Anyone ever bought one of these parts.kits? Any advice? I'm teetering between an AR and an AK.
I think the best thing to do is build both. Thinking of building an AR for yotes, pests, targets, and the
AK for down in the grit defense.

The only drawback to building AK's is that they are riveted . It takes some special tools and some skill to put the receiver together. It is a fun project. Be better to find one a little beat up and mod it. AR's are always fun.

most AK kits are old parts on new receiver and yes needs more tools to do and everyone used different specs in each country that made AKs

an AR build is very easy , and all parts are to a single Mil spec. you should do AR first in my opinion

watch this video

Thanks for the input. Very informative video.

Having built both, I'd would say you " assemble" an AR and you "build" an AK. If you buy a complete AR upper, the lower can be assembled on your kitchen table in less than 20 mins with a few punches and a small hammer. To build an upper, a vice block, combo wrench, and torque wrench is all that's needed and takes less than 45 mins to put together.

An AK build requires a press, bucking bars, headspace gages, etc. Assuming you using a finished complete rec. like a Nodak Spud, you won't need to do any heat treating If you are going to bend your own rec. from a flat, then more fixtures and heat treating are required. .I use to build them back when kits were $100 with the populated barrel. The ATF issued a barrel ban several years ago and kits don't come with a factory barrel anymore. So now kits are in the $300 and up range plus the cost of a US made barrel and receiver.

My advice is , if going AR route , buy a upper kit from PSA, Delton, or whoever and buy a lower locally . You'll have a complete rifle in 20 mins. and for around $350-$400. I would just buy an AK (stay away from all American made rifles) , they can run from $700 for a Romanian up to $1000 for a Bulgarian. Crazy how 15 years ago an AR would run you almost $1000 and an AK around $250.

It would probably be worth getting involved in building AK's if you were going to get an FFL and sell them. You would need to sell a lot of them to make money at it though. Just to build one, not so much, unless you are itching for a cool project and you don't care about the money. For the cost of all the tooling and time, you can buy a top of the line AK and still be ahead of the game. I guess it would be my personal choice but if I were building one, I would be building out of a milled receiver which are expensive. I may actually do that in the future but if I do, I will buy a complete receiver. It won't save any money because what you don't spend in the receiver tooling, you will spend in a complete receiver.