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Gas block surgery


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Took my SGL12-07 out for a good deal of play recently, hundreds of rounds. It ran...*okay*, temperamental with low brass, even had a few FTE's with 00 buck on setting 2 because it wouldn't even come close with 1. That was really strange, must have just been a fluke, after that it went back to being fine.

 

Anyway, some buddies and I were going to undertake drilling out the ports today but the lower dowel pin on the gas block absolutely will not budge. Several broken punches so far and it hasn't moved a micron, even tried then using the broken punches to at least get it started to no avail. Searching I found a lot of threads on people not being able to budge the block itself, but all other threads seemed to insinuate that the pins came out really easily. The gas regulator detent pin came out easy enough with a couple whacks, but the bottom pin won't budge. At this point I worry that trying to hammer it out is just causing the end to peen and will only get it stuck further.

 

Suggestions or tips would be greatly appreciated.

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could try some pb blaster spray on pins on both sides and the barrel tube gas block let them soak in for like 10min 15min then give gas block with rubber or dead blow hammer on both sides couple times this should loosen it up support barrel and gas tube and front barrel the side block which does looked peened, use nail punchs they are stronger pins should come out then whack gas block off. make sure your working on hard flat surface not rug or soft because it absorbs your impact,

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could try some pb blaster spray on pins on both sides and the barrel tube gas block let them soak in for like 10min 15min then give gas block with rubber or dead blow hammer on both sides couple times this should loosen it up support barrel and gas tube and front barrel the side block which does looked peened, use nail punchs they are stronger pins should come out then whack gas block off. make sure your working on hard flat surface not rug or soft because it absorbs your impact,

 

Will give this a try. Thanks for the suggestion. Do you think I run the risk of peening the pin to the point it gets stuck in there more?

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Travistp and I had a similar problem, and even broke a Snap On punch. Travistp took it home, got a bigger hammer and shorter punch, and got the job done.

 

Ouch! I'm going to soak it in some PB and let my brother take a crack at it tomorrow.

 

One thing I've noticed though, when I look down the barrel there's a visible "ring" around where the gas block is. Kind of like a dent, but mostly just visible because of the chrome lining, but it's definitely more pronounced around the bottom portion, right where this stubborn pin would be located. Is that a problem, or just pressure on the barrel from how the gas block is installed? I noticed a tiny similar spot around where my Dinzag FSB is installed. I can't feel it, but I can see it.

Edited by Barrage
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Travistp and I had a similar problem, and even broke a Snap On punch. Travistp took it home, got a bigger hammer and shorter punch, and got the job done.

 

Ouch! I'm going to soak it in some PB and let my brother take a crack at it tomorrow.

 

One thing I've noticed though, when I look down the barrel there's a visible "ring" around where the gas block is. Kind of like a dent, but mostly just visible because of the chrome lining, but it's definitely more pronounced around the bottom portion, right where this stubborn pin would be located. Is that a problem, or just pressure on the barrel from how the gas block is installed? I noticed a tiny similar spot around where my Dinzag FSB is installed. I can't feel it, but I can see it.

 

 

Don't over think this. Take it out to the sidewalk. Lay the gun down on a 2x4. Have someone hold the gun and swing away. I used a 10lb short handled sledge hammer and still had one helluva time. First use a starter punch or have a good supply of 1/16" punches available. I went through a few myself.

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Yea it was a bitch. Lower dowel was 2 wacks and right on out. Now the dowel holding a detent was another story. Rest the gun barrel/gas block on a block of wood and a block under the back close to the buttstock if not on it. Take a short 1/16 punch or cut one thats 1/8inch long. Use a small sledge you can get at lowes or home depot. One thats handheld. Then... wack as hard as you fucking can. My dowel pin was jacked up looking for sure. It smooshed one side of the dowel so bad I had to grind it off and smooth it out. Anyways itll take a fee good solid wacks to even see it move. It was very heartbraking as I scratched my gad block but I didnt givr a shit at that point lol. Get a 1/8 punch. Take it too a grinder and shave it down to .095-.100 and once u get it to move so alighty with a broke 1/16 go to town on it with the shaved 1/8. Goodluck and dont worry about a few scratches. Its cheap russian paint anyways. Have fun cause I know I did... also once out.. take some sand paper to the dowels and slick em up. Sure did go back together easier then it came off.

Edited by travistp
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I just went through the same thing but mine was the lower (shorter) pin that was the SOB. The upper one that has the detent and spring came out, compared to the lower one, much easier.

 

The lower one did bend/break a few punches but eventually after some pretty solid whacks it did break free. Getting it started was the hardest part.

 

I did exactly what these guys suggested above.........put it on my workbench, had a buddy steady the gun, and I hammered away. My buddy was looking at me like I was crazy for how hard I was hitting it but I told him the people here said to "swing for the fences".

Edited by burntpowder
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Well good news and possibly bad news.

