My respectful advice would be this...
Just because you can build up your own AK from a kit doesn't mean you should build up your own AK from a kit.
If you're looking to save your money, remember these two things:
1) Even a bargain-basement AK, like a US-build Century WASR built from a Romanian parts kit, is still an AK, and a crappy AK is a lot closer to a top-of-the-line AK than, say, a crappy AR is to a top-of-the-line AR.
2) Sometimes even Century gets it right on their discount AK builds. There's a night-and-day difference between a "Monday" WASR (perfect alignment, precisely cut mag well, etc.) and a "Friday" WASR (canted gas block and/or front sight, sloppy mag well, etc.). I would never order a Romanian Century AK over the Internet, sight unseen, but I'd definitely feel fine going to a local dealer with several of the rifles in stock and hand-selecting the best one, once I knew what to look for.
Conversely, if you're looking to save your @$$, remember these two things:
1) Your first build of an AK (or any rifle) is unlikely to demonstrate your full potential, as you're not as familiar with the little tricks, pitfalls, and nuances you will come to understand after you've build a dozen, a hundred, or a thousand of them.
2) You can take a high-quality parts kit (which are getting harder to come by) and send it to a well known, qualified, experienced AK builder (Jim Fuller of Rifle Dynamics in Nevada is the guy I trust) and have him build you an AK to your custom specifications for not that more than the price of a top-line factory model. Heck, you can even send out a WASR for a "tune-up" rebuild! What you'll get back from a competent gunsmith with lots of AKs under his belt is a rock-solid reliable battlefiled-proven weapon of high quality, one you can be sure you can trust when SHTF.
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