deathray

That almost looks like they puke them out on a 3d printer. I'd like to see them, but my inner engineer isn't super excited by the 4 piece design. Innovative for sure but I'm worried about durability.

Lol, OK

For me it was the price mostly since the SAS lower was cheaper when I bought it. The big Firebird logo on his lower annoys me, I want to buy a tool and not a billboard. I've handled the Firebird lower and it seems to be a perfectly functional piece of equipment. I got the SAS because I'm cheap and vain. (that and shipping from T&N is faster since I'm much closer to them)

Tooth and Nail sells a 24 round mega mag. It's nearly a standing monopod but if you absolutely need to clear a birdshot only stage at a match without reloading, it's a hot ticket.

The optics mounting on the 1919 is vastly superior to that of the Vepr. The Vepr dust cover moves too much to hold a zero for accurate slug shooting. A left side charging handle is way easier to put on the 1919. Not an issue if you're a lefty of course, but as a righty I hate reaching over or under the gun to run the bolt. The mags are cheaper for the 1919. Yes you can get SGM mags for cheap, but the tab for the mag catch breaks on those, and they'll drop out of the gun if you clamp two mags together as demonstrated by Russell here: http://sinistralrifleman.com/2014/06/15/vepr-12-follow-u

Remington GL126 and Gl127 work very well in my XN.

I personally find the FS2000 to be a fine rifle, these retrofits sucked in the 90's (or even 80's) when the muzzlelites came out for Rugers, and they still suck. Purpose built bullpups can be good guns if the ergonomics don't drive you nuts.

That looks terrible.

In all fairness that prairie storm stuff will beat the rear trunnion out of a Saiga if it doesn't break other stuff first. It is just silly hot ammo, but is pretty awesome to watch somebody rotate a spinner 8 times with one hit from that stuff. But then again, the drive block on my MKA failed on me at Ironman shooting mostly GL126 and 1300fps Truballs. The Truballs did it in at Ironman.

No, I was prepping for Ironman and had to skip this one.

I got a replacement bolt from XN without trouble.

If a bit of good natured ribbing counts as trolling, it explains a lot about why Jim is so grumpy all of the time.

Mine is pretty great for shooting clays. Though most fudd types have no clue what to think when I show up with an overgrown AR looking shotgun with an aimpoint on top.

I figured something inflammatory would bring you out of lurking. So what's the projected timeline for the drum? I have dollars and no drum and would like to convert that situation to less dollars and more drum.

Probably busy trying to patent the concept of a drum magazine.

Now that's bad news for customer support.

My MKA ran extremely well at this match, which would have been great had my rifle game not been a complete disaster.

I used a buffing wheel and rouge. It took a while (these things are fairly hard) but it is much smoother. I did the entire bolt body, bolt carrier, and the bolt locking lug. It is a very common thing to do on Saigas, so I figured I'd try it on my MKA despite it being a completely different design. It worked well for me.

Watching Jim get angry on the internet does get amusing.

The best thing I have done to mine is to polish the everliving crap out of the bolt and carrier. That dramatically improved reliability for me and got rid of the "crunchy" feeling mine had when cycling the action. I've got T&N and Firebird stuff on mine. They both make and/or sell good stuff. The SAS lower that T&N sells is nicely made and works fine on mine, I haven't played with the Firebird lower. Getting rid of the overly long length of pull factory stock definitely helped a lot. Before sticking a different stock on there I was finding myself not securely should

Info@XNArms.com was the point of contact I used when requesting a new bolt.

No drama here, I'm just happy to have a spare bolt at the best price ever.

It's a bold move, let's see if it pays off. But then again, it's not like that sub-1mm thick strip of steel was doing a whole lot in the first place.

A problem I did not consider. However since you built Saigas for a long time I'm sure the idea has crossed your mind more than a few times.

Interesting development. The new bolts from XN lack that top piece of steel. Factory bolt with the good old "XN crack" And the new one fresh from Turkey: I guess they just decided to cut that section out completely to avoid people like me who complain about cracks and such. Total time from my "hey guys, I've got a problem here..." email to receiving the bolt was 30 days.