The C Products 20-round Duramag is a straight-bodied stainless steel magazine for 5.56 advertised with an anti-tilt follower. Anti-tilt in a straight 20? But don't straights need to tilt to be reliable?

In my case, the original aluminum 20s from Colt/NHMTG/Okay work but are very fickle with the stack of rounds staying in place and not tilting too much causing the entire stack to get stuck down and create a misfeed. The plastic tilting follower and the rough edges on the riveted internal stainless strip interact poorly. I would guess that the original aluminum followers of the past would get hung up less and maybe were the basis for the stories of reliability. Even with the metal followers, there are accounts of soldiers downloading to 18 or less for reliability.

I finally tested the Duramag and the first question was the follower. C Products figured out that some tilt but not too much was the answer. They use a shortened anti-tilt follower that does not hang up. The cartridge stack presents correctly at all round counts. Finger pressure, a bump or drop does not shift and bind the stack.

The stainless steel body is thinner than aluminum to keep weight down but without compromise in strength or rigidity. Stainless welds stronger with more consistency than aluminum. Unlike aluminum, the welds on the Duramag do not break with a firm hand squeeze. The post reinforcement is a smart addition for added shear strength.

The magazines are perfectly fabricated and lock in easily fully loaded on a closed bolt. The feed lips are resilient and seem to be heat treated. Function has been perfect. Overall excellent magazine.

Wow! You have a problem with
Colt/NHMTG/Okay 20’s ??.   That is a Very tuff mag pill to swallow!

H

Odd.

In 350L I put a magpul follower in to replace the OEM. CMMG/CPD are the same mags for this caliber.

Works much better. Both feed .223 as well.

Not gonna lie, this all made me laugh out loud.

For the OP,  maybe they have been.

Not IME.

This may be the 1st time I've ever seen anyone report that G.I. 20 rounders are unreliable and C-mags are better...



I think you might be on your own with this one.

Weld seams breaking with a firm hand squeeze.....


Oh boy.

Yeah, it's a lonely road...

I think it's an imaginary road. My experience with 20s goes back to 1969 and neither I nor anyone I knew had the issues you describe.

I Knew this would blow up badly.... it Did.  Good night

H

Apparently the guy from Small Arms Solutions has nothing but good things to say about C-Products..



Around the 18:22 mark


Not that any one persons opinion is gospel, but he does have quite a bit of experience. I still own about 30 of the c pro mags and ALL of mine work just fine (standard aluminum, 30 rounder, 5.56, 2014-16ish manufacture..).

Then again at the 31:20 mark, he also endorses ASC... Which I don't care for...

New CPro or old, after the shit show that my dozen produced I'll never look that direction again.

Problems with Colt/NHTMG/Okay mags. Hahahahaha. That’s a good one.

C Products is garbage. I almost stocked up on a ton of them back when they were first released. Thank goodness I did not.

When did all the hate for C Products mags begin? I remember when they were all the rage around here & arfcom had group buys for them. I still have a few of their stainless mags from back then and never had a problem with them. I recently bought a couple of 5 round C Products Duramags for use in a RAR bolt gun and they are very well made and work perfectly.

Around 2008, for me. I bought some, they were total trash, and the customer service was right there with them. I have not tried them again, because there are so many other excellent options.

My experience with C Prod. involved many instances of the bullet getting pushed back when the round would catch on the front lip of the magazines.  Since I don't need a kaboomed rifle I won't give them another chance...

Paladin

I wanted to say I dealt with him. He never missed a opportunity to inform me he was a Veteran and on and on like any of that made my non-functional mags work or something.

C Products now is not the C Products of the past, correct?

Just wanted to bring light to an improvement of an old design.

I would say buy a few and try but it is too late for that.

Thanks for the review OP

I was with the review up until he mentioned breaking quality USGI magazine welds with a firm hand squeeze...

To be fair, some lay people can legit close the CoC #3.5 grippers, and if you're a normal human being and have ever tried these, it will wreck you to consider what a #3.5 takes for hand strength to close. Maybe OP be like that?

Take a few of your aluminum GI mags, remove the spring and follower and then give them a squeeze. Not every spot weld is equal and at least one will fail. Sure, the follower is out and allows the body to collapse but the same failure happens in the opposite direction when a loaded mag is dropped.

Over the years I have tested the following Al GI mags, all with similar results:

Okay
Adventure Line
NHMTG
Brownells (this one is for you Blain)
D&H

Stainless steel, done correctly, offers improvements in this application.

Just trying to point out an innovative product.

Carry on with the insults...

While my experience with the USGI-type aluminum 20-round magazines is quantitatively better than that of OP's, it is qualitatively similar.  I believe he is being honest about this, as I have had some recurring and systemic problems with that style of magazine, that I have not with any other magazine designs.  

Various good designs of 30-round mags have been flawless for me, while I have regularly encountered 2 issues with the 20-rounders.  These problems are equally common with very old and very new magazines (whether used or new-in-wrapper from the '60s or today), and are not ameliorated at all by installing new springs.  

The first issue is that across various dates of manufacture (from 1961 Colt/ArmaLite-marked to current-production Okay Industries), I often, across 6 different rifles that never encounter this problem with any 30-round mags, see these magazines fail to lock the bolt back after the last round.  It seems a bit more common with the mags with the aluminum followers than with than with the plastic ones, but the new-in-wrapper Colts from the 1960s do it every bit as much as the ones that were clearly used a good bit before being surplused.

The second issue is that, in my experience, the USGI 20rd mags do have a weak failure point that is not present on any of the 30s I have tried, and one which this C-Products design looks to fix.  This is that the rivets that hold the steel strip into the front of the magazine break easily.  This has happened during regular competition, field, and range use that does not phase any of my 30rd magazines, but most often occurs when I take the magazines apart.  The part of the steel strip that bends down and latches into the floorplate puts a lot of leverage on the bottom river, and when the latch is depressed, even when I am being specifically careful to go easy on that rivet, the rivet regularly breaks, essentially making the magazine permanently broken.  This has occurred both with very early-production Colt/ArmaLite magazines, as well as new-production Okay Industries mags.

While I have no personal experience (yet) with the 20rd steel duramag units, they look like they may fix both of those problems with the self-levelling follower and the different floorplate.  Also, my experience with the C-Products stainless steel 30-rounders (all made 2016 and later) has been excellent, and they are some of my favorite mags.  I know C-Products had some serious issues back in the late 2000s, but in my experience (I have A LOT of their mags, and have put A LOT of rounds through them across 6 different rifles), those problems were fixed by 2016.  Not a huge sample size, but not small, either, for what it's worth.