Recently I had the pleasure of getting to do some work on a Saiga-12 for a customer. I’ve done several Saiga builds in the past but this one was combining nearly all the things I would want to personally incorporate into a build so I was pretty excited.

The Base Izhmash shotgun had the trigger group converted by E-Tac, and at some point had upgraded furniture installed. We have a vertical foregrip on an offset mount, for easy mag clearance, and a standard Tapco tri-rail forearm.

Most Saigas you will find have either 2,3, or 4 gas ports drilled through the barrel, aligned to a single hole in the gas block. This particular example only had a single port, most likely contributing to this rifles extreme difficulty cycling anything but high power slugs. I milled out the port, widening the hole so that more gas could pass through.

I installed a MD Arms V-Plug Gas Selector, as it allows for better gas flow and 5 settings instead of the stock two position selector. Inside the gas block is a free-floating piston sometimes called a “puck”. I installed a MD Arms Booster Puck, a piston designed to allow less gas around the piston and transfer more gas into kinetic energy that it can use to cycle the bolt.

Once everything is installed and operating correctly you can incrementally increase the gas pressure until the ammo you are using cycles correctly.

Finally I installed an Eotech 512 on a side mount scope rail, and adjusted the recoil spring so it would function flawlessly with the 30 round Wraithmaker drum.

I sighted it in with 2 3/4 rifled slugs, zeroed for 2in high at 50yds.

In all, it turned out pretty well. It still has the occasional FTF/FTE but thats normal until after 200-500 rounds or so have been run through it.

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