So, my when I first got my Polish milled, it had a little quirk where if you pulled back the bolt and eased it foward it would hang up on the hammer. It was basically a poor mans bolt hold open, but with a bump it would slam shut. It wasnt terribly annoying when I was using the rifle however whenever I gave it to someone else to check out or fire, they would leave the bolt "open" and it was super annoying. I figgured this would go away after firing. Well, it fires 100% but after a few hundred rounds it continued. So...I set out to stop this annoying "feature".

 

This little quirk is not really uncommon and it is actually a side effect of Kalashnikovs genious design. As the bolt returns foward, it actually forces the hammer down AGAIN to make sure it is 100% caught by the trigger hook(s). unfortunatly, due to american FCGs not being exact copies of the originals, they arent always perfect. This is what I did.

 

 

The corner where the arrow points to is what is catching the bolt. I simply removed the trigger group, stuck the hammer in a vice, and knocked that corner down a LITTLE with a file. You really just have to break the corner, no further. I threw it back into the rifle and tada! It now will NOT catch no matter how hard I try. Not all hammers have this design with the corners, and I am not sure which is more original in design but for reference, here is the other style.

 

 

Hope that helps somebody out there!

excellent post.. I actually noticed this recently on another variant and thought.. that is sloppy.. I would fix that if it were my gun.. lol

My WASR does this. I had no idea what caused this (thought there was something wrong with it). Now i know why it does that and now i have a solution. Might try it this weekend. Thank you for posting this Glenn!

Ohhhhhhhhh so that's what's causing my PSL to do it. I'll have to take a look at it and see if I can do this.

Ohhhhhhhhh so that's what's causing my PSL to do it. I'll have to take a look at it and see if I can do this.

 

Its actually not really possible to see if it is doing it, I just assumed that it was the problem, took a stab at it and was right. However, you cannot hurt anything by just knocking that corner down(a little!), so you may as well give it a shot. Remember, go a little, test, go a little more, test. Easier to take off than put back on lol. I got mine on the first try with about 4 strokes of the file so its not alot.

Wow, what a shitty hammer. What company makes that awful, square imitation?

 

Good to see you corrected their mistake at least.

now i have a reason to work on my saiga, she does this also...

Common. It's the hammer profile. Most of the AK style rifles I've owned had this issue, some worse that others. See.s common with the Tapco G2 triggers. I've switched to ALG triggers and seems better. My GenIII Beryl/Archers seemed to have e a nice trigger tight o UT the box...no hangup. Can always reprile hammer to match surplus hammers.

17 minutes ago, tower06 said:

Common. It's the hammer profile. Most of the AK style rifles I've owned had this issue, some worse that others. See.s common with the Tapco G2 triggers. I've switched to ALG triggers and seems better. My GenIII Beryl/Archers seemed to have e a nice trigger tight o UT the box...no hangup. Can always reprile hammer to match surplus hammers.

I appreciate your trying to help others but you answered a question posted 13 years ago!

Didn't realize the date till well after posting. Was just looking over the AK posts and responded.