AK47 built by Lancaster Consulting
An Owners Review

Blaine and I have made an arrangement and I have placed an order for this rifle at a discounted price.

I will do a full, detailed review of the rifle. I am completely impartial and have no axe to grind. I will review everything about the rifle, including how long it took to ship from order placement, how it was packaged and what it looked like out of the box. I'll detail strip it, clean and lubricate it and then take it to the range for function check, zeroing and then some aggressive shooting with different types of magazines.

I will bear in mind that this is a $500 Romanian kit built on an Armory receiver - my expectations are not unduly high or low. I'll take digital photos of the rifle and sample targets and I'll post this info on the appropriate forums.

AKM 47RM Rifle, $499.00
762 x 39 semi auto, built by Lancaster Consulting

• Armory USA /Global Trades receiver
• 16 inch chrome lined barrel
• Threaded barrel with slant brake
• Bayonet lug
• Tapco G2 fire control
• Well finished wood furniture set
• Parkerized base finish w/epoxy Gun-Kote
• Rifle head spaced & test fired at factory
• Recoil buffer installed
• 1 - 30 round bolt hold open mag
• Comes with rifle case
• Lifetime factory warranty

As far as my past experience, I have owned and shot the following Kalashnikov variants at one time or another:

• Romanian SAR-1, SAR-2, SAR-3
• Bulgarian SA-M7S, SA-M7 carbine, SLR-105/105A1
• Norinco NHM-90
• Russian Saiga conversions
• Russian VEPR K in 5.56mm
• Global Trades SSR-85B on FEG receiver
• various custom builds by Ted Marshall, AKUSA and Krebs custom

Initial impressions:

The Good:

• communications between Atlantic Firearms and customer
• shipped fast and on time
• packaged in softcase inside cardboard box - well protected
• nice wood furniture
• relatively nice metal finish
• nice FCG, use of RSA retainer plate
• smooth travel of bolt carrier
• rifle is very clean - no oil or cosmo anywhere
• nice bore and rifling
• rifle shot well - 4 MOA shooter

The Bad:

• triggerguard/mag catch assembly is crooked longwise
  (as looking at the bottom of the rifle) - does not appear to effect magazine latching
• consequently pistol grip is crooked looking at rifle head-on
• cleaning rod will not budge

The Ugly:

• gold Lancaster logo is too big and tacky
• rivets look solid overall, but inconsistent - left rear trunion rivets are flattened out like pancakes

The rifle arrived so clean that there was no need to detail strip and clean - I simply field stripped it for the inspection and lubed the rails and bolt with Breakfree CLP for the function test. Magazines locked into the Armory receiver fine, but the magwell was a touch wide.

With the exception of the big gold Lancaster logo and the twisted, crooked triggerguard, the rifle looked pretty good. Unfortunately the triggerguard directly effects the geometry of the PG as well.

I ran 130 rounds of 122 gr. steel-cased Wolf FMJ through it, using the supplied 30 rd. steel mag (Romanian, probably), a plastic Polish 30, a Bulgy waffle 30 and a Hungarian 20 round steel. It ate all of the ammo with no issues, no failures of any kind. It likes the steel mags the best. I sighted it in the Russian way, the target at 100m, the rear sight on "3", and the point of impact adjusted to 25cm above the point of aim.

Final assessment:

As is, the current QC on the rifle does not justify the $499 price. This is a Romy "G" kit on an Armory, USA 1mm receiver and not much more. The rifle is a solid shooter, but the twisted trigger guard (and naturally the twisted PG with it), inconsistant riveting, impossible-to-remove cleaning rod and large, tacky gold logo make this a $350 rifle. The wood furniture is very nicely finished and the Parkerized base finish w/epoxy Gun-Kote is applied farily evenly. If Lancaster can address their QC issues then they would have something to compete with the Vector offering, but right now they don't quite get there.

NOTE:

Blaine at Atlanic made it clear to me that he wanted an honest review of this rifle. When I first received it, before I shot it, I contacted him about the cosmetic issues. He told me to go ahead and continue with the review, assuring me that whatever decision I made at the end would be fine with him.

Blaine runs his business the right way - deal with confidence.

Also - Lancaster Consulting has a lot of potential if they address their QC issues. Hopefully they will take their feedback as something they can use to make a better rifle.