New family member (Rifle Dynamics)

[SonicBlue03]

Thanks to the mishap in December, parts availability dried up before Jim and company could finish my AK on the original timeline. I had ordered an RD701 from them in August and was looking at end-of-Dec/first-of-Jan delivery. It arrived the day legislation took a bath in the Senate, so I was pretty happy to celebrate.

ODG, the bakelite mag was just to look pretty. I ran her a little bit on Friday and was pretty amazed at how much more controllable it feels compared to my other AK platform. Feels lighter, too. Originally thought it was going to be built off a Saiga, but the rifle they Fullerized was an Arsenal -107.

Once Jim gets caught up on backorders and they start selling them again I might have to order another. I've been an AR guy for decades and this one might sway me to be a filthy commie lover.

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[Hamundr]

Beautiful! I would love to take one of their Ak builder courses.

 

[SonicBlue03]

Ditto. The last ones he's scheduled have been a conflict with things in life, but I'm sorely tempted to sign up for one in the fall if he offers it. $2500 to learn from Jim for a couple of days *and* build your own rifle? That's a win if I ever heard of one.

 

[206thsense]

Nice looking rifle!

 

[leonarddi]

That looks awesome!

 

[Hamundr]

More pics please!

 

[SonicBlue03]

Fuller builds a badass stick that is for sure. I really dig the Bolton gas block, barrel chop, Ultimak combo thing he does, real sweet setup. Which muzzle device did he use? More pics def.

He's using the AK Battle Comp on his builds now. I locked her away after shooting/cleaning her on Friday. I'll dig her out and get some more very soon (and hopefully to shoot the p--- out of her a bit more.)

 

[SonicBlue03]

Make sense, he had a hand in their development. I have yet to try one. I'd like to your impression on it as well the stick itself. Look forward to more pics.

First impression of the rifle itself: "Wow, this is light. REALLY light." I was expecting something similarly weighted to my Saiga 12, or thereabouts. This could be about 2lbs lighter, and maybe 1lb lighter than my lightest AR. With that I went to the range with a pre-conceived notion that it was going to kick a fair bit more than other rifles of the same caliber. Ran the target out a bit (I went up to Norpoint - the rain was dropping cats and dogs) and loaded about five rounds into the magazine. I decided to only take one mag with me for this trip (you'll read in a sec why that was a mistake.)

Smooth action, very little resistance, could reach under with my left hand and chamber a cartridge quickly with just my left thumb. Tucked the rifle in and pulled the trigger. Crisp, clean, comparable to the stock trigger when it was in my LWRC A3; no comparison to the Geisseles that inhabit my other rifles now, but it was pretty darn smooth.

Recoil and rise - I was expecting something to hit a little harder. Still (obv) more noticeable than 5.56mm in an AR, but didn't jump much off where I was trying to keep my sights lined up. Very non-abusive. I was trying to keep a rate of one round per second just to get a cadence going and see how things would group, but started immediately to run into problems with the magazine. I'm not sure if it's because it's new or possibly just defective; I'll probably pull it apart and play with it later. It's a US Palm mag, and most of my others (sans the bakelite in the photo) are either surplus or Circle 10 mags. So the day was spent occasionally putzing with the magazine and working to get some level of feed consistency.

The Fuller sight - very easy to line up the front and rear sights. Very low profile, very easy to manage. Acquisition is fairly quick. I don't have much to add there; I've always liked irons so when I find one that's easy to use (for me) I'm happy.

 

[Sun195]

Very nice - dare I ask how much it cost?

 

[SonicBlue03]

I bought it before they raised prices (04-Aug-12) so I got it for 1700 flat. They bumped the price a couple weeks later by 150. Now? No effin' idea what they'll be. They're not even taking orders right now, so I suspect once they meet their demand and supplies become available it'll be around 2K or higher (I'd put money on "higher.")

I wish we could have SBRs in this state, though. If you've ever seen pics of the Krinks they build those things are artwork.

 

[SonicBlue03]

Some more gun pr0n.

 

[206thsense]

View attachment 62509View attachment 62510View attachment 62511

Some more gun pr0n.

Niiiiiice.

 

[SonicBlue03]

Jim is using US Palm as his standard currently. I'm sure there was a discount involved.

Honestly, I'm a fan of it thus far. When I stuck on the V1 sling mount last night I'm finding that I might end up taking it off and going with the V3 or 4 just because it bites a little into my wrist just holding without firing. I'll test it out next week to see how firing fares with it.

 

[SonicBlue03]

I've been a big fan of Hogue sleeves on most of my semi-autos, but haven't replaced any rifle grips with their offerings. That said, I might have to look at some of those for some of my ARs. For my Blackout pistol I went with an Ergo Pro grip which so far I like (of course I've found all of 60 rounds since I started putting it together so I haven't really tested it under fire yet.)

 

[mancat]

Guess I gotta be the voice of dissent, but I would've left an SLR-107 alone and sent him a Saiga instead.

 

[SonicBlue03]

They actually chose the rifle; I didn't send him one to work with. They were normally building them off Saiga platforms but what they do (and I approve of) is take what they think they can get that meets the level of build quality they expect in a base platform. So I'm good with it (but I see your point.)

 

[MikeE]

Here's the Saiga 7.62x39 he did for me:

 

[mancat]

OK I get what you're saying. I didn't know they supplied the rifle.

 

[Smarshy74]

Great buy SonicBlue! I also contacted them in the middle of last year and started saving up. Then as soo as I had saved the $1,700 I sent them an Email and they informed me that they had increased the price that news made me discuraged not to mention the 24 week wait time.
At that time I decided to build my first AR and I am glad I did. I completed my dream AR before DEC, so I paid fair prices and now I can enjoy that at the range. If I would have bought the RD501 I would still be waiting for it and I would not have a long arm for range days.
Seeing your pictures and reading your review reminds me of how sweet it will be when I do make the decision to buy from Jim. Thanks for sharing!

 

[SonicBlue03]

Congrats on the AR build! If you haven't posted up pics yet, you should (and link the thread here.) And anytime, man.