Review: Panzer BP12 - The Inexpensive Tavor 12?

everybody this is hammer striker here today I've got a Panther arms be p12 12-gauge shotgun in the table we had previously done a first look at this gun and we hadn't at the time had a chance take it out to the range we've had it out to the range fired it it actually it works pretty well it patterns really nicely we're shooting some double lot buck with it it is a three-inch chamber so it's capable of anything that you really want to run through it we were using it at the indoor range it's just too hot out here in Florida to get to our outdoor range so we weren't able to run any birdshot so we're running slugs and buckshot through it and what we fed it just worked so it's proven so far to be pretty reliable it's very similar to an MK a 1919 you've seen that one on our channel they were really popular for a while but there are some differences there's some improvements and then there's a few things that they didn't do quite as well as they probably could have so let's go ahead talk about the basic features of it before we go any further we'll start with it came with two five round magazines there is a ten round magazine available I've got them on order I haven't gotten them in yet and as I'd mentioned that it looks very similar to an MK in 1919 I originally thought there might be some compatibility here's an MK in 1919 magazine and they look kind of similar they're not similar enough the followers a little different and there's a couple of other minor differences in the magazine the five round magazines don't latch properly they don't hold the gun open so it won't lock back and at that point I decided not to even try it with it I didn't want to damage anything just dry fire on the table the magazine wasn't working correctly and the 10 round magazines that are available for the MK 1919 they don't even seek all the way you can see the shape of the magazine well it's kind of angled and it hits and it doesn't see it it doesn't lock so I know that's not going to work so I did order some 10-round magazines that's kind of unfortunate we've got a bunch of the magazines for the MK a figured that we might end up being able to use them not going to work that way other than that it's as a bullpup and the base of principle behind that is the action is behind the grip and tray so the Chamber's back here the receiver magwell and the fire control group brought back here the trigger is up here and actually the fire control groups all the way back here this is where the hammer is so there's an arm a linkage you'll see it when I take the lower off that connects the trigger back to that action what that does is it makes it or it's got a twenty inch barrel but it's only thirty point seven inches long so it's a fairly short gun for the length of the barrel it also shifts the weight to the back so when you're shouldering this thing and holding on to it it wants to level up against your shoulder and it doesn't feel nose-heavy you know a lot of shotguns you get a fairly long shotgun and it wants to nose down you've got all this gun out in front of you the other advantage to this this type of a design does it points well as you turn because all the weights back here and there's not a whole lot of barrel out in front of your grip if you look at it there's just not a whole lot of barrel out front of your grip it tends to more naturally point as you turn the gun tends to turn with you very nicely a few of the other features well I've got in this position it has this barrel shroud kind of looks like a suppressor it's not it has a no sound suppression whatsoever it's just a it screws on kind of looks cool but it really doesn't perform any true function there's a Picatinny rail on both sides and as you can see there's a rail on the top it came with these flip up sights you push a button and they flip off and the rear sight also flips up and it has a little armature that you can go a smaller large one thing we did find with this if you have the small one up and you fire the gun the recoil tends to do about that with it it doesn't it's not really spring loaded properly that it stays in place I found that a little bit annoying but you'll will find that they're adjustable so there's the adjusting screws so you can height and windage adjust the rear sight the front sight is not adjustable but you do all your adjustment with the rear sight so it does come with those sights right from the factory so you can take this thing out in the box and read from get go pull pretty good groups now one thing I will point out is that it's cylinder and it's not threaded for chuck's so you basically run the single cylinder bore slides buckshot birdshot whatever you want it pattered nicely with buckshot I have a feeling when you get into some of the smaller bird shots the pattern is probably gonna open up quite a bit without a choke to control bird shot it tends to go about everywhere but the purpose of this thing isn't a goose hunting gun this is more of a tactical shotgun defense you know there are various features like that it's less intended for tight patterns with various chokes for somebody who's really into it's a bird hunting before I forget to mention it the barrel is chrome-lined should make it easy to clean easy to maintain and make it feel fairly reliable long-term you'll be doing it less likely to get corrosion and that type of thing really where this would come in in a non defensive scenario would be something like hog hunting deer hunting things where you're not going to be using birdshot