SNL nasepads and Bolen springs

[STIGUY]

Trying to complete some adfitional mags with Dawson basepads and Bolen springs. As mentioned before, I still can not get the slide lever to close. Some have mentioned a screwdriver to get the bottom coil to go into the bottom part of the pad. But in looking at this and trying, the sproimg coil appears to be way over the size of the void in the bad. So I was thinking either have this machined or taking a dremel tool to these. Has anyone had as much trouble as I have with

this? Before you memtion cutting the bottom coil....the springs are new and I just spent $11 and I have read that the bott coil allows the others coils to "bunch" up properly to gain capacity?

[SteveU]

The bottom coil of the spring is getting stuck in the little lip inside the basepad and the rim of the tube. That's keeping one side of the tube off the lip and so the basepad is "crooked" on the tube and the slide lever won't get past the rim of the tube.  If the spring is visibly in on either side of the basepad (from pushing it with a screwdriver or the like) sometimes the bottom bend of the spring is under the back where it's hard to see. If you pinch it in a little, adding a little turn to the pinch to tighten up that spiral bend as well as narrow the bottom coil slightly, it should fit without significantly affecting capacity. At least that's my experience -- the spring experts can tell you if that's bad advice, but it seems to work fine for me.

Edited April 23, 2010 by Surge

[kgunz11]

+1 to what Surge said. Pinch that very bottom coil in a little bit and they'll go on with ease.