Review of the Promag Akdal MKA 1919 Twenty Round Drum Magazine

 by John Wallis

Okay, so I don’t know if there are many hunters or shooting sports aficionados that look at this page, but I felt like I needed to do a review of a shotgun magazine I bought for my Turkish shotguns. I really like these box-fed shotguns and wound up with four of them when they first started hitting the market. One is an ATI Bulldog, two others consist of the Tokarev TBP 12 and the TAR 12P. I also own a Rock Island Armory VR80. Of course, there are also large capacity magazines that can be purchased to go along with these shotguns, such as the ten-rounders and twenty-round drums. However, not all of these magazines or drums are created equal, which I found out rather quickly.

The magazine I am referring to today is the Promag, Akdal, MKA 1919 twenty-round drum that I bought from Dong’s Sporting Goods in Tulsa. It came in a plain brown box with no distinguishing markings on the outside, so I couldn’t tell who the original manufacturer was. The salesman at Dongs told me it was a KCI magazine, and I had heard good things about them, but when I got home, I found out that the product was actually made by Promag. Now, I have owned many Promag magazines in the past and actually have two at the moment for my 1911 and a thirty-round drum for my AR 45. Up until now I hadn’t really had any issues with them, so I figured it would be okay.

However, when I took my VR80 and the Bulldog to try out the drum mag the next day, I found that the drum had developed cracks in the plastic around both the screw holes in the rear backplate (see picture). I thought maybe I had gotten a defective mag and called Dong’s to get a refund on my hundred- and ten-dollar purchase price, but Dong’s only referred me to the manufacturer’s “lifetime” warrantee and told me I was S.O.L. if I thought they were going to give me my money back.

Minute cracks developed around these screws on the first day of shooting.

So, I thought about sending the drum to Promag to rectify the situation but then thought they would probably send me another drum mag with the same issue. Sure, it may have been better, but I didn’t see anywhere in the literature where updates or modifications had been made to the drum that would make it any better. So, I opted to keep the defective drum and see if I could modify it to reinforce the weak points around the screw holes. The first “fix” was to use liquid steel. (see picture).

The liquid steel did work for a time but became unstable after several rounds were fired through it. I had to reinforce it a second time before it would actually function properly. This “patch” went over the ragged hole that had been created when the recoil force pushed the steel part of the magazine rearward, causing separation of the polymer drum from the metal part of the mag. This separation causes the detached drum to vomit up whatever shells are left in it, spewing unspent shotgun shells all over the ground and the plastic lead (five plastic dummy rounds bungeed together) hanging out the top of it like a dead octopus. I fired sixty-one rounds through it this time before it decided to give up the ghost.

When the last separation occurred, I was compelled to use metal to keep the two pieces together. So, I bolted a piece of fabricated sheet metal to the backplate to hold the two pieces together and feel this should be done to every Promag 12 gauge drum coming from the factory. (See picture) I’ve shot twenty rounds through it so far and it remains functional and tight. There is no play between the metal and polymer parts and I hope this one is a permanent fix.

Some would say I should just send it back and activate the manufacturer’s life-time warrantee but it’s not that simple now. It seems that once the magazine has been opened or tinkered with, it voids the warrantee. So, if I ever get another one, I will probably go with Panzer Arms’ “skeletonized” drum that costs about the same money, also has a lifetime warrantee, is lighter weight, and has higher reliability rating than the Promag.

Anyway, this concludes is my rant (and review) about navigating the complexities of what works and what doesn’t in the world of Turkish shotguns. Thank you for your time.