AK rear sight mod

[p..]

The stock sight's tough for me to use. I wanted to try something like this without throwing $65 at a Krebs, and wanted to keep the elevation/range adjustment stock, unlike the Mojo or Williams. Plus I wanted a hooded rear sight because I always seem to end up shooting into the sun. Took a vacuum line restrictor and an extra rear sight leaf, cut stuff to fit, brazed it together. Still need to paint and install it and give it a whirl at the range...

[deadlyfire]

:p awesome handiwork!

I wish I was skilled enough to tackle projects like that or had the machinery to do so. Make sure to tell us how it works out at the range!

[kartoffel]

Well done!

[dpaqu]

cool. tag for future looks

[blackbox]

you my friend are onto something good, start marketing it before somebody takes your idea! excellent work... i wanna see the finished project!

[Dave_M]

Please don't take this as pissing in your corn flakes too badly, but a peep sight that far from your eye is really only beneficial from a bench position and doing slowfire.

[BullittBoy]

I bought an RPK sight with adjustments for left and right and a peep from Arsenal USA a few years ago. It was $30 I believe, I installed it and exactly like what the poster above said it was great for target shooting but awful for anything else. I sold it and put an UltiMak rail and Primary Arms micro dot clone on it for $150 together. This is the way to go on an AK, you can co-witness absolutely with factory iron sights and the sight and rail maybe add about 6 oz to the rifle. It is a great addition to any AK.

[militarymoron]

what dave_M said above - the rear sight is too far away from the eye to use a small aperture - it won't work like an AR15 or M1A sight.
i had a mojo rear peep sight on my AK and took it off as it didn't work for me. the aperture was too small and i couldn't see the front sight blades. so all i could do was try to center the post in the aperture.

you might also find that your hood is obscuring too much of the target, and it'll take longer to find it (like making a head shot at 25 yards). ok for bench shooting, but not for anything else. if you have it mounted now, try it - pick a head-sized target about 25 yds away, and snap the rifle to it from low ready. then try it with the regular AK rear sight, and see which one you're faster with.

nice work, though.

[p..]

No question it's too far away and too big to provide the same focusing effect as an aperture sight near the eye. I tried a bunch of different sizes and liked the sight picture I got with a 0.130" aperture so that's what I'm trying out now. Yes, for fast shooting in close it's much slower than the stock rear sight and it does obscure some of the target.

I use the rifle mostly for shooting steel plates out past 100 yards, and with the stock rear sight it's tough for me to focus on the front sight post. I widened the notch a bit and that made it a little better, but it still didn't seem to work that great for me. Plus the range where I shoot faces southwest and I'm usually there late in the day, facing into the sun with the plates shadowed by the backstop and trees. Good times. ;)

I harbor no illusions that this is the next big thing or that it's an alternative to a dot sight. But it cost me about ten bucks to make so it won't break my heart if it sucks. It'll be a few days until I get a chance to play with it.

[VA_Dinger]

Nice work.

I used the overly expensive Krebs peep for awhile; I had no issues with them.

In my opinion the anti-peep statements should be adjusted to say;
"Because it's farther back from the eye on an AK a peep style sight will not be as useful as it can be on other rifles, BUT when done correctly it still can be an improvement over the stock sights found on some countries AK's".

I've found sights can be very different from AK to AK. My Bulgarian milled AK's are damn perfect. Maybe it's the width of the rear sight gap, maybe it's the finish, whatever but they are very effective.

The same cannot be said for some other AK's. The rear sight width seems too narrow; hence it's harder to pick up the front sight, etc. On these AK’s I would have no issue popping a Krebs peep on and rocking. Or you can simply take a file and open up the rear sight gap. Several guys I trust do this to most AK’s they own.

[Belloc]

Edit.

[militarymoron]

the large aperture makes all the difference - that's certainly a better sight picture than i had. as i mentioned above, the mojo aperture was too small to see the blades.

[ForTehNguyen]

wider rear notch looks like it helps a lot. On my AKs the corners of the notch in the rear sight get a little blurry

[dpaqu]

the large aperture makes all the difference - that's certainly a better sight picture than i had. as i mentioned above, the mojo aperture was too small to see the blades.
+1

Anyone here take high school geometry? The distance of the eye to the aperture makes no difference in the sight picture. Sight radius makes a difference, your eyes ability to focus on the front sight without getting distracted by the rear sight makes a difference; You can get the exact same sight picture (relative perspective of the front and rear sights when the gun is shouldered) if you open up the aperture as the rear sight moves away from the eye.

Anyone who has ever “crawled” the stock on their AR, M14, M1, Springfield+ has noticed this affect and IIRC your generic AK has a longer sight radius than an M4

[p..]

Had a chance to go play with the rifle a bit. For my eyesight and the kind of shooting I do, it worked out great. Shot from field positions with a cotton GI sling (used some 550 cord and a 1 1/4" D ring off the front sling attachment point to use the GI sling) at an 8" plate at 50 yards and a 10" plate at 100 yards. Couldn't miss at 50 yards and I was able to do a lot better at 100 yards than I could with the stock rear sight. For me it's a win.

I like to pretty much keep the wings out of the sight picture because unlike with an AR, with an AK the post isn't necessarily centered between of them. Mine's off to the right a bit more than I like now so I see the right wing a bit in the sight picture. I'll reindex the front sight base on the barrel to get that closer to centered.

Anyway, fun little project. Worked out okay for me.

[Skarmajunga]

Gee that range looks familiar :D when are you making one of those peep sights for me?