TheHolyLancer
Regular
- Location
- Toronto, Ontario
So I have a bit of weird experience, I am an expat living in US, but my parents are in Canada, and after taking my dad out to the GAT show, he picked up a Dera Mk 12 from Wolverine.
It came fast, ordered on Sunday and came in Wednesday, we went and shot it today (Thursday).
In my US supply, I own a Vepr-12 (can't bring it over, prohibited since RPK based), and a pump 590A1. And I can say that the dera is a great sporting shotgun, but that its weird exposed piston like system won't do it any favors under any duress.
Instead of taking crappy as pictures, I will refer to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QotTc5qqmA to show you how its disassembled, and what the each part looks like. And the manual over at http://deryaarms.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/MK-12-Owners-Manual.pdf
First, the piston as you can see is very exposed, there is a puck of sorts that sits around a covered gas port. This is NOT A SEALED GAS SYSTEM. Which means that if it gets any dirt or what nots in, you are likely going to see a malfunctioning gun. And that it dumps hot gases on to your hands if you were to hold the handguard near where the gas port area is...
Second, this is a short piston like design, as the piston is actually not connected to the BCG, but rather the silver puck hammers a short piston like sleeve, which then hammers 2 exposed BCG tongs that then drives the BCG backwards and cycles the gun. Which means that the contact points could mushroom down the line. Much like how in IV8888's piston meltdown video, the short piston BCG got mushroomed at the contact point (due to the piston warping, and likely the material itself is not strong enough under duress and heat of the meltdown test) https://youtu.be/CfZcEjdvx8c?t=713 . Thankfully, given this is semi 12 ga, I highly doubt that it would be under similar stress as what IV8888 has done to that short piston AR.
Third, the front sights are more or less useless, because you need to take off the handguard for cleaning (which DO NOT HAVE LOCKING SCREWS?? it is held in by the fake suppressor), and that means anything up front will likely have a hard time staying zeroed, esp with the cheap magpul knockoffs that they supplied. I wish they saved the 50 dollars or so on the weird airsoft like quality plastic accessories and just drop the price a bit, or supply real magpul mbus and nothing else. I think this thing will demand a red dot, but given you remove the barrel to get at the BCG for a complete cleaning, I am not even sure if that can help if the barrel don't go back in perfect each time.... Granted, it is a shotgun, and not a precision rifle.
It also did not run from factory, I am used to having my guns run more or less 100% from factory, except on my PSA and BCA sub 200 dollar assembled uppers (yeah, canadian prices are a bit much, compared to what I see off of /r/gundeals on reddit). And this thing will FTE off of full powered slugs out of the box. Until I had field stripped it, wiped it down and applied lube on the gas system and the rails on the BCG without removing the barrel.
My vepr 12 had a break in period, but it would at least cycle slugs out of box and just birdshot (and lighter loads) having issues. But this thing, while seemingly lubed and was actually very wet from the factory, it seemed that it still needed some TLC before it would cycle anything.
After 50 normal slugs, it started to cycle birdshot and low powered slugs mostly fine, with a few stovepipes every 10-20 rounds. And at that point, me and my dad's shoulder started to hurt and we called it a day. At the end of it, I think it will still need another 50 or 100 before it becomes hiccup free on the bird shot, maybe a bit more?
As it stands tho, I think its a great option for Non-Restricted Semi shotgun for Canada, if you know how to clean and properly break this in, if I had no break in experience with my Vepr 12 and known about how finicky this thing could be, maybe it would have been returned or something, because it just would not fire anything out of the box... For something that costs 1k CAD I feel like maybe they can do some machine assisted break in at the factory, or some sort of design adjustment for it to work better out of the box.
And if I am honest, I see something very similar to this and more or less a copy of the MKA 1919 -- the AR-12 Semi Auto from Panzer Arms of Turkey off of /r/gundeals for only 400 USD now that went on sale for 350 (https://www.reddit.com/r/gundeals/comments/7eozip/shotgunpanzer_arms_ar12_shotgun_for_sale/ and that is the only thing that kind of make me pause as to how good this is, but oh well Canadian laws and import hassles I guess.
