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Posted: 9/7/2014 11:12:50 PM EDT
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Went to the local gun shot early Saturday morning. Came across a guy with a big box of surplus 30 round magazines on the table. Dug down through them and found these two interesting magazines. One is a well worn early Colt 30 rounder with a glossy dark olive green follower...but there's no number. The other magazine had me stumped with the remains of blue paint and a couple shiny rivets on the front. Looked inside and noticed the cut down follower and magazine block for blank ammo, so some type of training magazine. He was wanting $10 each for the mags so I picked out a couple other clean ones and offered $30 for all four. Finally settled on $35 and I was happy with that just for the retro coolness factor of these two items.
SAJTU  " /> " />
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it doesn't look like the japanese mag.
looking at the japanese mag, you'll see the lip for the front of the follower is bent at an angle and the OPs mag is notched like a usgi mag. also the block in the japanese mag has a little notch in the center and the op's doesn't. 
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block doesn't look like the red 20s which appear thicker:
they do look like these 20s from another thread: 
https://www.ar15.com/archive/topic.html?b=3&f=17&t=631985 |
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Captured some clearer photos today of the two magazines. The blue painted magazine has a riveted block in the front...nicely done...and the follower is trimmed back similar to the 20 round magazines in previous post. I added the .556 blank for some scale. Since this was the San Antonio Gun Show, maybe some of this came out of Lackland Training Annex or Fort Sam/Camp Bullis. On the Colt magazine, the dark olive green follower doesn't have any numbers like I've seen on previous post. Were these paint stamped on the followers and maybe rubbed off or did some of these magazines come with an unmarked follower?
SAJTU   
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I have some Ex-USAF 20 round mags that were retro-fitted (like in a armorers shop) with a blocking piece riveted into the front of the mag for blank ammunition use, and the magazines were painted in various colors. You may have something along those lines. (?)
Remnants of yellow and red paint on the mags I had. These were all jumbled into a 20mm ammo can marked "Training Mags" that came from DRMO out at Carswell AFB about 25 years ago.  " />
I refinished the blank mags with a red annodized color to easily spot them in my mag stash. 
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Seems an easier way to go about a blanks only mag without needing a special follower, just trim back a standard follower and add a spacer.
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At one time I and some friends had about 15 of these re-worked 20 rd mags, the rest of the can were just standard 20 round mags.
I am down to having only 4 of these reworked ones now. It seems like your 30 rd mag and my 20 rd mags may have come about from USAF Armorers. |
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Cdenmark...thanks for the info on the Colt numbered follower. No evidence of any paint remaining on the follower so must have been cleaned off at some point.
The block and rivet work are done well so some effort went into converting the magazine. Since the AF Gunsmith Shop is locally out at Lackland, you might be right that it's some sort of USAF training magazine for blanks probably at the armory shop level. That paint also looks really close to AF blue.... That's one advantage to hitting the local San Antonio gun shows, I keep finding a few retro or cool tidbits on tables that probably wandered off base or to DRMO over the years. SAJTU |
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