Century International Arms is probably best known for it's WASR line of AK-pattern rifles. In it's basic configuration, the WASR has a traditional wooden buttstock with a metal buttplate, which does precious little to make shooting the 7.62x39 mm rifle more pleasant than, say, virtually any other type of stock.
To remedy this issue, Century has introduced a Recoil Reducing Buttstock for AKs. This stock fits the WASR, the Centurion 39, the Saiga shotgun and a host of other AK offerings from Century and other manufacturers/importers (it won't fit all AKs, so check before you buy). The company tested the recoil of a variety of it's WASR offerings, along with the U.S.-made Centurion 39 Sporter.
The results were surprising both in terms of intensity and spread of recoil force measurements. For example, the basic WASR-10 with a wood stock measured 32 pounds on the high end and 19 pounds on the low end, with an average of 27.2 pounds of recoil force for the experiment. Even the stamped-receiver and polymer-stocked Centurion averaged 18.6 pounds of recoil. With the new Recoil Reducing stock, WASR recoil was cut to 15 pounds on the high end, 8 pounds on the low end and an average of just 11.6 pounds, well below half of the basic configuration.
We'll have a complete review of the Recoil Reducing Buttstock in the near future.
