@Johny_Baba @Gessler whatd the limitations which bars putting free floatjng hand guards over normal Aks? Ak-12/15s and Galils are the only development in that direction.
In my view it's this thing,
Rear Iron Sights Block on AK, it's directly pinned on the barrel itself and other side is pinned on milled receiver // trunnion in respective cases of milled or stamped receivers.
i mean just look at construction of AK to get what i'm trying to say...
So what purpose does it serve actually ?
-> provides a base for rear iron sights
-> affixes gas tube on it
-> other side provides a locking surface for receiver top cover
BUT downsides >
-> It's a heavy chunk of metal directly pinned on barrel, so guess how harmonics would get ducked
-> This relatively heavy chunk of metal is put on centre side of the rifle, already there is chunkier trunnion side and of course bolt carrier + gas piston is also chunkier extending on respective sides....thus ducking up centre of mass of a rifle...not much but slightly off the centre due to all mass distribution...result is when AK is fired on repetitive mode you shall see it kinda becomes harder to balance it due to this arrangement where centre of mass is not on centre...
So is there a solution ?
i mean look at
Valmet Derivatives of Kalashnikov (both Valmet and Galil i meant)...
Solution 1 = Remove Iron Sight Block altogether and supplement requirements of affixing gas tube etc in some other way, here they just mounted gas tube directly on receiver//front trunnion via altering it a bit, provided surface to affix Top Cover directly on gas tube and moved iron sights on Top Cover itself
There is one downside of this design that is this arrangement is wholly holded in place by push provided from recoil spring-via-top cover-to-gas tube...Once top cover is taken off you shall see gas tube coming outta its place if pushed rearwards...but i guess Ok their doctorine of having Iron Sights on top cover requires that firearm won't be functioning without it so such things won't happen in general.
^This arrangement in general can be utilised in many ways to provide free-floating handguards (sic, refer to excellant explanation of
@Gessler 's previous post how cent percent free-floating barrel is impossible on AK but hope you get the idea what am i trying to say here) to an AK, though such thing appears to not have been done on any Valmet Series of AK (Valmet//Galil) yet.
But whatabout other solutions hhmm ?
Let's wait for next post in series.