Bill Geissele’s wife’s company, ALG Defense, makes products for more of a mass-market than the very sweet, fairly simple, Geissele AR-15 triggers that live in more than a few SOF M4s and Mk. 11/12/18s, etc. (Indeed, sometimes the Geisele triggers are authorized MFP 11 or unit purchases, and sometimes they are installed on a catch-me-F-me basis by unit weapons men or armorers). Along with the triggers for full-on M4s and HK416s, Geissele makes improved triggers in both single-stage and two-stage variants for a wide range of semi ARs. They’re not cheap, they’re not always in stock, but they’re good.
ALG Defense makes simpler AR triggers — and now, an AK trigger, imaginatively coded AKT. In this video Bill explains the objectives this trigger meets and talks about some of the challenges involved in designing it.
The AK, Bill says, “has a ton of sear engagement.” That’s what you, the shooter, perceive as the very long and very smooth takeup of the typical AK trigger. (The SKS trigger has a similarly long, smooth engagement, suggesting that this may have been a standing Soviet / Russian design objective).
The result is an AK trigger that fits a variety of common receivers on domestic, imported, and kit-built AKs, and that reduces the trigger pull force and duration (including that all important very long sear dwell) significantly.
For example, Bill shows a graph of a stock AK trigger versus the ALG AKT; the stock trigger moves about 0.150″/4mm and takes about 4.5-5 lb. of pressure during that sear dwell period. The AKT takes up the slack more quickly and seems to come in about 0.065″ and just under 3.5 lb.
At about 8:30 he shows a 3D model (in Autodesk Inventor) of the trigger and walks through its function.
It fits some AKs with no fitting, but because of the wide variation in AK safeties, some AKs need a roll pin positioned so as to contact the safety. It’s explained in the video and in the AKT’s instructions.
Kevin was a former Special Forces weapons man (MOS 18B, before the 18 series, 11B with Skill Qualification Indicator of S). His focus was on weapons: their history, effects and employment. He started WeaponsMan.com in 2011 and operated it until he passed away in 2017. His work is being preserved here at the request of his family.
5 thoughts on “Geissele (ALG Defense) AK Trigger”
I didn’t realize that an Amish woman could marry a non-Amish and still retain her Amishness, as it were. Plus the idea of an Amish woman making firearms parts…Apparently I don’t understand the Amish as well as I thought I did.
She makes them all herself, by hand and only by candlelight…
Comments on the man’s wife aside I’ve REALLY been looking forward to this. I have an Arsenal that is run suppressed about 60% of the time and the stock FCG already went tits up, likely due to a poor heat treat.
It’ll be nice to have a trigger that I don’t have to fight with.
Still can’t tell if he was joking about his wife being Amish… Seems like the company is very nominally hers.
In the US these days, if you build a small business, the specter of the tax code expropriating it from your children is a very real thing. The very wealthy can and do manipulate the code to their benefit. The idle poor live life in a hammock built of tawdry handouts and low expectations. The workers in between get the shaft, proportionately to how hard they work.
A lot of weirdness in business structure is dictated by our tax code, that subsidizes vast inheritances at the expense of small working farms and factories.