Thursday, January 19, 2012

Yildiz SPZ ME project: Part 1

Alright y'all here's the start of my trap shotgun. I went to Academy Sports right before I left Texas and spent a considerable amount of time with one of their helpful store clerks digging through some of their Yildiz Shotguns. These are sold exclusively through them and available no where else. Since Academy is regional, I knew I had to get one then.

What I was looking for was something special. While I knew all of these would be more than decent enough to get me into the sport, I wanted something I can tinker with. After looking at 2 we finally opened up the box I went home with. A Yildiz SPZ ME 12ga. over/under with a 3" chamber and decent looking wood. After looking it over in the store I came to the conclusion that this particular gun looked like it needed some finish work and had somehow got through the quality assurance. Perfect, I'm not able to machine actions or barrels nor do I have the correct licensing to do so.

So what major things does this shotgun really need?

Keep in mind, others sold by them did not need most of this, I was looking for a project.

First things first, the barrels lock up too tight right now, a quick check with a bit of flame inletting and I can see where I'd like to remove the slightest amount of material to get a better contact patch with the receiver and to get the unlocking lever to return to 100% center. As of right now, 100% spotless clean and lightly oiled, with the barrels closed, the unlocking lever is 3-4 degrees off from fully locked. Some very light polishing of the breech face should solve this problem.

Next thing I noticed was how tight the sides of the barrel fit with the receiver. I have to use about 5lbs force near the middle of the barrels to open the chamber. After shooting 100+ rds shooting trap the last thing I want to do is grab a hot barrel. I will lightly polish the barrel and if needed the receiver to reduce this effort to a flick of the shotgun to open the chamber. All of them seemed tight but this was exceptionally tight.

The triggers aren't too bad, maybe an 1/8th or so of take-up and a clean crisp break probably around 5 lbs. I don't think I'll do anything with this.

The wood needed a bit of work. It looked like some very nice walnut. These guns are Turkish so I assume it is locally grown. Some of their higher end models may have the desirable marble cake black streaking, however this did not. It does have a little bit of "curl" or "fiddleback" and looks to have been part of a crotch. This is some of the nicest wood I've seen on a firearm of this price. It came matte and looked like it had a single coat of oil on it. I threw a couple coats of Tru-Oil on it to protect the wood from myself and it shined up quite a bit.

The checkering is a bit flat in spots. I'll bring up the points and re-oil those areas next.



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