Circle 10 AK is currently putting together a five cell RPK magazine chest rig for the market. When I asked the owner why specifically for RPK magazines, he pretty much replied, “Why not! There aren’t too many similar designs on the market, and it is flooded with standard 30 round magazine chest rigs!”. Although making a product for the sake of there not being one isn’t always a good business plan, in this case a valid point can be made. True, 30 round magazines reign supreme in the AK world, with the overwhelming majority of use by AK owners is with 30 rounders. However, unlike the AR world where the magazine capacity really stops at 30, RPK74 magazines, and even steel 45 round magazines are extremely popular. There have been numerous attempts at making extended capacity magazines for the AR platform, but so many of these have ended in failure. Surefire is probably the most successful venture yet, with the 60 round quad stacked magazine (of course excluding Beta Mag, but I want to focus on conventional magazine design).
The reason for there being much more popularity of 45 rounders in the AK world than the AR, is probably because of surplus. There really has never been an overwhelming adoption or military issue of anything more than 30 rounds for the M16, thus there has never been a surplus of extended capacitymagazines on the civilian market. However the AK has numerous squad automatic weapon variants, in multiple calibers and countries. Thus a a number of these magazines have made their way into circulation in the United States, for not much more than the cost of the 30 rounders (unless of course, they are bakelite tan Izzy or Tula magazines).
Read more – The Firearm Blog
(Featured image courtesy of circle10ak.com)
