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When the bolt carrier is on its way back, it resets the hammer. The elongated AK-style piston drives to the rear, and the bolt carrier, which is attached to the piston extension, travels back until gas pressure drops. When the rifle is fired, powder gases are diverted into the gas cylinder on top of the barrel. A corresponding rear sling attachment with two wooden screws is located on the bottom of the buttstock. A sling attachment point is attached to the front of the gas block assembly. The test rifle arrived with the regulator in the first position, and testing was conducted without adjusting the gas setting. The regulator is adjusted by rotating a ring held in place with a spring clip. That also lets the rifle keep running when dirty. The M76 Sporter can fire 8x57mm Mauser ammunition with a variation in muzzle pressure by virtue of a three-position gas regulator. The stock on my test sample looked like it lacked a sealing finish either it was removed in the refurbishing process or had never been applied. The buttstock, pistol grip and upper and lower handguards are made of native teak. Its overall length is 44.5 inches, and the 21.5-inch, button-rifled barrel is cut with four grooves and has a 1-in-9.5-inch right-hand twist rate. Without a magazine or optic, the M76 weighs 10.25 pounds. Sporter SpecsĬentury’s M76 Sporter precisely matches the specifications of the original M76. And while this was a few years ago, and Century no longer offers the gun in its current catalog, you can still find the model on the secondary market. Using the new barrels and receivers, along with TAPCO trigger assemblies and refurbished M76 parts kits, Century Arms built the M76 Sporter rifle-a gun any serious ComBloc-firearms aficionado would want to own. Steven Kehaya, Century’s engineering and product development manager, had the company mill new, legal-for-sale semi-auto receivers and make new 4140 ordnance steel barrels.
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Century Arms of Delray Beach, Florida, figured out how to offer the M76 legally to the public. They ignored the auto sear feature and left it as part of the M76’s design.įast-forward several years. It appears the engineers at Zastava had taken the Communist-supplied technical data package for the AK-47 and scaled it up for the 8x57mm cartridge. (That qualification is applied to any semi-auto with an auto sear or with a cutout in the receiver to accept one.) Ultimately, the BATFE tracked down every one of the M76 rifles that had been sold and then confiscated and destroyed them. The agency discovered that those first imported M76 rifles retained the auto sear feature, qualifying the rifle as a machine gun in its eyes, even though the M76 was never intended to be fired in full-auto. Afterward, the BATFE’s technical branch found a way to label the M76 as a prohibited weapon.
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One American importer brought several M76 systems into the U.S. Based on the AK-47, the M76 looks like a longer, stretched-out version. Several years ago, Zastava Arms began exporting M76s, which the company had been building for years. Faced with similar circumstances, the independent-minded Yugoslavs went another route. That helped the Soviets use their stores of ammunition and manufacturing capabilities to create more rounds originally designed for the 1891 Mosin-Nagant bolt-action rifle. When the Soviets designed the SVD, or Dragunov, they chambered it for the powerful 7.62x54mm rimmed cartridge. How to Bring Your AK Into the 21st Century With Magpul AK Upgrades
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