 

The good news is I got to my ports and drilled all four of them to .078

 

The bad news...possibly damaged the barrel.

 

I took this to my brother, who being a machinist had far more tools than I did. Total, 6 punches broke, and tried using all of them broken to at least get it started, it wouldn't budge. We'd let PB blaster soak into it for a while and it didn't seem to help at all. Our set up was exactly as Travistp had described above. Two wooden blocks, one beneath the block, one beneath the stock, me stabilizing the shotgun while he wailed on the punch. After one raucous whacking spree to no avail I noticed something didn't look right. The gas block had canted 1/4 inch, yet the pin was still in it. How that was possible, I have no clue.

 

After correcting the gas block with a rubber mallet, I looked down the barrel. I mentioned in a previous post that after working on it, I'd started to see an indentation or warping of the reflection around the gas block while looking down the bore. Now it is much more visible. When the gas block canted with the pin still in it, the pin must have made an indent on the barrel. It's held in by the groove on the barrel, but this seemed to have gone past the groove. Here are pictures.

 

QuLb1cX.jpg

 

OahxmB3.jpg

 

I apologize for the crappy lighting, but with my higher quality camera and other lighting conditions you just couldn't make it out past all the reflections. You can see up top a little slag from drilling the ports which will blast out easy enough, but then the little black mark below them to the right is the small dent I'm referring to.

 

It's not *that* bad, it is more pronounced in person than in the pictures, but it's there and it makes me wonder if shooting slugs through it will damage the barrel or be potentially hazardous? I don't know how tight the bore tolerances are for rifled slugs in these guns.

 

As for the pin, once I saw the barrel I said, "hell with this" and we drilled it out without problem, I'll order a new dowel this evening, but I wish now that I'd have just started with drilling from the beginning.

Edited by Barrage
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What does the groove on the barrel look like, I beat the piss out of mine. No dents nothing.. You said your gas block moved, you sure those wacks with the dowel pin were not hitting that gas block a little? Hmm... Is that "dent" located exactly right where the groove is at? That barrel is pretty damn tough man. From the pictures, it looks as if that dent is exactly where those gas ports are located not in front but hard to tell? Have you rubbed anything on it to see how much of a "raise" is actually there or just visually inspect it?



Also, did your buddy at the machine shop not have a 2 ton press available?



You would be the FIRST that I have ever seen of a dowel pin damaging the barrel...

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Disect a slug round and remove the slug... send it down the bore.. u may need to use a wooden dowel being tapped by a hammer to make it go do... now see if the slug hangs up on the dimple u see... if it does push it past it and only shoot buck and game shot if not u should be safe for slugs

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Before you put the pins back in chuck them up in a drill run it, put a file on the end of the pin at an angle. This will put a bevel on one end of the pin and make them a hell of a lot easier to get out next time. I broke a bunch of punches on mine...ended up using a stanley tapered nail set and a 5 lb hammer after letting it soak over night in PB. Also put on concrete with 2 x 4 under it.

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I just dont see how that barrel could have been damaged from wacking on a dowel pin... i mean i beat mine so hard my girl thought i had broken it lol. it worked like a charm after a few good wacks, no damage to the dowel groove just the pin was all bent and smashed on one side, smoothed and rounded it back out, did at the sccritterkiller said and took a small file and a drill and chucked it up, angled the dowels and installing and removing was wayyyy easier.. im just still in "awe" over the barrel getting a high spot from the damn dowel pin..

Edited by travistp
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You would be the FIRST that I have ever seen of a dowel pin damaging the barrel...

 

That wouldn't be dissimilar from luck I've had in the past.

 

The dent is absolutely where the groove in the barrel is. The punch was fitting in the dowel hole, on the dowel. It was just in there so ridiculously tightly that it was just like he was smacking on a solid piece of the gas block and that's what caused it to cant, causing the pin to ride up the side of the barrel and leave an indentation. He does not own a press, nor does the shop he works at. I asked the same question, but apparently they just do a lot of CNC work and their shop has never needed one.

 

Running a brass rod over the dent pushes the rod "out of the way" so to speak. What I mean by that is that when running the tip of it straight down the barrel, when it hits th dent you can see it veer. it's small but definitely there.

 

I dissected a slug and dropped it down the barrel, and much to my dismay it stopped around the dented area. One light tap with a cleaning rod was enough to get it to fall through. Tried this several times, ended up with a lead ring around the barrel right where the dent is. Definitely there.

 

Sad day.

 

Drill it or press it would be my advice to anyone who finds this thread searching. This is a pretty shitty feeling.

Edited by Barrage
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What size punch were you using?? If I were you.. I would load a slug in it. Take it too the backyard and tie some string to the triger.. run a few through it if u just dont care. Might smooth it out and I thnk youll be ok. I dont see how that happened unless you were using the wrong size punch... you do know they make replacement stainless steel us made barrels right?

