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Thread: AK firing pins. Are they the same length?

  1. #1
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    AK firing pins. Are they the same length?

    I just put the mic on one and it was 3.282 and i saw a wasr one that said it was
    3.357 in length. I thought these were standard length. It is too late and I am too
    tired to tear my bolts down. I changed the one in my ab2 from a flat to fluted awhile
    back and now I am concerned about the change.

    Ease my mind guys or set me straight.
    While no one ever listens to me,
    I am constantly being told to be quiet.

    In a world of snowflakes,
    be the heat..

  2. #2
    Administrator Krupski's Avatar

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    Quote Originally Posted by l921428x View Post
    I just put the mic on one and it was 3.282 and i saw a wasr one that said it was
    3.357 in length. I thought these were standard length. It is too late and I am too
    tired to tear my bolts down. I changed the one in my ab2 from a flat to fluted awhile
    back and now I am concerned about the change.

    Ease my mind guys or set me straight.
    Well, as far as I know, there are two different kinds of firing pin... floating and spring return.

    Both are the same length... they only differ in shape and the floating ones come in several different shapes... flat stem, flat stem with a round "tail" and a semi-round stem with a round "tail".

    The exact length of an AK firing pin is not important for two reasons:

    (1) The "rounded tip cone" shape of the primer end of the firing pin controls how far it protrudes past the bolt face.

    (2) The firing pin, for reliability reasons, comes out MUCH further than necessary, depending on the anvil of a Berdan primer to stop it's forward motion. This is why an AK usually punctures Boxer primed ammo.


    Bottom line: Don't worry about the length. It doesn't matter. In fact, what you can do is install different firing pins into your bolt(s) and either fire live ammo outdoors or else pull the bullets out, dump the powder and fire the primer-only shells and look at the primer indents. That will tell you for sure if any particular firing pin is OK to use.

    And, you may think that changing from a floating pin to a spring return type is an "upgrade". Don't bother. One way or another, the spring makes NO difference. Fire a live round, then eject the next chambered but unfired round and examine it. You MAY see a teeny tiny dent in the primer, but that's no problem... and you'll find that a spring return firing pin does the exact same thing.

    With AK firing pins, been there, tried that. I experimented with AK firing pins for a few weeks several years ago to learn this exact stuff.
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  3. #3
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    Ok then I was right. It just threw me when I saw a wasr fp that actually showed the length.

    Thank you very much.
    While no one ever listens to me,
    I am constantly being told to be quiet.

    In a world of snowflakes,
    be the heat..

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