When you have a lemon...make lemonade...or buy an orange
Yes, the shavings issue is universally bad. I hope everyone who gets one of
these is likewise checking out their barrels prior to shooting. Mine had plenty
of shavings trapped under oil and gunk in the bore and required brushing to
loosen up and remove. Solvent patches alone will not bring this to the
surface.
First off, please read this:
http://thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=359052
Now for an update on mine which was one of the last ones from the first
batch imported a few months ago. I widened the magwell area of the
receiver (especially back toward the mag-catch) and polished the trunion
area where the bolt enters it from the receiver rails. I went back out
shooting again and started off by emptying a 75 rd drum to finish polishing
my work --no problem w/ fmjs.
I was able to shoot some different chinese and romanian drums and these
functioned flawlessly w/ fmjs (feeding from left side). A friend had issues w/
both 30 and 40 rd mags w/ hps. These consistently hanged up on the right
side. I had 5 30 rd mags that the rifle consistently liked to function with
when fed fmjs, but inserted a romanian 40 rd mag which had no issues in a
jugo rifle and the AES hiccuped 1/2 way thru --two different times running
through. After some more firing the rifle will function w/ about anything (fmj,
hp, sp) from any of the 3 drums (however, there is some nose deformation
w/ hp & sp). I've come to the conclusion I probably need to carefully
balance out the grinding and angle of the magwell area to make things more
consistent. However, at this point it works well w/ 3 drums and five 30 rd
mags. I've shot a lot of ammo thru it and wil be moving on to a different rifle
soon for practice.
Accuracy varied thanks more to inconsistent Wolf ammo than anything else.
I used a Russian PO 3.5x20 Compact Weapon Rifle Scope w/ German Post
Reticle on a Russian scope mount and had no problem getting 4-6" at 100
yds w/ a flier that would widen it out even more. My particular PO had a
lens grinding job which must've been done by a taste-tester at the Stolichnaya
bottling plant. I have a nicer Belorussian 8x which I might try in the future
just for curiosity. In any case, a switch to Silver Bear and the rifle did 4-5"
groups w/ no fliers. This was from a warm-hot barrel and 1000+ rds of
milage.
I really didn't find this AES any more accurate than many shorter AKs considering
that I get 6-8" groups w/ the same ammo and open sites on a hot barrel jugo,
mak, thumbhole romie, and <3" w/ a scoped 16" Arsenal.
IMHO the AES didn't offer anything positive in trade for its cost in weight and
length. Well...there is that Red-Dawn-chicks-dig-it-factor...rest assured that
this rifle will be on the rack for barter at the TBL Bunker if the post-peak-oil
collapse happens anytime too soon.
I often buy more than one kind of rifle as I shoot them a lot and then trade,
sell, give to friends later. Although I've made this particular rifle work, I will
not be buying another AES-10B in the future. I seriously question that
Century is actually test-firing all these rifles after they're "completing" their
own magwell work on them --let alone cycling 30 rds of dummy ammo
through the actions based on the shavings alone. However, considering that
the rifles are made in Romania, maybe the original manufacturer also has
some quality control issues w/ the RPK series?