I have a thing for weird shotguns…not Turkish bullpup weird, but SAS-12 weird. You might remember these entering the country a few years back and selling for rock-bottom prices. These were going for less than $200, and I think they dipped to something like $89 on a Black Friday deal. I remember wanting one, but never pulling the trigger, so to speak.
I saw one hanging on the wall in my local gun store’s used section and it was still selling for next to nothing. When you factor in inflation, the SAS-12 is actually cheaper now than when it was released. What drew me to the gun was its traditional sporting layout combined with a box-fed magazine.
The SAS-12 has a faux wood forend that’s dyed or painted brown. The stock is actual wood and is an odd shape with an aggressively clubbed pistol grip. Barrel lengths were either 24 or 26 inches, with this model a 24-incher. Across the top is a ventilated rib, and we get a matte black finish.
It’s all set off by the magazine at the bottom of the gun. It’s an interesting, eye-catching combination. Eye-catching and cheap are enough for me.
From China With Love
I know what you’re thinking, it’s a Turkish gun, right? Nope, it’s Chinese. It’s odd that we don’t get more shotguns from China, to be honest, but maybe it’s tough for them to undercut the Turks, but they found a way to do so with the SAS-12.
The SAS-12 came with a pair of three-round magazines, but five-round magazines are available as well. When these guns premiered, the five-rounders were a little pricier, but I was able to find them for seven bucks on Centerfire Systems, so I ordered a handful.
The magazines are cheap, stamped-steel units with a rickety follower. They fit extremely tightly in the mag well and are held in with an AK-like ambidextrous paddle release. It doesn’t really release the magazine as much as it unlocks the magazine, so you can pull it out of the gun. If you somehow accidentally hit the release, the magazine certainly won’t fall out.
Loading the magazine is a little tricky. The follower doesn’t exactly glide in the magazines. Some rounds take a good bit of pressure to press into the magazine, and eventually the follower drops free, and the round flows it. The rims can cause issues, so take your time to make sure the rim of the fresh round doesn’t catch on the brass portion of the last round inserted.
Inside the SAS-12
A crossbolt safety sits behind the trigger and it’s easy enough to reach. The length of pull is long, measuring about 14 inches. There’s no recoil pad, but who needs one? The stock is wobbly. I took off the butt plate and tried to tighten the bolt that holds the stock to the gun, but it was topped out.
The gun has a bead sight at the end of a vent rib. Is the vent rib crooked? I’m seriously asking, and I feel like if I have to ask. I should know the answer.
The SAS-12 is gas-operated with a traditional piston system setup. That’s nothing fancy and we’ve seen it a hundred times over. The difference is this system is rough. Nothing is polished, there are burs everywhere and there’s flash left over in the gas ports.
I typically think of Turkish shotguns as bottom of the barrel, with China placing just ahead of them. Oftentimes, a Chinese pump action is fine, but the SAS-12, well, it just sucks. To sell the gun as cheaply as they did, they cut every corner they could think of.
Shooting the SAS-12
I didn’t expect much from this gun. Semi-auto shotguns are historically picky and good semi-autos cost a fair amount of money. The SAS-12 costs less than a Maverick 88. To get off to a good start, I loaded the gun with some Winchester AutoBuck, ammo that’s supposedly optimized for semi-auto shotguns.
Color me shocked that the first magazine ran like an absolute champ. I chewed through all five rounds with ease and was pleasantly surprised. No, I was downright shocked. Will this gun run okay? The AutoBuck isn’t too hot, so the recoil wasn’t all that bad. Maybe I had a winner.
I did not.
Every magazine after that was plagued with issues. The AutoBuck didn’t work, 00 at 1,325 didn’t work, and reduced recoil, of course, didn’t work. Neither did 16 pellets of No. 1 buck at 1,250 feet per second. Hell, even Hornady Black at 1,600 feet per second failed. The only birdshot I tried was No. 6 shot and it bombed, too.
Constant failures to eject, with shells getting stuck in the chamber, double-feeds and failures to eject. I even removed the magazine, handloaded a round and it failed to eject. This thing is just an absolute mess. If I welded the gas ports shut, it would still be a poor straight pull bolt gun because the shells get stuck in the chamber so often.
Besides Reliability
The shot hit where I aimed it, for the most part. Patterns were more dependent on ammo since the gun has a cylinder bore choke. With AutoBuck, I saw the same basic one-inch per yard spread I see when it’s fired from the Mossberg 940 Pro Tactical.
Recoil was intense. I fired hefty loads, but it’s still more recoil than I’d experience with other semi-auto shotguns. Not quite jarring, but noticeable. I’m used to shorter LOPs, so maybe the longer LOP is giving me that good press to the shoulder.
What’s Left
In the end, the Chinese SAS-12 sucks. Can I make it work? I’m thinking some polishing, some deburring, and some smoothing might help things. I’m all about getting some tips and tricks for that in the comments. It’s so cheap that if I make it worse somehow, I won’t care at all. Let me know what you think.
Don’t waste your time on it. It is what it is and will never be anything else no matter what you do to it because it was designed and manufactured with ‘worse’ already built in. “polishing, some debu* rring, and some smo* othing” is never going to make it a reasonably ‘reliable’ and/or ‘reliably functional’, and/or ‘pleasant or enjoyable to use’ shotgun.
Travis, I know you have this hobby interest thing for weird or cheap guns, but you hit the bottom of the barrel this time. This shotgun was made cheap on purpose because it uses out of spec parts and manufacturing and left overs from other firearms – in other words its a gun they made to avoid having to throw such bad stuff away so decided to use it to make some money one it. Some people claim to have been able to get them to sort of semi reasonably work properly after a long break in period firing, they claim, high velocity ammo – a claim I think is really complete bunk because I know people who also got this shotgun and of those several none of them have ever been able to get it to function semi reasonably work properly no matter what they did to it or what ammo they fired and two of them are gunsmiths and did all the “polishing, some deburring, and some smoothing” stuff too and other things.
If you insist upon keeping it then put a big note on it that says “Never make this mistake again!”
The gun is literally made from junk, stuff that should have been thrown out and not used but they decided to make some money with it anyway and put this shotgun together with it.