you're going to either be using slugs we ran some rifled slug through this and it patterned quite nicely or buckshot where you're you're gonna have a fairly tight group of a large quantity a large shot and what I've mentioned pattern on the slug I meant to say group it grouped nicely it was a fairly tight group so it's going to be repeatable the only thing you may run into with hunting on this is if you have a magazine round rescript restriction the smallest mag that comes with it is a five round so you may have to modify the magazine to hit like a three round limit depending on where you're at what you're hunting and what the requirements are where your are but that's really where this is going to come into play and then of course a range day this is an excellent range day I want to coop have some fun gun especially you can have all sorts of toys on it it comes with this ankle grip now when it did the first look I thought this was a proprietary setup this ankle grip is a little bit proprietary but underneath this once you pull it off there's actually a Picatinny rail under there so you can put a forward grip or whatever else you want on there and because this isn't got any tricky things with the grip and the bird's head grip or any weird things this is just a shotgun from day one it comes on the 4473 as a shotgun there's no reason you can't put forward grips or any other of things on here and it is 922 our compliant as you see it so that you don't have to mess with worrying about any of those restrictions pretty much you can take it out of the box and use it it does come with an AR style safety it isn't ambidextrous it's one on this side as well now one thing I did find is that it had a tendency to want to bite your finger when you're holding it here with this it on the fire position the lever stuck down just enough and it's gonna be difficult to do it upside down the lever stuck down just enough that depending on where your finger was it wanted to get your finger so you find yourself trying to kind of grip it down a little bit like this to avoid it I may look to see if there's a blank available to cover the one that's on the trigger side that you'll because I'm right-handed so I really don't need the safety on this side you would hit the thumb on the other side but it is nice that it is ambidextrous when we watch the ejection pattern for the most part it ejected forward and to the side but a few of them did come back a little bit it's got a shell deflector on it but it doesn't have a back deflector like if you look at the iwi Devore they have a deflector back here they're pretty much guarantees that no shell can come any further back than 90 degrees from this point so if you're a left-handed shooter and you you've got it on the you're the left hand side hint of your face it's possible you might get a shell on the forehead or something like that so it's even though it's got an AM be safety it's not super friendly for left-handers and it is not reversible it's it's solid is this is the way it's going to be it's going to be a right hand eject and there's nothing you can do with that and I did mention that it's got a three-inch chamber and it is rated for magnums the lower receiver is polymer the upper is aluminum barrel of course is chrome lined steel so the majority of this thing is polymer at the bottom half aluminum at the top half the rails and all of that are all aluminum so it's well built now you would think that it would be light it's actually not eight point three seven pounds for this and if you take that in consideration to something like a Mossberg 930 is around seven and a quarter pounds a Benelli ethos is six and a half fish pounds you know kind of varies depending on what tomato you choose so if shotguns goes a little bit on the heavy side but the combination of a little bit more weight the way you grip it this rubber butt pad at the back and the bullpup configuration actually makes it really comfortable recoil even when shooting the rifled slugs through it really didn't feel that the recoil was excessive we did run some low recoil through it as well and it handled that perfectly the only thing we haven't had an opportunity to run through this is some real light field loads that would be the one thing that we haven't done but the Mk 1919 which again is fairly similar to this once you've got through the initial break-in on that gun it handled the light loads equally well a few of the other features of it it has an air style grip so you can change this grip out it's kind of like a rubberized grip this it grips actually quite comfortable but you can change that out if you don't like it the trigger is polymer it actually has a fairly heavy trigger but it's a nice trigger I'll demonstrate that in a little bit the other feature is that it's got is an air style bolt release and you can see I've got the charging handle on the left side it's also reversible you can put the charging handle on the right side equally while I figure I put it over here on the left keep it away from my hand and everything even though you know the way you're gripping it you're going to pretty much be away from it but you'll see there's a notch right there right there that you can just pull it out and slide it in you have to pull the handle off to disassemble the gun it's not difficult to do and you can put it back wherever you want it and it also has an AR style charging handle here that you can charge it so it's very flexible and way you can operate this and what you can do with it it also has an adjustable