Posted: 2/1/2010 4:45:59 PM EDT
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I posted about this a while back, and I had very little interest because it seems people have not had the same problems as I. I have since taken it upon myself to extend my testing, and this weekend just exagerated the point. The issue is that the plastic magazine baseplates (as are found on 228/229 magazines) are made out of a very brittle plastic, and repeated droppings onto hard surfaces tend to crack these baseplates and set free your magazines internals. This weekend during training under what I can only describe as "damn cold" weather conditions (-8-0 degrees F) I managed to crack these baseplates faster than ever before dropping them onto a concrete floor. The temporary solution was to create a bumper-pad out of masking tape which was the only resource available to me at the time. That enabled me to finish the course, but not without being made fun of. The long term solution is to manufacture these out of a more appropriate and more rebust material; however this requires a significant investment in tooling and the last time I asked not many people had interest. I'm not sure if this is because most people have not had these issues and I simply I am too hard on my gear or something else, but unless we can identify a need I cannot move forward on making these. So is it me? Anyone else had this happen? I can post pictures, but I've used a sample of over 20 magazines with different manufacture dates from various sources, and all genuine preban (stuck in NY) Sig magazines. Replacements are like $7, but they are the same defective part. Perhaps I need to try a newer Mec-Gar baseplates... anyone know if the newer baseplates have this same issue? |
| how bout applying a rubber pad to the bottom of the plate with some form of adhesive. I have thought about doing this on p250 mags. I have found some places online that let you purchase 12" x 12" rubber in any thickness you want. I was thinking about purchasing a 1/8" thick pad, tracing the bottom of the mag, cutting it out, and sticking it to the plate. Kinda like your masking tape pad, just a little more permanent. The bottom of a 250 mag is completely flat though, not sure what the contour is like on a 229 mag. |
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OK... metal base plates are ok even if dropped- though you may not be able to disassemble that mag again, at least it is functional for loading the gun. I have this problem with 225/P6 mags all the time. As for making a rubber or other kind of "add on" to the mags, I'm sure that would work but is not a solution to the problem as I don't need anything else sticking off the end of the gun. I variation of this might be to dip the baseplates in some of that rubber that's sold to dip tool handles, but I'd rather fix the problem completely rather than band-aid it. The underlying problem is that these baseplates where just made from the wrong material to start with. I'm just not sure how much demand there would be for replacement baseplates which is what I'm trying to gauge. |
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Quoted:
There was a guy on SigForum a while back making machined aluminum basepads for some of the SIG pistols. Thanks for the tip. I did some poking around and managed to find the guy. He sent me some pictures of his P228 basepads and while they look amazing, they are a bit larger in size than is P6/P225 base plates giving the magazine more of a sport look. I might pick some up for range use, but it'd be nice to have smaller ones for CCW use. |
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Quoted:
Quoted:
There was a guy on SigForum a while back making machined aluminum basepads for some of the SIG pistols. Thanks for the tip. I did some poking around and managed to find the guy. He sent me some pictures of his P228 basepads and while they look amazing, they are a bit larger in size than is P6/P225 base plates giving the magazine more of a sport look. I might pick some up for range use, but it'd be nice to have smaller ones for CCW use. For CCW, I would not worry about magazine protection. You are unlikely to veer need to drop a magazine, and if you do, a $40 magazine will likely be the last thing on your mind. |
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Quoted: For CCW, I would not worry about magazine protection. You are unlikely to veer need to drop a magazine, and if you do, a $40 magazine will likely be the last thing on your mind. The bottom line is if you train with the same gear you carry, you want to make sure your magazines are good to go and not about to pop a baseplate off if you grab it wrong. I rotate 6 magazines through my carry/training and if any one of them ever gives me a problem it gets replaced. That way I know any one of the 6 is reliable, and I still have 3 good ones to go when a failure is encountered in training (like this weekend when I broke 3 during a 2-day class). |