5 shot magizine

[Paul Mohr 0]

I am one of the weird people that does not really want a hi capicity mag for my gun. I was maybe thinking of taking the gun up north one day and hunting deer with it. I live in Michigan and you can only use centerfire rifles up north, shot guns and muzzleloader only where I live. The problem is my magazine holds too many rounds for it to be legal. I heard they make a five round clip for these guns and thought about buying one.

 

Well yesterday I decided to do a little shooting in my back yard. I got some toys for christmas I wanted to play with. One a Bench Buddy, basically a cheap plastic bench rest. The other a Savage 93GV17 .17HMR rifle. I figured if I was going to have the .17 out, I Might as well see what the AK would do off a bench. I discovered the Saiga would not fit in the rest because of the clip sticking down too far. After some re- engineering of things I sort of got it to work, not very stable though. The groups were not all that impresssive by the way. A 5 shot group of around 2 inches or so at 50 yards. I never noticed the recoil on this gun until I put it in a rest, this thing really jumps when you shoot it! Oh, and the group from the .17 at 50 yards would fit into one bullet hole from the 7.62. I think I am going to like this gun.

 

So later last night I was looking at the clip from the Saiga and noticed it has two ribs on it. One on the bottom that the magizine floor slides over, and another higher up that looks the same. That got me to wondering. I took the mag apart and slid the inside piece( I don't know what it is called, the follower maybe?) up to where the first rib was and put some cartridges in it, I think it held six that way, but with no spring pressure.

 

I decided to cut the mag in half at that rib. I cut it on my table saw and then polished things up a bit with my dremel. You also need to notch a little groove in the back so the floor plate will slide on. I put it back together and I'll be damned if it doesn't hold exactly 5 rounds! It looks like the molds they use for these mags will make a 5 or 10 shot clip, depending on how they configure it. So now I have a 5 shot legal clip for hunting, and it fits in my bench rest without hitting anything. And it cost me exactly nothing! Finnally something went my way for a change. I also think it looks better this way, but like I said, I am a bit odd.

 

After shooting this gun off the bench though I am seriously considering different optics for it. I think the scope I took off my ML is too good for this gun. My ML would shoot 1 inch groups at 100 yards with the same scope. I saw a cheap BEC at CDNN that looks pretty cool, I may go that route for this gun. I am going to try some better ammo before I write it off though. I think most of it is the nasty hard trigger, but not all of it.

 

Paul

[SammoH 0]

That's cool. Useful information to know. I'll keep that in mind should I decide to hunt with my Saiga. I doubt that I will though. It's just too much fun on the range or just in a field behind my buddy's barn. I mean, if I went hunting with my Saiga, I think I'd end up emptying a clip into the deer/bear etc. Whatever I shot.

 

I'll stick to one of my bolt action rifles (either a 30-30, a 308 or my favorite, a 7mm mag) for hunting.

 

It's still good to know though that we can take the 10 rd mags and convert them to 5 rd mags if necessary, albeit a rather odd conversion in the way of Saigas.

[stevem 0]

I have a couple of 5 round mags that I bought off of a guy on gunsnet.net.I think he charged me $5 each plus $3 shipping.I think a new 10 round is @$18.Comparing them side by side with the 10 round mag, I think they are made slightly differently in that the 5 round has a couple of indentations in the plastic at different locations than the 10 round.And the 10 has a peep hole so you can see when it's fully loaded(in case you can't count to 10)Other than that, they are identical, just like Paul Mohr said.I havn't seen anywhere to buy the 5 round Saiga mags in quite some time, but if I find a company that carries them , I'll let you know.

[stevem 0]

oh, yeah, I bought some recoil buffers from Blackjack and that benchrest recoil virtually dissappears.Got one for my Saiga 12ga too.Now I have to order one for the SKS I got last week....they work great and must help prolong the life of the internals.I don't care much about recoil, but metal to metal hammering really annoys me.I don't know why they don't come with these from the factory.