cheek riser you can bring this all the way up there's a screw on the other side here you're just loosen this you slide it up and it's got little detent notches in it so you don't have to super torque this to get it to stay put the detent notches will keep it in place once it's tightened down reasonably now one of the negatives of this is you do have to pull this off to disassemble the gun so you have to take that screw off pull this whole little piece off of here and the nut that goes into this round there's a steel knot inside this plastic outer nut and it's not captive so if you're not careful when you unscrew this the nut will fall off so you want to make sure you're paying attention to that if you were to field-strip it out in the field it would be easy to loose this now if you do lose this part and can't use it then it doesn't render the gun inoperative you just loose this cheek riser it's also got a place for a sling here at the back and on the Picatinny rail you can install whatever sling holders you want it on the Picatinny rail so it's got again all the flexibility you would want in a tactical it's really kind of a tactical shotgun the angle grab which course course be replaced in lots of rooms for lights lasers etc etc all the toys that you might want to have on a gun like this it is piston-driven you'll see that when I get it the upper off of here and it vents through here so the operating mechanism the springs are in front there's no buffer tube at the back like in AR all the springs and everything or up front and that piston keeps the back part of the gun relatively clean and minimizes back flow into your face but it does vent through here so this will get dirty over time so depending on how you're holding it you can end up with residue on your fingers that's just the nature of of a gun like this the way it's designed because parts for these are difficult to obtain and I don't want to have to try and hunt down a firing pin I'm going to use these inert dummy rounds or snap caps they're 12-gauge snap caps I'm just going to protect the firing pin because trying to find a replacement for it's gonna be rather difficult magazines actually going fairly easy when you're doing it in a normal hold you just slide it up slap that hit the bolt release closes the bolt and then you can operate the trigger now I want to know from this sights you can see there's no take-up whatsoever and I am currently on fire there's absolutely no take-up the triggers right there on the wall it's about a 12 pound trigger and it's a really short Chris break when it does break it feels lighter than it really is but it does measure and get the gauge out it does measure her around 12 pounds and it's a really short reset now of course I'm didn't cycle the gun so it didn't reset but you'll see that it broke here and then was back on there so I will cycle it one there's the break and that would be the reset all the way back out so if surprisingly a lot of Bullpups are notorious for having really sloppy triggers this does have a heavy trigger but it isn't sloppy which is kind of kind of nice now the mag release is only on the right hand side of the gun it's an AR style mag release actually I'm just mistaken on that I was looking in the wrong place there is yeah there is no mag release on the on the left side it's only on the right side so it works just like an AR and the magazines do drop free pretty easily again trying to do it sideways on the table is less optimal but it's easy to work with this thing so let me get rid of that chambered snap cap and we'll go ahead and partially take this apart I'm not going to fully strip it all the way down to its components it's kind of a pain and one of the other negatives is I don't like things that require a tool this requires a tool look so like like an air armors wrench it does come with it there's a bolt on her or not you have to take off to get it fully assembled the original MK a 1919 had a you had to flip down the pad you actually had unscrew it with wood screws pull that off we replaced ours with a trapdoor and then you had to run a long extension with a socket up the up the stock to disassemble it this one is better than that you're not using long socket extensions but you still have this tool and it is a different company that makes it but the design is very very similar there's a lot of similarities in the overall design so the first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna put it down safe because the hammer is back and I really don't want to accidentally pull the trigger drop the hammer on the lower part of the receiver and mess it up beyond that there's these pins I just push one here with my finger you pull it and you pull all the pins out and that will allow you to separate the lower well I also forgot this is the pain you I always forget to do this and there goes that nut that I was warning you about you have to take this cheek piece off in order to be able to disassemble it was it would been easier had I done that before I actually disassembled it let me set this aside and I'll show you the lower the lower is pretty simple you've got the fire control group back here you've got a rod to go so forward to the trigger and operates the trigger that's really all that's in here and then you do have this feed ramp and the feed ramp is polymer it was a weak spot in the MKS it does look like it's replaceable but I haven't seen any replacements for it now in the MK a this was kind of a known weak spot these would wear haven't seen anywhere on this one so I don't