Advise on making a 10 round magazine.

[rocinante]

One of my surplus mags doesn't feed well so I thought it would become a guinea pig to make a 10 round mag. My plan is to cut it to length, bend the bottom to hold the plate, shorten the spring.

How short would I cut it?

I have tried bending aluminum before and sometimes it cracks. Would heating it with a propane torch be a good idea to aid the bending?

For the spring I figured I would cut it a bit, see if it works, if not keep snipping until it felt right.

[rocinante]

looks like i will be a pioneer then. I'll report back.

[mitchg233]

It's just an odd question. Usually reducing capacity just means limiting the follower. Actually messing with the case........I dunno. I suppose you are sure it will feed better if shorter? Usually feeding issues are from the follower, play in the mag seating, or spring problems. Let us know.

[rocinante]

I got a futz up magazine so why not? Applications would be easier to use on a bench rest and if I went hunting it wouldn't freak the fudds with the long banana clip. Here is Georgia I can hunt with mags of any capacity but a lot of states have limits of 5 or 10 or even less. So not totally an out of line quest.

Seems to me the hardest issue would get the floor plate secure and the spring length right. The follower shouldn't matter it just floats on top of the spring.

[Stevo]

It's not hard to secure the floor plate if you don't care about easy disassembly. Body and spring length will be the hardest part.

You can rivet an angle bracket to the side of the mag and rivet the floor plate to it. That's what I did on the top mag:



If it's acceptable to use a rivet to limit capacity, then body and spring length is far less important. With the floor plate and spring out, put 10 rounds in the mag and measure where you need to drill the hole for the rivet which will block the follower's downward movement. Drill hole, install rivet, easy peasy, lemon squeezy.