK click into locked bolt, some people think the locked bolt make them harder to extract, I don't have any issues pulling them out. All in all I hate the croat mags and prefer Yugo military surplus all day long.

The polish mags run great and have a nice powder coat finish.

If you want a BHO Yugo military surplus is the way to go, otherwise I prefer the polish mags because of the powder coat finish.

My favorite AK mags are the Yugo military surplus and Bulgy waffle mags.

ComBloc if you can get them, made when there was a CCCP and real mil spec.

Sebastian the Ibis said:

The BHO is a useless PITA since the bolt will go forward once you take the mag out. Also AKs don't have bolt releases like ARs so you are going to have to crank it back anyways.

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I'd have to disagree with you on that. It lets you know when you're empty so that you can start reloading rather than being under the delusion that you still have at least one rd left, aiming and then trying to fire.

If you're interested in an experiment to see if your conclusion has any merit try this :

Pull out your shot timer or if you don't have one beg, borrow or steal a shot timer from somewhere or download a shot timer app onto your phone.

Have a shooting buddy load up a regular AK Mag (without a BHO) where the number of rds put into the mag is unknown to you and then have him load up one rd into another mag for the purpose of forcing a reload.

Have him load the mag into the rifle and chamber a rd and put the safety on so that you won't be able to tell by the approximate weight of the mag how many rds are in there. Then when you're ready have your buddy say 'Go!!' and start the shot timer, you then take the safety off and fire the unknown number of rds into a target at 25 to 50 yards while getting good hits (they need to be A zone hits for it to be a clean run). When the mag runs dry do a reload and fire one more accurate rd at the same target stopping the clock.

The extra mag can be any place, back left jeans pocket, mag pouch, table or truck bed. Doesn't matter just so long as they're both in the same place. The range is also close to take accuracy out of the equation a little, but the A zone accuracy requirement is put in to keep the shooter from just zipping through the rds without hitting anything to just get to the reload and get a good time.

Then do the same thing with the BHO mag using the same number of rds that you used in the regular AK mag and one rd for the reload mag.

Would be nice if the 2nd mag was a Croat or Yugoslav BHO mag as well, but it doesn't really matter since you won't be pulling the 2nd mag on the timer.

You can also try doing it a second, third or fourth time switching out the mags and having the Yugoslav/Croat mags go first and perhaps having a different number of rds.

Which time do you think is faster?

For me it's always been the BHO mag simply because it let me know when the mag was empty rather than having me go through the unneeded process of aiming the rifle and squeezing the trigger when I didn't even have a rd in there.

AK's aren't exactly dainty, gotta reload with vigor. Using the Russian method of butting the catch and empty mag with the front new mag to be reloaded and letting the bolt slam forward or hitting the catch with your thumb and rocking the mag forward slightly and pulling it out and letting the bolt slam forward, putting the mag in your dump pouch, grabbing a fresh mag, inserting it and then cycling the bolt doesn't cost you any time at all and requires no additional effort just so long as you're reloading the AK with a moderate amount of force.

Try it out on a timer. You'll see what I mean. Everything changes with a timer. Some shooters may dislike the bolt slamming forward when the BHO mag is yanked out. Q : Are these huge gains in time? A : No, they aren't. Admittedly they're measured in seconds and points of seconds.
However it does alert you that your rifle is empty and regular AK mags don't do that and in some cases those extra seconds and fractions of seconds could matter.

Why the Russians didn't include that feature on the AK when they did with the SKS is beyond me.

At any rate we had a fun time trying both the Croat and Yugoslav BHO mags out yet again and trying our hand at twin and quad loading a semi shotgun (Stoeger M3K) at the range on the clock. Something that neither my friend or I are much good at compared to some competition shooters, but we're improving and a day at the range trying this stuff out beats a day at work any day.

FYI for anyone that's looking for a deal on the Croation mags.
http://palmettostatearmory.com/case...capacity-magazine-steel-w-bolt-hold-open.html
At $229.99 for a 42 mag case, they come out to less than $5.48 each with free delivery.

I got a case of their blems a couple months ago and only 2 or 3 of them had any visible scratches, none were dented.

They all fit and those that I tested functiomed in my WASR 10 without any modifications needed.

Count me in as liking the 20 round mags, much less obtrusive.

Regarding the BHO feature, it seems to me that if BHO mags were used in conjunction the safety lever that has the BHO notch, when the last round was fired one could simply pull the bolt back, locking it open with the safety lever, change mags and release the bolt. I have an AK with this type of safety but no BHO mags so I can't test th theory. Could someone else try it?

35W

I know this wasn't your question but I personally like the Magpul AK mags. They fit & work great in my Zastava NPAP. They are easy on the fingers when reloading also.

Browning said:

Why the Russians didn't include that feature on the AK when they did with the SKS is beyond me.

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Because the SKS magazine is for all intent and purpose non-detachable, and was meant to be reloaded with stripper clips. The SKS was developed before Simonov had a chance to examine the few MP43's captured at that point, and basically just shrunk down his PTRS-41 anti-tank rifle to fit the M43 round. M.T. Kalashnikov had the luxury of examining the MP43's and having some of the development team for the MP43 there to assist him with the AK-47's final development models after they were captured. A bolt-hold open would have unnecessarily complicated the action, as well as manufacturing. The AK-47 was designed for use in massive 'walking assault' formations where the individual soldier's ease and comfort in firing were inconsequential.

akarguy said:

AIM Surplus has 30rd milsurp Polish steel and Yugo BHO mags. Both are about $10+/-. Aside from the bolt hold open, curious if anyone is familiar with pro/cons or otherwise. Thinking of picking some up, are there any advantages to either? What would folks recommend for milsurp steel AK mags?

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metal to heavy just stick to plastic like cheap pro mags they are tough enough to toss around and still work