know if I'll have a problem there but I also haven't seen any actual replacements now the aftermarket really did really enjoy the MK a and it had a lot of replacement parts this one I haven't seen that happen yet and then there's a little bit of a notch at the front these do work they just have a few things that look like they might be a little bit on the delicate side so now I have the upper and if I want to take this apart further I unscrew this this Manik suppressor screws off and as you'll see that you know the muzzles right here there's no baffles or anything it doesn't do anything other than look pretty once you have that off you can then remove but I also forgot you pull out the charging handle and it just pulls out now sometimes it'll come out other times you have to wiggle it and but once it comes out then you can pull this off and that's a little plate that's at the front I'll show you that a bit this is the nut that I mentioned requires a tool the piston is here here's the piston right there the gas ports up underneath this to take this further apart you take this nut off then you have to thread it past this set of threads as well taking completely off then you take the first part of the gas mechanism apart thread that all the way off then the bolt and operating rod spring assembly all kind of slide out together once you take this nut off biggest problem you have to be careful with this nut is thunder spring tension it's an aluminum body a steel nut so you want to be really really careful that you don't cross thread it when you start screwing this thing on if it doesn't go easy back off aluminum doesn't really put up with cross threading very well it's pretty much flattens the threads out and it's game over if this is unable to keep tight when it cycles it'll eventually batter itself loose and the gun will come apart replacement parts for these are not readily available at this point if you ruin the gun you're pretty much just gonna have to buy a new one other than the one part that you need the tool for though overall this is an easy to clean easy to maintain gun parts to get dirtier right in here and of course the chamber and the barrel so it's easy to actually keep this thing clean and operational so I'm gonna go ahead and put it back together basically you slide a handguard back on now that piece that you heard fall was a little retaining plate here that goes on the front and there's a little Ridge and there's a little piston or a little ball on that that the where there goes the - oppressor goes on - so it's reading this fat guy here a much easier to do when they're not trying to do it oh I get it go in which can be a little bit difficult to get it to see as it threads down the hair start to click that prevents it from just unscrewing itself so I just tightened it down reasonably I'm not tightening it for all eternity that little ball and there's little detent so we'll keep it from coming apart completely then at this point when I wanted to put the lower back on it you still have to open the bolt at least partially which means you have to quit the operating rod back in and I'll put it back in on the right hand side this time which was right there there's a couple ways you can do it you can lock it back but you have to make sure not to hit the bolt release or you can hold it open a little bit to make room for the upper right and lower to reconnect which make sure the pins we the ones are captive they have a tendency when you're handling it to pull back in and you'll see this is kind of cumbersome to do when you're trying to do it on the camera in all reality when you're focused on just doing it yourself it's easy it's just like an AR just got three pins instead of two overall it's an easy gun to live with it's definitely a fun gun it draws attention at the range you bring this into the range light off a couple rounds and everybody around you wants to see what that thing is you've got because it kind of looks like an AR or a bullpup rifle when you pull the trigger and the bang tells you it's something else and in the mid 500s 559 you know on a couple of the online sites it's actually quite a fun rifle for a reasonable price rifle shotgun for a reasonable price it's actually quite a bit of fun we've enjoyed having it if I were looking to do something truly serious where I needed something that was really durable I might look at the Devore 12 but you're going to add a thousand dollars to the price tag to do that so for a reasonably priced gun a few of the limitations it's got a few of the warts it's got really don't make a big difference at this price point and of course when you're all done make sure you don't forget to put this part back on and if the cat has run off with the nut you'll have to chase that down this this one here you this really should have been captive I may take a drop of adhesive and just secure that to the screw so this is not always running around off on things but beyond that if you liked our video please give us a thumbs up share subscribe click that bell if you do thank you to our patreon supporters and YouTube subscribers and also just let you know we're now on gun streamer and we're still of course going to be on YouTube and we're soon going to be on Twitter and Instagram beyond that have a great day thank you you

Channel: Hammer Striker

Views: 127,041

Rating: 4.912766 out of 5

Keywords: Panzer, BP12, BP 12, BP-12, 12ga, 12 ga, Tavor 12, MKA 1919

Id: rPkI_0ALaUc

Length: 23min 54sec (1434 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 13 2019