Friday, September 16, 2011

Lifespan of a Pistol Magazine.

From Todd Green's Pistol-Training.com website:

The pistol suffered another “slide over base” stoppage during the class. It was a different magazine than previous but it seems likely the mag springs are giving up the ghost. Almost all of my shooting has been done with six dedicated training magazines each of which has seen 5,000+ rounds so far. All six magazines are getting replaced. While the problem would most likely go away with a simple mag spring change, it’s always been my personal policy that a bad mag is a Bad Mag and needs to be destroyed. When mag springs go bad, followers and feed lips and floorplates may not be far behind. Unless you live in a state where your pre-ban standard-capacity freedom-loving magazine tubes are irreplaceable, the best approach to fixing a problematic magazine involves crushing it and then replacing it with a nice new magazine.

I've met a few  shooters that think of their mags as a one time investment but they are really  a disposable commodity with what often times is an unknown service life. I know it's a hard thing to do, but eventually you will most likely have to just flat out replace the whole dang magazine. The magazine if the life-blood of a semi-auto pistol, if it's having issues you don't want to hope the problem has been fixed. Pending on firearm type or more specifically the construction of the magazine, you can do more harm to your gun trying to diddle with fixing magazine tubes.

Bottom line, if you have problems you believe to be mag. related, ditch the mag. Have a good numbering scheme for your magazines, or groups of magazines and once mags start diving you issues, get them out of rotation ASAP. Some like to keep them for range use to induce random failures, if that's your thing find a way that makes them visually different than all the others that is a little less subtle than simple numbering, blaze orange floor plates etc. are a good idea. 

No comments:

Post a Comment