I tested a couple mags yesterday.  First of all the PSA mags (they don't say D&H on them)  are awesome, very light, slick teflon inside and out and a Magpul gray follower.

I think these would be my go to mags.  Magpuls are bulky as hell and be honest, you shouldn't need mags that can be run over by an ATV or stepped on. Keep them in your pouch or whatever.

Pmags > D&H

D+H, g2g

NHMTG are first choice in aluminum, Gen M2 Pmag for anything else.  

NHMTG for 20s.

Tag since I picked up a few myself

D&H mags are G2G and are a bargain these days

I too use D&H mags and they have been good to go.  FWIW I am purchasing more of the D&H mags vs. the polymer types these days simply because they work for me and can be had at really good prices these days.

Yup, I have lots of P Mags, but bought a bunch of D&H mags from PSA so I could fit 2 mags per pouch in some gear I have that won't take 2 PMags, or will take them in but won't let them out without a fight.  

The D&H bodies seem like all the other USGI mags I have used, and the magpul followers are a known upgrade from the old black and green followers.  I haven't checked the springs.    

D&H claims they supply to magazines to "U.S. military units". D&H is also an ISO certified company which in my mind confirms this. ISO certification is a government contract requirement as far as I know. Either way, the ISO cert was good enough for me to order up a hand full of mags. I do like my PMAGs but at these prices, I couldn't resist.

D&H is NOT an approved magazine for the U.S. Military, that being said they do appear to be solid mags.

The current approved suppliers are...

Brownells
Center Industries
Colt (manufactured by Okay Industries)
Okay Industries

Just because they're not on the list, doesn't mean that they dont make them and label them for one of the companies on the list.
most people dont understand how government contracts work, you just illustrated that..

I think that the APPROVED vendors would laugh their ass off at your comment that they would have D&H produce magazines for them.

Colt owns the stamping dies that Okay uses, Brownells magazines are manufactured by Co-Line

Center Industries doesn't "Farm Out" production, neither does Okay Industries.

So, YOU just showed how you don't have a clue on the magazine manufacturers

The D&H at PSA are stamped with a Q4TQ4 cage code.  I thought this was related to a military reference, or would this be left over from Labelle?

Hell, C Products had a Cage Code. And yes it's a U.S. Military code. It's required to be stamped by the MANUFACTURER, that's why Colt magazines have the 33710 Cage Code issued to Okay Industries.

It's also only the FIRST step in getting approval.

Cammenga went as far as getting an NSN number and never sold any of their EasyMags to the U.S. Military.

Doesn't matter, the ONLY complaint I ever have heard of on D&H is they occasionally have sharp feed lips, but they still run.

All I know is my 4 D&H 20 round 7.62x51 mags work while none of the 4 Brownells 20 round 7.62x51 mags I bought would feed. They were sent back for a refund.

yep        




 

D&H are great.  The fact that they were a govt supplier under the Labelle name to me means they are first rate.  Labelle was considered the best of all GI mags during the '94 AWB.  I stockpile D&H as they are the best value in 1st rate mags.  Sure polymer mags can withstand being run over better, but I am more likely to suffer attrition in my magazine supply over the next 50 years if mags are banned by giving mags to others than physical damage.

The 4 D&H I have work great.

thats nice, but shit happens


D&H are ok, not usgi, but still ok

D&H is an approved vendor and supplier for the quick fielding program.

I bought 20 D&H mags a while back through PSA.  They're good mags.  I also have some pmags, which are good.  

Honestly, though, I end up keeping the majority of them in a storage bin and the mags that I use are rebuilt, used usgi mags.

The best part about it is that there's plenty of quality mags out there, by many different companies.

I've used about a dozen I picked up from PSA last year fro $6 a piece.  They have all been flawless.

Nice magazines.  I like the smooth black Teflon finish.  I think I have several "brands" of them.  DPMS, D&H, C-Products, and I'm probably missing one or 2.  They work for my non-operator non-usgi non-mil-spec ass.  Then again, my firearm isn't mil-spec either.

And I also like how they are much thinner than all the polymer magazines.  Only thing I really hate about them is, the follower doesn't feel as smooth going up and down in the magazine as polymers and I cant see into them.

Thread bump...