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It really wasn't the punches, and we weren't hitting the block, to be honest we weren't even hitting the punches *that* hard. We were hammering on it, but not driving railroad spikes by any means.

 

Firing a slug through it isn't worth the risk, and the replacement barrel isn't a realistic expense at this point. If it could be repaired I'd look into it, but I can't think of how that would be possible.

Edited by Barrage
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man no way it should have done that. i drove like 10 railroad spikes worth of hits.. fire some buckshot through it... see it smooths it out.. you can smooth the highspot out and still have a working gun.. i dont see it affecting anything once that spot is smoothed



Another question. While using the punches, did the dowel pin at all? What size punch? If you use a broken punch and hit too hard it WILL get stuck in that dowel hole and can cause that problem (didnt to mine though). Im still clueless...

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man no way it should have done that. i drove like 10 railroad spikes worth of hits.. fire some buckshot through it... see it smooths it out.. you can smooth the highspot out and still have a working gun.. i dont see it affecting anything once that spot is smoothed

 

Another question. While using the punches, did the dowel pin at all? What size punch? If you use a broken punch and hit too hard it WILL get stuck in that dowel hole and can cause that problem (didnt to mine though). Im still clueless...

 

 

All we could tell of the pin before we drilled it was that there wasn't any paint on it and it was shiny. It had some blow marks on it from the punches, but I wouldn't say it was really damaged at all. We also tried hammering on it again after it was half drilled and still couldn't get it to budge.

Edited by Barrage
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mine was mushroomed from hitting it so many times..and it still formed itself somewhat small enough to come out the hole without doing ANY damage.. I would have to say something happened besides it being hammered on. No way the dowel pin bends and deforms the barrel right there.. That punch had to be in the whole somewhat and it got wacked in the wrong spot and missed the dowel or something other than hammered the dowel pin did that.. no pictures of the process?

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mine was mushroomed from hitting it so many times..and it still formed itself somewhat small enough to come out the hole without doing ANY damage.. I would have to say something happened besides it being hammered on. No way the dowel pin bends and deforms the barrel right there.. That punch had to be in the whole somewhat and it got wacked in the wrong spot and missed the dowel or something other than hammered the dowel pin did that.. no pictures of the process?

 

Didn't plan on it being an ordeal, so no pictures aside from the ones I posted of the barrel. Just kept reading more and more "hit it harder" threads and figured we were just not getting it. I know you want to believe something wacky happened because that would make sense, but it really just doesn't. Sitting here thinking about it the only sense I can make of it is that the groove for the pin might have been mis-milled at the factory, far too deep on that side perhaps. That could have allowed the pin to deform itself up into the extra depth of the groove making for the extra trouble in removal, made a less resistant path for the pin to follow than "out", and made for a weaker area where the dent appeared. 100 threads on the topic can't be wrong, and it isn't rocket science, so my best guess is a flaw in the barrel itself.

 

I have a few guns but the Saiga is my favorite. I checked dozens of threads, made sure I picked up the right tools and went at it with as watchful an eye as I could. It looks like dented barrels can be repaired, I wonder if any of the Saiga-tech wizards have the ability...

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I have just read myself there is people who can fix problems like that as long as its not a "CREASE" which you might be in luck. Guy named Michael Orlen.. google him, does shotgun work in MA.. Call him tomorrow and have him give you a price on getting that taken care of and you might be good to go, unless any of these saiga junkies have experience in that line.. I think mine has some boogers in it.. ill beable to blow through 30,000 more rounds before i need to worry about it lol. Its a AK :-P

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It really wasn't the punches, and we weren't hitting the block, to be honest we weren't even hitting the punches *that* hard. We were hammering on it, but not driving railroad spikes by any means.

The first problem is that the gas block was not properly supported or there would have been nowhere for it to go in the first place.

 

The second problem is that you were not hitting decisive enough blows. You must strike directly 90 degrees, sharply and with A LOT of force. The fact there was ability for the block to move at all and there were many light blows caused the barrel to fatigue through "working". A few massive blows are far less damaging than a thousand light taps.

 

I wish I had some advice on how to fix the damage. I don't believe there is a way to fix that spot without damaging other sections. I wish you luck. Please let us know of you work it out. As others have said, that barrel may be destined for a short barreled saiga. It is still worth something to someone.

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Good response.. but barrage did say he had a block of wood under the gas block thats why I dont see how the gas block moved at all.. this is a first as far as I can tell. I had block of wood under stock and gas block and mine didnt rotate on me at all. Let me know if you talked to that guy I mentioned earlier..

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As Cobra said, hardwood should be used. Take a hammer to your standard pine 2x4 and you will see how the gas block moved. Look to Cobra's advice for how to do this. He has done it once or twice before. Sharp, driving, direct blows with a short stemmed punch and a solid backing will do the trick for most pins. If anything bounces, you are not doing it right and need to be more solidly setup.

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