Soviet AK furniture question

K-tech

July 12, 2011 13:07

Does anyone know what wood they used to make the authentic Soviet furniture for AK type rifles? I was going to try to attempt to make a forearm for a Saiga 12 that matched authentic Soviet era AK stocks. Also, does anyone have any advice on what stains to use to get them to match? I would greatly appreciate some good advice, thanks

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  beantownshootah

  July 13, 2011 07:34

  For economy, the Soviets were using wood laminates on the Kalashnikov-patter rifles pretty much since their inception. Most of them are probably laminated birch, but they probably used whatever was cheap and available. Since you're essentially talking about glorified plywood, does it really matter?
  
  In terms of coloration, the classic Russian stain is a sort of red-brown, described as "iodine" colored. You can see some nice examples here to get an idea:
  
  http://tantal.kalashnikov.guns.ru/bstakwood.html
  
  There are probably many ways to get that coloration, if that's what you're after. You may have to experiment a bit, but you can probably just use a mixture of red-tinted and brown standard wood stains.
  
  This "author" describes getting the standard classic Russian red-brown color using a mix of red and brown RIT fabric dyes:
  
  http://www.theboxotruth.com/docs/edu54.htm

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  K-tech

  July 13, 2011 10:50

  I suspected that they were made with birch and I was hoping there was a stain readily available to match, but I guess I've already decided to go through the work of making a forearm so mixing up some stain cant be too bad. Thanks for the input

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