It was a beautiful day here in northern IL, so I took that as an excuse to head to WI to do some outdoor shooting.  Among the many mags I brought with me were 10 of the PSA D&H mags (cage code 04TQ4) that I bought for $5.99 each during PSA's Black Friday sale last year.  I do recall from loading them awhile back that the springs seemed a little stiff.  Today, the mags were flawless.  No failures of any kind in two different rifles.  One was a 16" BCM standard midlength upper on a Black Rain Ordnance lower.  The other was a 20" PSA rifle-length upper on a PSA lower assembled with PSA parts.  I used a mix of Federal XM193, IMI M193, Winchester 5.56 and American Eagle 2.23.  (No, not mixed in the same magazine!)

G2G

I have been using both 20 round & 30 round D&H magazines w/Magpul follower's for many years.
All have had very clean welds and  operate very smooth..All have been 100 % in regards to  reliability and durability..
I would buy with confidence.
Lowers they were mostly used in are Rock River, Mega,Windham Weaponry & Colt.

I used to be a big proponent of D&H but have since modified my opinion; and since I've endorsed and praised them publicly, it seems only fair to make that known publicly as well. Maybe it'll help someone else avoid my frustrations.

I first bought buying D&H's in probably 2010-2012, honestly don't know when; and they worked fine. However, this past spring I encountered a problematic batch. I bought them from different vendors - some with Palmetto State Armory floorplate, some with D&H logo floorplate, and some with DSG logo floorplates. Those with the PSA logo (which I hadn't used before), hade issues in at least two of my guns; they took a massive, ridiculous rap to seat on an closed bolt. Much more than L5AWM's, Pmags, or aluminum mags; right up there with the issues the early E-Landers had. (Side note; the few Mod3 E-Lander 30's I have, work flawlessly in all my guns. )

Anyway, I'd read some reviews of people having problems with D&H's from a certain time frame, theorizing that when the magazine craziness was at its worst, they let some out that had problems. I hadn't experienced it, and had had 100% satisfactory function with my D&H's, so I dismissed those reviews. But it looks like those complaints may be valid, because I'd gotten some D&H's that were nearly impossible to seat on a closed bolt. Even empty they were very, very tight; it's not just a spring-tension issue.

At one point I thought maybe it was a combination of a relatively tight lower and all the other aluminum mags I used in it being 20+ years old and broken in some, so I broke out a ten-pack of new, unused NHMTG 30's to compare, and darn if every one of them don't work slick as snot in the same guns the D&H's had problems in. So it's not the gun and it's not the 'breaking-in' of the old mags to the guns; that left only those particular D&H mags. All the ones with the PSA logo floorplates had issues, and a small number of the ones with the D&H logo did. It's very likely that the good ones & bad ones were bought at different times & just have the same floorplate, but I can't say for sure; I bought several batches from several vendors and didn't keep them sorted out other than being "D&H magazines", regardless of floorplate, vendor, or date purchased. It's also very likely that not all D&H's with the PSA logo are bad; but all the ones I had, were.

All that to say this - there are obviously some bad D&H's out there, because I had some. Fwiw, these D&H's were all Teflon 30's; mostly black with probably 8 or 10 FDE in the mix.

Short version - most of my experience with D&H has been great, but not all. I've about given up experimenting at this stage and have settled on Okay primarily, with some Pmag & Lancer as well.

Good comments...

That is one of the reasons I prefer Okay Industries mags (Colt & NHMTG)

All of their magazines are checked on a magazine insertion jig prior to shipping.

I'm an Okay guy myself and their mags are great but in my experience, Brownells and Center are damn good too.  You get an occasional Center that doesn't drop free but they run like a top and are worth it since they can usually be had for $7-8/ea.

Keep a close eye on the EE, in the last year I haven't paid more than $8.00 ea. shipped for Okay mags in new to as new condition.

There should be a date code on the D&H mags

May well have been. I sold them to a dealer, with full disclosure of the fit issues in my guns. He maintained it had to have been a problem with my guns; his words something like, "Hey, they're D&H for crying out loud."

Didn't matter to him that those same guns run fine with other batches of D&H, as well as with Okay, Simmonds, Pmag, Lancer, and even (forgive me ) TangoDown & Troy magazines.

Junk.  Will never buy another D&H.  Would sale the 30 or so I have, but I couldn't have that on my conscience.

I have a few I now only use for the range when I don't care if they get beat up or stepped on. Out of the dozen and a half that I have, Almost like 3/4 have feed lips that are too wide. All of them have uneven feed lips.

Any mag should be durable enough to be stepped on. That's not something that is uncommon unless you're only shooting from the bench and are careful when changing mags.

PSA just had them on sale for $6.99 and I picked up 5 from my local PSA store.  So far, they've been flawless, but only have several hundred rounds thru 2 of them.  Still, at that price point, I think they are a bargain.

