Polish Tantal AK-74 Review

[antimatter]

I just thought I'd drop a quick note about the AK-74 I bought last week. I stopped off at Fleet Farm up in Brooklyn Park on February 4th to see if there was any ammo on sale, and noticed a sign in the display case advertising the Century Arms Tantal Sporter for $362.99. I had planned to get an AK at some point, and this looked like an excellent time to dabble my feet in the water without committing bigger bucks for an Arsenal gun. After a quick check in back, the nice fellow brought out a plain cardboard box, and pulled out the gun in question. Fit and finish looked pretty good to my untrained eye, so I took the plunge and bought the gun and a can of 1,080 rounds of 5.45x39 ammunition for and additional $130-ish. I also got a $50 gift card from Fleet Farm as part of the purchase (nice!). The serial number on the receiver starts with a 'Y', and the tags showed a production date of May 2011.

I took the rifle home and gave it a good cleaning. There was actually very little grease in either the barrel or the receiver, but the bolt assembly was bone dry so it got a light (very light) coating of CLP. One problem with the surplus military ammunition was that it wouldn't pass the magnet test, so I'd need to find something in 5.45x39 that I could shoot at the indoor range at Bills. I bought 100 rounds of Hornady 60 grain v-max locally (Cabelas) for $19 for a box of 50.

Sunday (Feb 12th) I took the gun to Bills for a shake-down test firing. I put all 100 rounds through the rifle and the initial groupings were pretty good - 2" for the first 20 rounds with the target all the way down range. As the barrel heated up the groups did grow to about 3", although some of that was the fact that I wasn't shooting off a bag and just had my elbows propped on the rest in front of me. I had two rounds that appeared to key-hole towards the very end, and one failure to feed. I didn't do any magazine dumps, just slow measured fire and a few double-taps, although that was enough to get the barrel pretty hot. Cleaning the gun afterwards was a breeze.

So, for a stamped metal peasant gun, the Polish Tantal did very well. I wouldn't call it a precision firearm by any means, but the low cost of the gun made it an excellent way for a duffer like myself to try an AK without breaking the bank (my bank, anyway).

[justaguy]

The real test is a couple mag dumps.

[David]

These guns are notorious for keyholing, although I have heard that newer ones (like yours) shouldn't be doing it anymore. I had one that didn't start to keyhole until at least 100 yards, though, so test yours farther out before you decide it's a keeper. The one nice thing about Century is that they usually fix stuff that's wrong.

[Elsie9]

I've had good luck with my 2011 model. I've done numerous mag dumps and and a fair amount of shooting at 100 yds. with no keyholing and no malfunctions. I haven't shot beyond 100 tho because that's the max at my buddies' backyard range. Anyway, I've had ARs and AKs (maybe still do ) and this one's a keeper. Low purchase price, low recoil, low maintenance, good accuracy, AK simplicity and reliability and cheap ammo. And a lot of fun to shoot!

[antimatter]

Mine seems to be improving with age. So far I've put about 400 rounds through it and, with a 30 round mag dump using the cheesy bi-pod that came with it, it will shoot a 3 inch group at 25 yards. I just installed some Tech-Sights on my tantal, but haven't had a chance to take it out to the range. For the money its been a heck of a shooter.

Eventually I'd like to get an Arsenal ak-74 and have someone like Rifle Dynamics spruce it up. Right now my gun budget needs a bit of a rest.