Current Groupthink: Magpul Glock Magazines

[Bigghoss]

M2's comment about polymer mags and friction reinforces my same opinion, but I have no verifying data. Now I routinely give mag interiors the old Flitz treatment if I suspect that interiors are not as smooth as I think they should be. But I have another opinion about magazines and difficulty in adding last round. I think that after market manufacturers are trying to achieve two goals: achieving oem capacity and keeping overall length to a strict minimum. One thing that I like about Beretta factory mags is that last round insertion is easy. Also, inserting a full mag is easy. If the shooter has to use extreme force to load that last round, then he may have hell inserting the mag into the pistol. For this reason, I sometimes down load some mags with this issue. The S&W 45 Shield is one example. My spare mag will have one less round.

I made a point two weeks ago to load the chamber and then drop the magazine and insert a fully loaded mag on a closed slide and did not have a problem. This was on the first range trip with the mags when they were still very difficult to load by hand. With the ones I have, inserting them with the slide closed doesn't seem to be a problem.

[Lucus McCain]

I have 11 of the 15 round Magpuls. They were all difficult to load to capacity when new. I found that by leaving them loaded and with use, they settled and I can now load to 15 unaided. I use them at the range and have had no issues with their function with both 147gr Lawman and a small number of self defence loads.

I tried leaving my 12 rounders loaded for several weeks. Didn't seem to help. Filing a little off the follower foot did the trick for me.

[L-2]

Update to my earlier Post#27, I've since given my G19 Magpul mags away due to the failures to lock-back with my G19Gen5.
My G26 Magpul mags are still my main carry mags.

[Frank R]

If you have to go through a hassle to get another round in a magazine, it's not worth the effort. My opinion.

I'll ride with Glock mags in the future.

[Bigghoss]

If you have to go through a hassle to get another round in a magazine, it's not worth the effort. My opinion.

I'll ride with Glock mags in the future.

Despite my doing the opposite, I can't really argue this.

[Totem Polar]

I’m not so sure that magpul has standardized out on these sticks. I’ve noted before that getting a 12th round into the G26 mags I have is harder than submitting a purple belt in jits (despite their total reliability otherwise), while others have noted no issues. Conversely, my recent midway order of G19 mags yielded perfect results; loading a full 15 feels no different than loading up the OEM Feeb sticks that came with my 19.5. All the magpuls took the 15th round with no effort using the uplula, right out of the little grey bags. And they fulfilled all aspects of function just fine. Until the gen 5 mags see more availability on the open market, I’m personally fine buying more magpuls each paycheck.

Clearly, this is case-by-case. I’m pretty sure every regular P-F poster is capable of loading a magazine; simplest theory is that the magsticks are somewhat inconsistent. I dunno...

[mtnbkr]

You guys may want to do some thumb exercises or something, maybe visit the dojo for some thumb wrestling. I don't have any issue getting 15 rounds into my Magpul 15 magazines.



Chris

[Bigghoss]

You guys may want to do some thumb exercises or something, maybe visit the dojo for some thumb wrestling. I don't have any issue getting 15 rounds into my Magpul 15 magazines.



Chris

I'm sure you don't. But some of us do. Considering how relatively new the MPs are to the market and how early some of us jumped on the bandwagon it's possible, if not likely, that some early mags are hard to load and some more recent production mags may be easier. Or maybe we just have weak thumbs from being keyboard warriors instead of shooting more.

[mtnbkr]

I'm sure you don't. But some of us do. Considering how relatively new the MPs are to the market and how early some of us jumped on the bandwagon it's possible, if not likely, that some early mags are hard to load and some more recent production mags may be easier. Or maybe we just have weak thumbs from being keyboard warriors instead of shooting more.

Possibly, though I don't know how far back one must go to get early production MP mags. I've been buying mine for over a year (not sure exactly when, the first couple were impulse purchases at a local shop). They were very tight at the beginning, but loosened up over time (talking about the MP mags here). I also keep mine loaded and in my range bag, which possibly helps.

I'll have you know that keyboarding isn't nearly enough to develop legendary thumbs (they only get reps on the spacebar), you need to do text-message reps to get the necessary volume.



Chris

[TGS]

In the last week I've had 5 Glock PMAGs go tits-up on me...4 17s, and 1 15...one of which was on my belt as a duty reload.

Ammo used was Winchester Ranger 124gr FMJ, Speer Gold Dot G2, Federal 90gr(?) frangible, and Federal HydraShok 124gr.

When using these mags in question, my 19M failed to chamber a round. The round hung up on the nose....a simple tap of the slide returned it to full battery. It happened nearly every round.

Given this happened with vetted mags and zero warning or visually apparent damage, I'm pulling the rest of my Glock PMAGs from duty use and bought a bunch more OEM mags today to fill in. I'll try cleaning the PMAGs and see if it makes a difference, but at this rate I can't even trust them as a training mag.