How do you deal with your unreliable magazine?

H

HP-Sauce

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By no means I have a large firearms collection, but I have already acquired a collection of unreliable magazines that I do not trust. Most of the time the body itself is fine and the problem stems from Spring/Follower/Base pad issues.

With brand new MecGar Pistol Magazines costing about $25-30, it is often not worth repairing or replacing parts as parts are hard to come by or shipping makes it not worthwhile.

How do you deal with them? I'm too frugal to throw them away and they just sit in a box gathering dust until I chance upon the parts that I need. Are there resources to find out if part from other guns are usable? For instance Beretta 92 internals are usable in Hi-Power Mags etc?

EDIT: Posted to wrong forum. Request mods to move to Handgun:General. Thanks!
 
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I trash them. I don't want anything to do with defective mags.

Whats more, I destroy them beyond repair before I toss them.
 
Some people will mark them in some way so that they can be identified upon inspection... but then specifically take them to the range anyway and do so on purpose. This gives them a great device to introduce failure drills in to their practice.

With a magazine in play that is likely to cause some sore of failure but you can't be sure WHICH magazine it is at first glance, it can definitely help train you to react quickly and naturally to your pistol stopping in the middle of a drill or session. It can & will make you naturally faster at rectifying the failure and getting the pistol quickly back in position to shoot.

However, keep them marked clearly in a specific location so that when the PRACTICE is over, you can keep that magazine out of any natural carry or simple use rotation.
 
You can always cannibalize parts to make functional mags if you want to play around with that.

You can use them for range duty, just mark them clearly.

Or you can smash 'em and trash 'em.
 
Dump them. Good ones are too cheap to make a mistake on a junk mag. Also, don't buy mags with a reputation for failures.
 
how is a magazine ever beyond the point of repair, outside of a gaping hole or being physically bent. you can replace springs/followers and straighten the lips.....what else is there?

not being snarky, just curious
 
how is a magazine ever beyond the point of repair, outside of a gaping hole or being physically bent. you can replace springs/followers and straighten the lips.....what else is there?
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You hit two of them as part of your question:
Bent.
Dented (beyond repair).
Punctured/torn.
Never built to the right specs, to begin with.
Or, replacement parts unavailable or not worth the trouble. (Many 10/22 magazines come to mind ... and even AR mags.)

There's also just flat-out worn out: So much use and wear, that the magazine body has been worn to where the tolerances are too much to work properly, even with new internals (follower, springs, pins, etc - whatever may be the case).

I scrapped a Browning Buck Mark magazine last year that was just worn out. The channel that the follower pin rides in had worn to where it was about 0.020" too wide (mostly on the forward edge), the inside of the rounded front of the magazine had been worn 0.005" to 0.008", and the back of the magazine measured 0.012" thinner than my others at top (couldn't measure anywhere else).

The sloppy tolerances just didn't get along with any pin and follower that I put in the magazine, so it wouldn't function reliably. I had tossed the spring, follower, and pin when I tried reviving the magazine with some new internals; so when I decided that the body was too far gone, I just tossed it in the recycling bin (stripped of the new parts, of course). It lived a long, hard life, and had reached the point that it needed to be turned into a Chinese washing machine.
 
They're marked and used as training mags. If they malfunction unexpectedly then it's just additional training in what to do if there's a malfunction.

But they are DISTINCTIVELY marked.
 
Show the condition and list them in the "For Sale" section for shipping cost only. There are folks looking for mags to experiment with and may use them. I am looking for "junky" Promag 308 Galil mag myself to see if they can be modified to fit Vepr 308! Will be interested in AR10 and DPMS SR25 308 AR mags as well! Anyone have a few to trash, send them my way!:D
 
How do you deal with your unreliable magazine?
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I cancel my subscription!! :D

Seriously, I segregate them, mark them, and keep them for range/plinking use, and possible spare parts.

unlike some I know (no one on TFL, of course!:D) I don't sell stuff that is broken/doesn't work, without making sure the guy getting it understands what it is, and what it is NOT.


*moved to Handgun General at OP's request*
 
Before I trash a magazine, I destroy it so some other promising nimrod doesn't retrieve it from the trash and put it in service. :eek:
 
Out of the 30 or so magazines I own I have never had a bad one, I find it kind of surprising that you admitted you don't have many guns, yet have a slew of unreliable magazines, have you tried cleaning them? Mark them and keep them for just range use, or trash them.

Also mag springs, followers, and floor plates are dirt cheap and relatively easy to come by, that is except Mecgar since they won't ship out spare mag parts. Many of Mecgar's mags use special springs and followers that are not compatible with factory mags or factory mag parts. Therefore I will never buy certain Mecgar mags that I will never be able to replace parts that wear out. This holds true for all of there + capacity mags. They use thinner springs than the factory mags, such as their Sig and Beretta +2 and +3 capacity mags. Yeah it's great you get 2 or 3 more rounds in there, but these springs are being pushed dangerously close to their elastic limit and will wear out sooner than the standard factory mags. If I cant replace the springs from time to time, they are next to useless to me.
 
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