Magazine issues

No, not the kind of magazines that you read or the kind you keep gunpowder in, I'm talking about the kind that feeds ammunition into your repeating rifle.

I've got a stack of assorted 15 round WW2 vintage USGI magazines for the M1/M2 Carbine, and a few aftermarket 30-round M2 mags. Some work well, others don't. The weak point in any semi auto is the feed lips of the magazine. If they are bent, the gun just won't feed right.

The way to see which ones work and which ones don't is to try and shoot with them. Oftentimes "bad" mags can be fixed by tweaking the feed lips. In this video, the 15-round mag works perfectly. The one before that allowed a couple of short bursts, but most of the time it failed to feed the next round into the chamber. The 30-rounder before that just wouldn't feed and I had to manually push the nose of each round down towards the chamber. Not a fun way to empty a 30 round mag!



The target during all of this testing was an empty Mapp gas cannister. For reactive targets, I use the Mapp gas cans, bowling pins, and clay pigeons. The bowling pins and pigeons I gotta buy, the Mapp gas cans are free with purchase of Mapp gas.

Here is the can when I was done with it. It probably won't hold gas at this point.