The Hatfield SAS Shotgun

[dhenzler]

A few years ago I decided that I'd heard enough about the Hatfield SAS20 20ga. I had heard stories from some that they had cycling problems, and jamming problems. I have been shooting Remington 1100's for years and have experienced cycling issues with those as well. So knew what to do.

Firearms manufacturers are hesitant to take any chances. When they build a gas operated gun that has no means of bleeding off excess pressure they port it on the safe side. However if you are only shooting target shells and no Magnum loads are in your future, you can open the gas ports a few thousandths and the cycling problem disappears. If you under stand how to calculate the area of the port before and after the enlarging you'll see that the pressure 12000 PSI only yeilds a small fraction of that to the action. I use number drills to determine the starting diameter and will go up one or two drill sizes max. In the case of my Remingtons one drill size generally does it. I have two Hatfields of slightly different designs. One required two drill sizes larger the other only one.

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Jamming was the other major complaint, and it took me a bit to recognize that the lifter in the action was a molded plastic part and when you make a mold that has two mirror image halves it's quite common for them to create a ridge along the line where the two sides come together. This is exactly what I found. No amount of lubrication would fix this... A nice new eXacto knife was able to shave off that ridge and that made a great difference. The bolt is rather sharp on it's forward bottom edge. I considered a little grinding job, but it never proved necessary.''

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My SAS20 went from having cycling problems about 20% of the time to Zero problems.. I have a skeet club, and used it for a while as a loaner. Many new skeet shooters show up with Grandpa's Browning A5 with a FULL choke. Terrific gun but difficult to hit targets only 12 yards away with a FULL choke. Even 21 yards away is too close for a FULL choke.

I hosted a group of Canadians that wanted to try skeet shooting. They used the Hatfield and it performed flawlessly. I had found a Beretta Skeet choke so it was shooting the correct pattern, and doing a great job.