Do Soviet drums come apart?

[ED4x]

If so can someone post how to take them apart?

They look alot better than the Chinese drums.

Thanks in advance

[Levin]

I haven't been hanging out here lately, so I'm just finding this (two weeks late).

They come apart nicely. I don't have one with me now, but I think I can walk you through it. There are two knobs, one on front and one on back (front/back as if in a rifle). The one on the back is the one that will open the drum. You will notice a hole in the center of the knob. You will need to insert a pointy object into this hole to depress the spring loaded retaining pin, and at the same time rotate the knob 90 degrees. The knob is not a screw and is not threaded. It doesn't matter which way you turn it, just rotate it 90 degrees. It will then pop off and you can remove the back plate. Removal of the forward knob works the same way, but it doesn't need to be removed to open the drum.

Once inside you can take the spring loaded spinney-thing out too. You don't have to worry about the spring exploading out all over the place, it's trapped inside of the inner part of the spinney-thing (not it's official name BTW). To get it out, recalling from memory, there is another spring loaded pin that must be pressed in, and a small (3mm-4mm) lever that must be rotated 90 degrees. The spinney thing can then be removed. You will want to relieve any spring tension by unwinding before you do this. Just twist the inner workings so you can remove the dummy rounds on the links, and once they are removed and spring tension is unwound, then play with the lever for removal.

It reassembles in the reverse order. You need to wind the spring to give it some innitial tension. If you forgot how far you unwound the spring in the initial disassembily, I believe it was only a half turn (180 degrees). If you removed the front knob, make sure you apply spring tension that works the loading lever in the proper direction. The ratchiting device inside of the drum should be forced inside of it's hole by the spring, not forced up (only a concern if you removed the front knob and the parts it retains). If you get this backwards you will know. The drum will not feed properly.

I hope this helps.