I brought my Saiga home today and was wanting to shoot it tomorrow at the camp. My intentions were to just try it out as is with the factory 5 or 10 rounder because I didn't have a bullet guide.
I did a bit of looking around and seems people have good luck with bulgy mags feeding well...
So I decided I wanted to shoot it with a real pistol grip and trigger group.
I set off on a personal challenge to see how fast I could get it to a basic legal conversion and safe shooting status (I.E. 922 compliant and have a full Trigger guard under it).
I had the gun disassembled and the old axis pins and guts out before the 3 min mark.
I did have the drill bit walk on one pin and scratched the paint... I'll take care of that when it is blasted and guncoated).
I had the bottom plate off (a quick 5/32 drill out for the three rivets) and was VERY pleased to see the square hole already cut. I then drilled the spot weld off the rear of the old TG, trimmed the extra tail off and had the front of the TG stuffed under the mag release and the rear of the TG riveted with a single TG rivet all under the ten min mark.
I have not decided if I will be trimming and then welding the trigger guard to the Saiga mag release (most likely) or putting an AK TG on it when I have time to do the full conversion.
The Crapco Hand guard was the longest single task as it took me ~3 min to get the damn thing on because it has a huge slot in the head and I normally like to use a hex head so I fumbled with that for WAY too long. I wish I had used the really nice MD arms Molot copy I got at birthday bash. It might have shaved a couple minutes off but it was on my night stand...
From there I was on the home stretch with assembly of the gun and the G2 group install. This took me another 6 min. for a total of 22 min!!!
I function checked it on the walk from my shop to my office for a picture and then ran a feed test of 3 diff bulgy mags (my only ones with US parts) and every bullet fed fine.
We will see tomorrow...
This will gun will keep the siaga front end but I will cut off the front of the Sight block barrel shroud part and thread it later. It will be all polymer or metal eventually. The only stock I had availalbe was the bulgy wood from the AKS-74 above the saiga in the picture.
I might throw some plastic rivets or maybe metal rivets in the old holes, but save for putting a better and US stock on it so I can use all of my Bulgy mags( the rest only have US followers). I think it will stay as is and will be a great back up for the AKS-74. When I get time I will do a full weld up and clean up of the gun.
Well here it is.
I did a bit of looking around and seems people have good luck with bulgy mags feeding well...
So I decided I wanted to shoot it with a real pistol grip and trigger group.
I set off on a personal challenge to see how fast I could get it to a basic legal conversion and safe shooting status (I.E. 922 compliant and have a full Trigger guard under it).
I had the gun disassembled and the old axis pins and guts out before the 3 min mark.
I did have the drill bit walk on one pin and scratched the paint... I'll take care of that when it is blasted and guncoated).
I had the bottom plate off (a quick 5/32 drill out for the three rivets) and was VERY pleased to see the square hole already cut. I then drilled the spot weld off the rear of the old TG, trimmed the extra tail off and had the front of the TG stuffed under the mag release and the rear of the TG riveted with a single TG rivet all under the ten min mark.
I have not decided if I will be trimming and then welding the trigger guard to the Saiga mag release (most likely) or putting an AK TG on it when I have time to do the full conversion.
The Crapco Hand guard was the longest single task as it took me ~3 min to get the damn thing on because it has a huge slot in the head and I normally like to use a hex head so I fumbled with that for WAY too long. I wish I had used the really nice MD arms Molot copy I got at birthday bash. It might have shaved a couple minutes off but it was on my night stand...
From there I was on the home stretch with assembly of the gun and the G2 group install. This took me another 6 min. for a total of 22 min!!!
I function checked it on the walk from my shop to my office for a picture and then ran a feed test of 3 diff bulgy mags (my only ones with US parts) and every bullet fed fine.
We will see tomorrow...
This will gun will keep the siaga front end but I will cut off the front of the Sight block barrel shroud part and thread it later. It will be all polymer or metal eventually. The only stock I had availalbe was the bulgy wood from the AKS-74 above the saiga in the picture.
I might throw some plastic rivets or maybe metal rivets in the old holes, but save for putting a better and US stock on it so I can use all of my Bulgy mags( the rest only have US followers). I think it will stay as is and will be a great back up for the AKS-74. When I get time I will do a full weld up and clean up of the gun.
Well here it is.