I ordered 10 D&H from Widner's.  I hope they turn out good.  I remember the old Labelle magazines being great and having a really tough, slick teflon finish.

I hope these new ones are just as good.  I bought a few black PSA mags at the local PSA store in Greenville, SC about 3 years ago and I thought they were C products mags.  They sucked.  I hope these newer D&H aren't the same thing.  The old ones I bought from PSA didn't seem to have the slick Labelle type finish on them....

The BCM gray ones are what you're looking for, so the Widener's should be too.  They're good mags.

Well these were advertised on the PSA website as D&H, with grey Magpul followers.  They feel fairly slick (not matte finished for sure).  Very light weight but very rigid.  BTW, I picked these up from the Greenville store as well.  I guess time will tell.

I like lancers, brownells with magpul followers (the usgi followers are terrible) and of course there's nothing wrong with pmags.

Which g.i. followers do you have problems with?

I started out with green followers and the only trouble I had with them was with a full auto suppressed 10.3", and that was only once or twice that I can remember.  The tan followers have been great for the five years I've been using 'em.

I bought some D&H mags recently. I've also experienced that the magazines are extremely hard to seat if fully loaded, and they were a PITA to load.

Not at all like the older black teflons w/ green followers & LaBelles.

So I took a closer look at my Palmetto floorplate D&H magazines.  Received a few of them.  Out of the handfuls I looked at, every single one had a defect.  At least it looks like a defect to me.  My older D&H magazines do not have these defects.

On the top above the spine, there are 2 "vampire teeth".  The feed lips are not smooth.  On the left side, it's hard to see in the picture, but it's slightly wavey.  On the right side, when it gets near the spine of the magazine, the cut is curved instead of being straight.  

I haven't had a chance to test these out yet on a reliable AR.  If they create problems, I can smooth all these out with a dremel, but that would suck for brand new magazines....  Date code is 1015.
I also notice the weld marks on these are half the size of the older D&H.  The older ones will be almost as wide as the spine.  These are about half the width.

One of the former board sponsors claimed "ISO" certification.....  There is a current thread about them titled "C-Products magazines still suck".  I wouldn't put too much stock in ISO certification...............

Reading of these issues had me concerned about two different batches that I have, so I loaded up two from each group - two were grey D&H with GI green followers from Tapco in 2006 and two were black mags from DSG with grey magpul followers from April 2013.  All were teflon coated.  To their credit, DSG held the line on their pricing throughout the panic.  The 2006 mags did not have the sharp edges of the 2013 mags. I did two rapid mag dumps in two different ARs.   The full 2013 mags would not seat on a closed bolt, but the 2006 mags would.  I want to look at this again, to ensure that I didn't have 31 rounds loaded. I would be surprised if this is even possible, but I want to be sure.  In any case, while this is not a large statistical sample, there were no feed failures of any kind.  

There is a bewildering array of ISO certifications that range from manufacturing to environmental controls.  ISO Certs don't really mean much unless you're looking at *which* ISO cert they have and if it's relevent to what you're interested in.

That being said, D&H are very high quality.

i have yet to shoot my D&H mags yet but i have about 15 of them. all of them seem to have sharper feedlips, had a hard time seating a full mag(while just checking them out) and i had some issued with feeding out of the mag when i was pulling the bolt back manually

note: i have only used polymer mags up until this point so i am not fully educated yet.

I ordered 20 of the d&h magazines that have the magpul follower's in them from palmetto state armory for $6.99 black Friday sale. I just received them the other day and they look good and they have the palmetto state armory stamp on the floor plate. with in a week or 2 I will take them out and see how they do.
http://palmettostatearmory.com/catalog/product/view/id/1239/

For the money or slightly more, I can purchase USGI magazines + Gen 2 PMAG's that have performed in my firearms without a hiccup. As of late, I have purchased brand new in plastic wrapping Center Industries USGI magazines for $6 a pop, Okay Industries USGI magazines in the white box for under $7, + Gen 2 windowless PMAG's from DSG Arms for $8 a pop. There are deals to be had if you are patient + you know what to look for, my friends.

Where are you buying these mags from?

Armslist, EE, local gun forums, gun shows, etcetera. It helps that I travel a great deal for work, my friend!

Okay, I just received my dozen that I ordered from Wideners and they look smooth, no vampire teeth or wave lips. I'm going to the range tomorrow to test a few out.

Friend just got a dozen from PSA, all tested fine at the range.
Tomac