One of the popular Russian YouTube gun channels has published a video telling about a Russian guy who converted his Vepr Super 308 rifle from its original hunting configuration to a tactical one. What is interesting about this video is that this guy made most of the parts himself or adapted AR-15 parts to fit the Vepr rifle. Let’s see what they did to make this rifle which they call a “pseudo-AR”.

Vepr Super 308 chambered in .308 Winchester

The rear portion of Vepr rifle’s receiver in this configuration has a sort of a ladder-shaped geometry. In order to mount an AR-15 buffer tube and an AR-15 grip, they made an adapter that converts that ladder receiver tail to a mounting platform for the mentioned AR-15 parts.

The adapter fits the AR-15 parts and the Vepr receiver fairly well.

Next, the owner of the rifle adapted an AR-15 handguard to fit the Vepr. He machined out most of the top rail to make a slot for the gas tube leaving a small Picatinny rail section in front of the gas block. The width of the handguard perfectly matches the Vepr receiver resulting in a very clean joint. The short Picatinny rail section on the rear bottom portion of the handguard is the extension of another newly made part which is designed to fill the original AK handguard attachment slot in front of the receiver, below the front trunnion. They also made a barrel clamp which can’t be seen in the images because it is inside the handguard. That clamp is what secures (via 4 screws) the handguard to the barrel.

Note the receiver gap filler/Picatinny rail section

The last modification is an addition of a sound moderator. It is not considered a suppressor in Russia because of some legal definitions and as they mention in the video, it can’t silence the supersonic bullet anyways, it just makes it hearing safe. The original rifle has a built-in perforated muzzle brake. The folks in the video complain about it being loud and redirecting a significant amount of gases back to the shooter due to rearward angled holes.

So the guy tapped the first set of holes of the original muzzle brake and attached the suppressor mount to it. He also machined a chamfer on the muzzle to align the suppressor with the bore axis. Then he machined the suppressor body and a baffle stack. The result is a sort of a semi-suppressor or a mix of a blast diverter and a suppressor. It is very compact, decreases the report to a relatively comfortable level, eliminates the gasses coming back to the shooter, yet still allows the muzzle brake to work and effectively reduce the felt recoil.

If you understand Russian or just want to see video footage of this rifle, watch the video below:

That’s how they do DIY customization of their weapons in Russia.