It came fast, ordered on Sunday and came in Wednesday, we went and shot it today (Thursday).
In my US supply, I own a Vepr-12 (can't bring it over, prohibited since RPK based), and a pump 590A1. And I can say that the dera is a great sporting shotgun, but that its weird exposed piston like system won't do it any favors under any duress.
Instead of taking crappy as pictures, I will refer to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QotTc5qqmA to show you how its disassembled, and what the each part looks like. And the manual over at http://deryaarms.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/MK-12-Owners-Manual.pdf
First, the piston as you can see is very exposed, there is a puck of sorts that sits around a covered gas port. This is NOT A SEALED GAS SYSTEM. Which means that if it gets any dirt or what nots in, you are likely going to see a malfunctioning gun. And that it dumps hot gases on to your hands if you were to hold the handguard near where the gas port area is...
Second, this is a short piston like design, as the piston is actually not connected to the BCG, but rather the silver puck hammers a short piston like sleeve, which then hammers 2 exposed BCG tongs that then drives the BCG backwards and cycles the gun. Which means that the contact points could mushroom down the line. Much like how in IV8888's piston meltdown video, the short piston BCG got mushroomed at the contact point (due to the piston warping, and likely the material itself is not strong enough under duress and heat of the meltdown test) https://youtu.be/CfZcEjdvx8c?t=713 . Thankfully, given this is semi 12 ga, I highly doubt that it would be under similar stress as what IV8888 has done to that short piston AR.
Third, the front sights are more or less useless, because you need to take off the handguard for cleaning (which DO NOT HAVE LOCKING SCREWS?? it is held in by the fake suppressor), and that means anything up front will likely have a hard time staying zeroed, esp with the cheap magpul knockoffs that they supplied. I wish they saved the 50 dollars or so on the weird airsoft like quality plastic accessories and just drop the price a bit, or supply real magpul mbus and nothing else. I think this thing will demand a red dot, but given you remove the barrel to get at the BCG for a complete cleaning, I am not even sure if that can help if the barrel don't go back in perfect each time.... Granted, it is a shotgun, and not a precision rifle.
It also did not run from factory, I am used to having my guns run more or less 100% from factory, except on my PSA and BCA sub 200 dollar assembled uppers (yeah, canadian prices are a bit much, compared to what I see off of /r/gundeals on reddit). And this thing will FTE off of full powered slugs out of the box. Until I had field stripped it, wiped it down and applied lube on the gas system and the rails on the BCG without removing the barrel.
My vepr 12 had a break in period, but it would at least cycle slugs out of box and just birdshot (and lighter loads) having issues. But this thing, while seemingly lubed and was actually very wet from the factory, it seemed that it still needed some TLC before it would cycle anything.
After 50 normal slugs, it started to cycle birdshot and low powered slugs mostly fine, with a few stovepipes every 10-20 rounds. And at that point, me and my dad's shoulder started to hurt and we called it a day. At the end of it, I think it will still need another 50 or 100 before it becomes hiccup free on the bird shot, maybe a bit more?
As it stands tho, I think its a great option for Non-Restricted Semi shotgun for Canada, if you know how to clean and properly break this in, if I had no break in experience with my Vepr 12 and known about how finicky this thing could be, maybe it would have been returned or something, because it just would not fire anything out of the box... For something that costs 1k CAD I feel like maybe they can do some machine assisted break in at the factory, or some sort of design adjustment for it to work better out of the box.
And if I am honest, I see something very similar to this and more or less a copy of the MKA 1919 -- the AR-12 Semi Auto from Panzer Arms of Turkey off of /r/gundeals for only 400 USD now that went on sale for 350 (https://www.reddit.com/r/gundeals/comments/7eozip/shotgunpanzer_arms_ar12_shotgun_for_sale/ and that is the only thing that kind of make me pause as to how good this is, but oh well Canadian laws and import hassles I guess.
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Had he asked my opinion about "what to get" I likely would have steered him in a different direction, but this one captured his interest..so I wasn't going to be a buzz-kill. 
