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SS Divsion Magazines


D.Hayden

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Guest Larry Cazes

I have had the best reliability with the Wilsons with the rounded plastic followers. I found that over time the steel followers in the shooting stars compressed and took a set somewhat causing nosedive jams into the ramp and needed periodic adjusting. Best price I found for the wilsons was Brownells.

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I have a few Wilsons that work fine.

I have mostly CMC Power Mags and the Mitchell copies of the Power Mags (both made by metalform) that work just as well. The Mitchell mags are the best bargain available on 8 and 10rd .45 1911 magazines from CDNNinvestments.com.

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CMC Power Mags are excellent. I agree that the Mitchell copies from CDNN are just as good, but cheaper.

After my experiences with the Wilson .38 Super mags, I'm done with that brand.

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  • 1 year later...

I have both Wilson and CMC and niether have let me down but I prefer the CMC and the flat steel follower for some reason.

I'll take a Wilson off a prize table or something; but when it comes to my money I'll buy the CMC.

JMHO

YMMV

FM

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CMC Power Mags. In addition to everything said above, they have the best, strongest, longest lasting spring in the business. All steel is good. I stay away from brands that use plastic followers. Plastic followers = problems.

Edited by Steve J
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Tripp Cobra Mags. Great Follower design and feeds my gun very well. I have the ten rounders and I think the 8 rounders are probably even better. Basepad on the ten rounders stink because they don't do a good job of preventing over-insertion. The 8 rounders shouldn't have that problem.

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Tripp Cobra Mags. Great Follower design and feeds my gun very well. I have the ten rounders and I think the 8 rounders are probably even better. Basepad on the ten rounders stink because they don't do a good job of preventing over-insertion. The 8 rounders shouldn't have that problem.

Isn't Virgil supposed to have a brass and/or aluminum baseplate in the works? I have a buddy who bougth some of the 10-rounders that could be over-inserted. I think he told me Virgil was correcting the problem.

Also, I spoke with the president of PSI (I've forgotten his name) about the Novak/ACT-MAG 8-rounders. I had some of these awhile ago and they all cracked. He told me that they have changed their heat treating and the cracking issue was resolved. If that's the case, the ACT-MAG's should be a good product.

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I tried (and liked) Novak magazines, but due to the cracking problem had to get rid of them. I've been using Wilson Combat magazines almost exclusively for a few years and never had any problems (as long as springs are kept fresh). Now that Wilson will no longer replace springs and/or followers under warranty, I will most likely start switching to Tripp's CobraMags.

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Tripp Cobra Mags. Great Follower design and feeds my gun very well. I have the ten rounders and I think the 8 rounders are probably even better. Basepad on the ten rounders stink because they don't do a good job of preventing over-insertion. The 8 rounders shouldn't have that problem.

Isn't Virgil supposed to have a brass and/or aluminum baseplate in the works? I have a buddy who bougth some of the 10-rounders that could be over-inserted. I think he told me Virgil was correcting the problem.

Also, I spoke with the president of PSI (I've forgotten his name) about the Novak/ACT-MAG 8-rounders. I had some of these awhile ago and they all cracked. He told me that they have changed their heat treating and the cracking issue was resolved. If that's the case, the ACT-MAG's should be a good product.

I know he knows about the basepad problem and he told me they were working on a solution but I haven't heard about a brass or aluminum baseplate. I ended up having a weld-on magwell installed feeling the extra material covering the front strap should prevent over-insertion. I'm still waiting to get it back from Springfield Custom.

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I tried (and liked) Novak magazines, but due to the cracking problem had to get rid of them. I've been using Wilson Combat magazines almost exclusively for a few years and never had any problems (as long as springs are kept fresh). Now that Wilson will no longer replace springs and/or followers under warranty, I will most likely start switching to Tripp's CobraMags.

I've got six of the latest generation Novak mags on the way. Hopefully these will not crack. I also have three of the new Metalform Elite mags on the way from Brownell's.

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snip--- Plastic followers = problems.

Steve,

Could you please elaborate?

Thanks,

Chuck

Plastic follower vs. a steel slide stop. Plastic looses. The plastic will wear out sooner and fail to lock the slide open. My personal experience with 10-rounders with plastic followers was that they would slip right out of the mouth of the magazine. I know they're popular. Wilson uses them. Baer uses them. I don't. I'm prejudiced against plastic. Don't trust the stuff.

Edited by Steve J
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10 round .45 cal:

I started with metalforms which fed flawlessly, but I zero'd several stages due to overinsertion locking the gun up solid when reloading from slide-lock. This is due to the stop on the mag being just a small punched out tab. So I brazed, using hard silver solder, larger "bumps" on. This worked for a while, then the bumps sheared off. So I spent a bunch of time fabricating small half-moon pieces out of brass bar stock, and silver soldered these on. Of the five that I did, three still work great, two sheared off. But the metalforms feed very well.

Next 10 rd experiment was Wilsons, which have a much more substantial insertion stop. But with the factory "self-lubricating" plastic follower, I have sometimes had a malf on the last round.

Best results (and what I currently use) are with Wilson mags with metalform followers. These have worked very well - the only time I get a malf now is after 300+ rounds without cleaning the breechface - but thats not the mags fault.

8 round .45 cal:

Stock Wilsons have worked very well.

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I know this started out as a question regarding magazines for the new SingleStack division, but has progressed to a general skinny-mag testimony.

I'm a bit different. I use only the CMC 10-round Power Mags for L10, and only Wilson-Rogers 8-round mags for everything else (including daily carry).

My experience has been that the CMC 10-round mags use a stiffer steel than the Wilsons, resulting in fewer episodes of the mag not falling free when the mag release is pushed. They do sometimes get out of shape and require an adjustment, but I've never had to make that adjustment more than 1/8" from the very top of the mag. With the Wilsons I've had to adjust them as much as 2" down the mag body (on more than a few, I should add).

For 8-round friendly stages/arrays and daily carry, I've had great success with the Wilson mags. Maybe it's because they're shorter that they're not as prone to deformation as their 10-round Wilson counterparts.

Plastic follower - yes. Work as intended - yes.

Edited by ima45dv8
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