Will the AK-47 melt?

competentone

Ok guys, I have a question for you.

My brother and I were bump-firing our Sar-1's--they were getting pretty hot.

Does anyone know what parts will fail on the AK if one continued rapid-fire without stopping to allow the gun to cool?

Does anyone have personal experience rapid-firing the AK--or any gun--to the point of failure? What goes bad?

n/a

I dont think you could fire it fast enough or long enough to melt it.

In the military I have fired the AR sustained fire to the point you could hardly hold it, but it didnt melt, just got hotter than H---, with no serious malfunctions, the bore gets eat up, and as the barrels are made of what in the military is called "living steel" when hot enough it will bend around a bit, but return to normal. I dont think you could see the bending with the naked eye,

Also in Nam, have gotten the barrel of the 50 cal red hot enough to light a smoke off it, didnt melt but had to change barrel,s a lot.

LR

Laredo Lefty

Personal knowledge yes, when I was in the Army in 1968, they did a firepower demo for us at Ft. Lewis where they linked about 1,000 rds for the M-60 machinegun into 1 belt and started shooting without stop. After a couple hundred rds the barrel began to glow red, and got brighter and brighter but never melted.
When I got to Vietnam my unit got ambushed one day, and of course I was scared s*#tless. I fired about 25 twenty round mags out of my M-16 A1, all on full auto. When I stopped for a moment the top round in the mag cooked off due to the extreme heat and the gun blew up in my face. These are cases of lots of rounds fired, and on full auto guns. I dont think you will damage your guns. The guns will most likely out last your trigger finger. Like the other guy said, it will probably get too hot to hold before any damage is done.

Happy shootin -Joe-

Nighthawk

The real issue is safety. Yes you can ruin a barrel that way with repeated shots. The main issue as someone mentioned is the gun getting hot enough to fire unspent rounds in the clip. If you shoot your firearm until it gets excessively hot make sure to drop the mag out of the rifle. There have many cases of excessive heat firing rounds in the clip or chamber.

Good Shooting.

Rugster

SixStringer

I wish I could afford enough ammo for that to be a problem :P

hobbist

As an engineer I tell you, it is impossible. Temperature melting of steel is so high that gun will stop function due to the thermal expansion and ammo will be cooked even before it.
Hobbist

Wodan

Your fingers go first. Cooked, I have done it on an chinese one. The metal got too hot to hold. trigger even got hot. It did jam a few times, but kept on going. That was the good ole days when you could buy 1200 rnds for 80.00 bucks of the cheap stuff.

I shalt punish thy bodies, because the more thou sweateth in training; the least thou bleedeth in combat

competentone

Thanks for all the replies!

(And I wasn't really worried about it actually melting--just curious about what would fail first; I see it's the "human element" which is the weak link.)

Woden, the "good old days" are still just about here; you can get plenty of 7.62x39 at $80/1000rds.

ADfree

Wear gloves.

TED GAR

The maadi, chrome lined barrel, even if full auto,will
not melt. Just grease, the action, first.