While we were at SAR West this past weekend, we of course took some time to check in with Jeff from Apex Gun Parts. We’ve been buying goodies from Jeff long before we started up the blog, and his customer service is second to none. Apex has one of the best selections of parts kits available right now (Sterlings, a bunch of AK variants, VZ-58s, Goryunovs, PKTs, and more) as well as tons of other cool stuff. One particularly neat little package deal is the Yugo AK Value Pack, which consists of a 30-round bolt hold-open AK mag, grenade launching adapter, and bayonet for $23. Just the thing to go with your M64 or M70 Yugo AK (and the M70 is the best of the AK variants, in our opinion). Anyway, we had a chat about what’s going on at Apex these days:
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The M70 is certainly the heaviest standard carbine AK variant. I used to own one, though, and I gotta agree, they’re very endearing.
You should do a video on why you like the M70. I love yugos but the parts compatibility (furniture and such) is what made me decide not to buy one.
Hi, Ian – as for the Holecek Pumps (that’s what they’re called by the Czechs – ‘Pumpichki’, meaning ‘little pumps’ – like bicycle one for example) being the world’s first with a bolt telecoping the barrel: with all due respect I’d like to point to an earlier (1944-45) MCEM-2, -4, -6 series of submachineguns designed by a Polish technician at RSAF, Lt. Jerzy Podsendkowski (sometimes called ‘the MCEM-even series’, as opposed to ‘the MCEM-odd’, being MCEM-1 and -3, the Turpin guns). These were manufactured in prototype batch by the RSAF Enfield, and had the war prolonged, they would surely be introduced into the Royal Army as PDW-style holstered weapons. After the war they were discussed at length in English technical magazines – perhaps including the copies read by Uziel Gal then serving his term in HM Prison at Lydda for illegal gun manufacturing. BTW, it was there that Mr. Gal had his only technological training, graduating from British correspondence trade school, while an inmate. I don’t know what the British had in their minds for him, but training machine gun tinker to become a mechanical engineer smacks a bit of perversy to me. Anyway, Czechoslovakia was helping Israel in 1946-1948 period, but closely thereafter came the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia, and it seems that all cooperation with Izzies has been severed even before Sa-23/25 (the 9 mm forerunner of the Sa-24/26 in 7.62×25) were ready enough to show. The British-Polish trace seems much more possible taking these circumstances into consideration.
But of course, who knows how it really was. Anyway, the Pump is a fab burpgun, even downgraded to 7.62×25 after the Commie coup. And it has one feature that even I can’t find a Polish predecessor for – a wedge-section staggered-row magazine, later to be used in Swedish K, Walther MPK/L, SW76 and all the younameits. This is in my opinion the keystone proof of the MCEM-even influence on Uzi’s origin – the Uzi has an old-fashioned rectangular section magazine body with all its drawbacks. Had Gal really knew the Pump, I’m sure he’d like that magazine.
I really wish real M64s or M70s were still available, either imported from Serbia or repro’d on US receivers. The Zastava PAPs Century imports now are such a tease, with the blonde furniture and the heavier receiver of Yugoslav guns. The lack night sights, grenade launcher sight, and the single stack bolt are deal breakers though. I suppose I will just have to save up for an 80s import M70B1.
Yugo m70 are certainly in world top5 AKs by quality, but not the first and best. Biggest flaw is of course lack of the chrome in the barrel, and the whole concept of launching grenades (using thicker reciever, reinforcing the barrel bushing etc.) has ill fate; since the material of the barrel will not support higher pressure, after launching only less than a dozen of grenades, rifle will suffer a rapid decrease in accuracy – so you do not launch grenades if you plan to carry the rifle and use it accurately for some time (in war). Not to mention question of support when launching with folding stock model (m70ab – which is prevalent in built numbers of this rifle)…
On other end, yugo SKS (or so called PAP) is ideal for that purpose, and with it you can launch grenades all day retaining the same barrel accuracy.
@Leszek
Looking on to rarely known ZK-476, kinda prototype gun, it is clearly visible that it affected the UZI development in a greater way than often mentioned SA24/26. Definetly a forgotten weapon ! (hope for an article about it one day ???)