Russian Tula AK47 Bakelite 30rd Magazine

Russian Tula AK47 Bakelite magazine.  These have the Tula Star and are in excellent condition.  The magazines are produced from a thermoset phenol-formaldehyde resin which is glass fiber reinforced. These magazines are much lighter than any steel production magazine and are still quite durable. You’ll hear many stories of them being brittle and breaking, but in reality, they do not chip and break easily thanks to the fiber reinforcement. These generally feature orange, brown, and red tones and have a marbled, almost wood look to them thanks to the lamination process used to produce them. They were molded as two halves and epoxied together. They all feature steel reinforcement along the body of the magazine and later variants had steel reinforced feed lips as well. The reinforcements can be found by looking for the spots of black paint. They continued this tradition to the present and anywhere the steel would be slightly exposed, it’s painted black over.