Monday, February 21, 2011

When the new forend costs more than the carbine, it's time to change your plans.

The dogs have been alerting to things I can't see in the middle of the night, and I've been thinking I need to add a little bling to my AK. Specifically, I want a shooter with a light on it.

This goes pretty severely against my own notions of how a personal weapon should be set up - I like'em as plainjane and idiotproof as I can make'em, because they've got quite an idiot to deal with. I have repeatedly proven in the field my ability to screw up or misuse any defensive technology more sophisticated than an arquebus. But I do think maybe I can deal with a flashlight.

Unfortunately, before I can add a flashlight to my AK, I have to replace some of the ancient Romy furniture. No problem, I thought: I'll just get me one of those "quad rail" things everybody talks about. My left wrist got screwed up real bad many years back, and for carrying purposes I've found a vertical foregrip much more comfortable. So unless I can screw a rail to the existing foregrip, I've gotta replace the whole thing with a quad and then get me one of those ugly clamp-on things. That's okay, I'm not afraid of ugly.

But Holy High Price, Batman! The lowest price I can find is about $220, which is roughly what I spent to build the rifle, and that's before I buy the expensive light that was the point of the whole exercise!

Forget it. I'm gonna go douse the dogs in fluorescent paint and call it good.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think someone makes (or made) a barrel clamp that attached a mini-mag lite sized flashlight onto barrel, using a pressure switch on foreend. Mini Mag light krypton bulbs would blow off with recoil, but LEDS last much longer, and there are some fairly inexpensive flashlights that might handle your needs. Unless your light needs to double as aircraft landing strip power, lol.

Just throwing that out there, in case you want to investigate that avenue.

BC said...

A couple companies make short rail sections that can be screwed onto a fore-end. I believe Ergo is one of them.

The mini-mag light with an LED bulb, even duct-taped on, would be much better than nothing though.

Anonymous said...

http://www.sportsmansguide.com/net/cb/cb.aspx?a=709702

Got this from sportsmans guide - 240 lumens, clamps on gas tube on my ak 30 bucks, no problems.

III N TN

Joel said...

Thanks! That might be just what I need.

Anonymous said...

Ultimak + vltor offset mount + Surefire or Fenix light = awesome.