Read enough AK listings and the same four words keep turning up: Krink, Draco, underfolder, milled. Only one of them names a specific factory model, and even that one gets stretched until it covers guns its maker never built. The rest are nicknames, configurations and manufacturing methods. Each says something real about the gun. None is an official designation, so buyers search for them and sellers apply them loosely.
Krinkov: a Soviet carbine and a loose label
The original Krinkov is the AKS-74U, a short Soviet carbine in 5.45x39mm adopted in 1979. Its barrel is 8.1 inches and its triangular stock folds to the left side of the receiver. It also differs from a cut-down rifle in two details. The top cover is hinged at the front trunnion and carries the rear sight, so the sight rides on the cover instead of sitting on a block ahead of the receiver. And the muzzle wears a booster, a short cylinder with an internal expansion chamber.
Nobody knows for certain where the name came from. The story that Afghan fighters named it after a captured Soviet officer called Krinkov has never been confirmed. A Firearm Blog investigation traced the word to Pashtun usage that reached the United States with accounts from the Soviet-Afghan war, and Soldier of Fortune used it in print in 1984.
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In the American market, a Krink is a short AK pistol or short-barreled rifle that copies some of that layout. The closest copies keep the hinged top cover, the rear sight on it and the booster. Others just mean "short AK", and that looser sense is how the word is used in most listings.
Gun
Caliber
Barrel
Notes
Riley Defense Krinkov
7.62x39, 5.56
8.5in
Hinged top cover and booster
Arsenal SAM7K
7.62x39
8.5in
Milled receiver, Bulgaria
Zastava ZPAP92
7.62x39
10in
1.5mm stamped receiver, Serbia
Zastava ZPAP M85
5.56
10in
The 5.56 sibling of the ZPAP92
PSA AK-P
7.62x39
10.5in
Ships with a pistol brace
The Zastava ZPAP92 is the civilian version of Serbia's M92 carbine, and Gun Digest called it "the Serbian Krinkov" for its Krink-style rear sight. Its construction shows how loose the label is. The ZPAP92 uses Zastava's thicker 1.5mm receiver and bulged trunnion, its muzzle threads are 26x1.5mm left hand, and this catalog also lists ZPAP92 rifles with a stock and a pinned muzzle extension that brings the barrel to 16.5 inches. The M85 is the same short gun in 5.56.
Draco is a model name. Century Arms imports the Draco from the Cugir factory in Romania, and it is an AKM-pattern pistol with a stamped receiver, no stock and no booster. It comes in three lengths.
Model
Barrel
Overall length
Draco
12.25in
21.5in
Mini Draco
7.75in
17.5in
Micro Draco
6.25in
14.5in
Some listings give the Mini Draco a 7.5in barrel, and one in this catalog calls a 6.25in gun a Mini, so check the barrel length rather than the title.
The Draco name also appears on guns that share little else with it. The Draco NAK9, built by Nova Modul in Cugir, is a 9mm pistol that runs on straight blowback instead of the AK gas piston and takes Glock magazines. The Draco 9S is another 9mm model.
Many people call a Draco a Krink, and the Krinkov page lists the 7.62x39 Dracos for that reason. The two 9mm models do not belong there and have been taken off it. The full line is on Draco AK pistols, and the Mini Draco has its own page.
Underfolder and side folder
An underfolder has a stamped metal stock that swings down and forward under the receiver. The Soviets built it for airborne troops and vehicle crews: the AKS-47 put a downward-folding stock, similar to the MP 40's, on the milled AK-47, and the AKMS did the same for the stamped AKM. The AKMS stock is two stamped struts and a folding butt plate, light and flat when folded and less comfortable to shoulder than a fixed stock.
A side folder swings to the side of the receiver instead. The Soviet pattern is the triangular stock of the AKS-74 and AKS-74U, built from stamped struts welded into a frame that folds to the left and is sturdier than the AKMS underfolder. Bulgarian, Polish and American makers build their own side folders.
Underfolders
Side folders
Zastava ZPAP M70 Underfold
Arsenal SAM7SF
Arsenal SAM7UF and SAS M-7
Kalashnikov USA KR-103
Century C39v2 Underfolding
Century VSKA Trooper
Century AK63D
Pioneer Arms Sporter side folders
Pioneer Arms Sporter Underfolder and GROM
Riley Defense Krinkov
Listings often just say "folding stock", and the two types are not interchangeable. This catalog had three Pioneer Arms side folders filed as underfolders; their own descriptions said side-folding. Browse the two types on Underfolder and AK47 Folding Stock.
Milled and stamped receivers
The first AK-47s, produced from 1948 and adopted in 1949, had stamped sheet-steel receivers. Welding the guide and ejector rails into them caused high rejection rates, so the Soviets switched to a heavier machined receiver they could build on existing tooling: the Type 2, milled from a forging, from 1951 to 1957, and the Type 3, milled from bar stock, from about 1953. In 1959 the AKM went back to stamping, this time with a 1.0mm steel sheet held together with rivets and pins, and nearly every AK since then has been stamped. The Soviet figures show the difference: a Type 3 AK-47 weighs 7.7 lb without a magazine, the AKM 6.8 lb.
"Milled" in a listing therefore means the receiver was machined from solid steel. Arsenal in Bulgaria mills its SAM7 receivers from hot-die forged blanks, and American Rifleman reported more than five hours of machining per receiver. Century's C39v2 was milled in the US from a block of 4140 steel. Milled receivers cost more to make. The gas system, bolt and trigger work the same way in both.
The weight gap is smaller than the history suggests. Zastava's ZPAP M70 uses a 1.5mm stamped receiver, half again as thick as the AKM's, plus the bulged front trunnion from the RPK, because Yugoslav rifles had to launch rifle grenades. The result weighs about the same as a milled gun. Listed weights in this catalog:
AKS-74U-style short AK: hinged top cover, rear sight on the cover, booster
Caliber, maker or receiver type; often just means "short AK"
Draco
Century's imported Romanian AK pistols, plus two unrelated 9mm guns
Whether it is a Krinkov copy (it is not)
Underfolder
Stock that folds down under the receiver
Anything about the receiver or the action
Milled
Receiver machined from solid steel
How the action works (the same either way)
What this catalog got wrong
Before this article, three 16in RAK74 rifles and four 9mm Dracos sat on the Krinkov page. A Zastava ZPAP92 description said its receiver was milled and a ZPAP M70 underfolder was praised for a milled receiver it does not have, while an Arsenal SAM7SF, which is milled, was praised for being stamped. Arsenal descriptions said, four times over, that SAM7 receivers were machined from a solid billet or block, when Arsenal mills them from forgings. A Draco was described as blowback, one Zastava M85 as a short-stroke piston gun (every AK here is long-stroke) and another as concealed-carry ready, and a SAM7 rifle and a SAM7Kv2 pistol were each listed at 15 lb. The action field had two SAM7K pistols filed as lever actions and two Dracos as single actions.
All of those are corrected. The milled page now lists the whole Arsenal SAM7 line and the C39v2 instead of six guns, and untagged Dracos, Mini Dracos and underfolders have been added to their pages.
Nick Sawinyh - Nick Sawinyh is a father, husband, hobby farmer, and gun enthusiast from Kentucky. He founded GunsNation and writes most of what appears on this blog.
