A Blog about Survival and Gear

Strike Industries (SI) sent us one of their AK Rails for testing and evaluation a while back and I have to admit that looking at the pictures on their website I was not in love. Up till now, I have been using a micro red dot on a Midwest Industries (MI) AK side rail. I’m not a huge fan of the side rail concept but it does allow easy on and off and is great if you want to move back and forth between a red dot optic and iron sites.

As a data point, the MI side rail weighs in at 7.2 oz on my scale, partner that with a red dot and you’re at 11.5 depending on the mount and the red dot. That’s not a ton of weight but you do notice when you take it off to clean the rifle.

When I went with the MI rail (which I like a lot but is double the cost of the Strike Industries and hard to find right now) I was thinking I wanted to get the red dot as far back as possible. This was one of the reasons I was not thrilled with the Strike Industries concept as its moving the dot forward.

First impressions out of the box, we were impressed. This mount is a super lightweight, like 1.4 oz on my scale lightweight. The AK Rail is made of 6061 Aircraft Aluminum that has been hard coat anodized. The rail comes with instructions, 3 leveling hex set screws, and a horizontal mounting screw & nut that ride where you rear sight rides.

Installation was fairly easy, the hardest part being getting your rear sight off. There are a number of ways to do this, most you can find on the web. My preferred method is to stand the sight vertically and push down on the sight leaf with a screwdriver, once you get the leaf far enough down the rear sight will drop free. Both of Jim Fuller’s AK armorers DVDs include details on how to remove the rear sight and both are highly recommended by us. SI does not include details on how to do this in their instructions or if you should remove the sight leaf which we assume you should. Continue reading →