School me on 7.62x39

[PaleDriver]

Hi,
With the ammo prices going up I am considering a 7.62x39 AR upper. What are some of the things that I should be aware of when buying this ammo.

I check THIS site and see things like corrosive primers sometimes and wonder what cautions I should take when buying this ammo. Are corrosive primers always mentioned, or do you have to know what brands to stay away from? Is it just a matter of cleaning your rifle after shooting?

[M&P Chris]

In my experiences surplus ammo always has corrosive primers.

You do need to clean the gun well shortly after shooting to dissolve the corrosive salts.

[IntenseImage]

Or simply buy non-corrosive ammo. Its still easy to find and not very expensive

[knight0334]

With com-bloc type mil-surp it is usually best to assume that it is corrosive and take proper precautions - like cleaning the gun after use.

Hot water is all that is needed to clean up corrosive residue. Rinse out the chamber, bore, and anything else that hot gases may have traveled through, then dry it out and oil it.

[Pukindog]

Not only does the barrel and action need to be cleaned but the gas tube, piston ( if any ) need to be cleaned of corrosive salts.
Jeff

[Svickstc]

Even some non corrosive ammo (labeled as such) can be corrosive and there is a good way to test this if you search "how to test corrosive ammo"

I had a x39 AR and it was a love hate relationship...probably because it was my first AR i ever built

[bfoosh006]

To be honest, the AR bolt will be a major weak link ( broken lugs ) , along with magazines that function properly in an AR.

I would suggest buying an SKS or an AK, 10ish 30 round mags and all the ammo you can afford. I feel nothing good can come of the UN Arms Treaty in context to cheap foreign ammo.


That said , non corrosive ammo is easily found.
And corrosive ammo is pretty easy to deal with.

[ungawa]

Shape of cartridge, and thus magazine requirement, does not match AR magwell. Therefore, results are variable. If you just want to plink with it then OK but if you might use it for defense then get an AK, or least an MGI magwell AR lower.

BTW - 5.45 (AK74) ammo is currently much cheaper than 7.62x39 if that is the driver. But that kind of thing changes in the blink of an eye.

[mudlust]

For the price of a quality upper in x39, you could buy an AK with some ammo or an SKS and a case of ammo. The ammo crisis won't last forever and in my opinion, it would be counter productive to invest in changing calibers to shoot cheap ammo. For the amount of money you are considering spending, it may be a better investment to purchase a progressive press and roll your own.

[smitty56]

For the price of a quality upper in x39, you could buy an AK with some ammo or an SKS and a case of ammo. The ammo crisis won't last forever and in my opinion, it would be counter productive to invest in changing calibers to shoot cheap ammo. For the amount of money you are considering spending, it may be a better investment to purchase a progressive press and roll your own.

To the original OP:
In my opinion, if you want to shoot 7.62x39, do it with an AK.
An AK will do it cheaper and better.
If you want to get into reloading, you have picked the worst time in history to try to find the components in any volume at any kind of reasonable price. I assume you are talking about .223/5.56 ammo that you can find some things out there such as brass, primers, bullets and powder on a miniscule basis. My main national source for .223 bullets has not had any stock since December for basic .223 bullets. All bullets components are being sold directly to the ammo manufacturers.
Reloading 7.62x39 is drastically more harder to do because of the lack of boxer primed brass cases out there.
If you want reload, do it with .223, but for this year at least, you would be better to go do any other hobby besides this one because of the HIGH cost of everything.
Good luck.
Smitty56