Originally Posted by
nincomp
It is a bit of a complicated story. I guess that I should note that I had always thought about rebarreling this rifle, but the damaged chamber was the final straw that has convinced me to do it. It is important to note that this happened around 15 years ago, when men were men and Saiga's were cheap. My memory is a little hazy. One of the problems with medications that affect judgement is that, well, your judgement is affected. At the time, I did not realize that I was impaired (this is part of why I am disabled, the meds from one injury put me into the good ole' "hey y'all, watch this" mode* and I further damaged my back trying to lift something that was much too heavy.)
There is damage at the neck and throat area from a drill bit. A gunsmith said that it was "probably OK", but did not test fire it. This particular rifle did not have a normal 7.62x39 chamber to begin with. It has the "stepped-neck" chamber used on some early Saiga's. The first half of the neck is a larger diameter before it steps down to the final diameter at the end. This damages brass so much upon firing that it cannot be reloaded. My understanding is that factory did this to civilian 7.62x39 rifles for a while to easily differentiate between genuine civilian weapons and stolen military ones. The issue is that the whole reason for buying this rifle was to try to try to develop a very accurate load for it, and this would involve reloading. Since the brass could only be used once, I had doubts about the project from the beginning.
As I recall, I was slugging the barrel with lead fishing weights. I wanted to know the exact land and groove diameter. As it turns out the barrel of this particular Saiga has significant diameter reductions beneath the gas block and trunion, in other words, the places where interference fits squeezed it. Unfortunately, I used a wooden dowel to drive the lead slug down the barrel. The slug jammed at one of the constrictions and as I pushed harder, the wooden dowel split on the diagonal - jamming it in the barrel. After a couple of days trying to clear the barrel, I finally drilled it out from the receiver end. Although I was trying to be careful, the drill bit nicked the relatively sharp "step" in the neck and hit the throat.
For this to make a little more sense, it is important to note that this all occurred when Saiga's were $199 and did not have the reputation that they now have. The Saiga was literally the same price as a HiPoint carbine. i bought one of each at a gun show for a project. The whole idea was to get the least expensive semi-autos available and see what I could do to improve their accuracy. This led to slugging the barrels, seeing what bullets could get close to the lands, etc. Rebarreling the Saiga was an option from day-1. Hell, I even bought a 7.62x39 reamer. Unfortunately, a disabling injury prevented me from continuing the project.
*For those unfamiliar with this, the very last words uttered by many southern boys is "Hey y'all, watch this!" Other times, it is "Hold my beer while I try something".
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