Firstly, let me preface this by saying as far as magazines are concerned, I've always worked with USGI mags made by OK Industries and never had problems with them, that said, we are always open to new products so when we heard about the new HK High Reliability Magazines, we just had to try them out.  

Contacting our buddies at HK, we were first referred to their dealer network which was a waste of time and after 6 weeks, we had still not had confirmation of their availability.  Marianne went to work higher up the food chain and low and behold, magazines and an invoice turned up from HKD!  

We did not get much of a chance to test the magazines prior to the fire we suffered on February 17th 2005.  The new HK mags were actually stored in the armory less than 12' from the center of the fire, not only was the storage box they were in burnt completely and they were surrounded by cooked off rounds but the fire department  had dumped them from 8' onto the shop floor, soaked them in water, trodden on them and then partially buried them under wet drywall, cinder block and roofing material including molten plastic.  Please bear in mind that the temperature was so hot in this area the the steel roofing "I" beams were distorted.  

Fast forward six months and Wednesday of this week and demolition started on the building.  I went over to have a last look around to see if anything else was left and I noticed a rusty HK mag sticking out of a pile of crap on the floor.  Removing the rubbish revealed our HK mags on the ground looking very sorry for themselves after all, not only had they suffered the above abuse, but they were then subjected to the final months of winter and then the heat of this summer plus the rain and snow we had since February.  So anyway, I picked one up and depressed the follower and it moved  freely.  I scooped up the rest and took them to the shop.  

The restoration process was simple; I wiped them down with CLP, dried them off on Thursday and took six of them to the range today with 1,500 rounds of M193 ammo.  (I also took some USGI mags so it wouldn't be a total waste of time!).  

Here's the mags - check out the limited corrosion on the followers.
 

Loaded and ready to go.  See how good the coating is.
 


The round is sitting correctly so the feed lips appear not to have been affected by the heat.  
 

Well they shot without a hitch!  Not one hang up, failure to feed nothing, 1,500 rounds through six magazines without a single problem, the range temp today was 89F and I had left the mags in the sun while I photographed them.  They loaded up fine with no bind or adverse spring pressure, no issues there what more can I say?  

Now we don't sell HK mags and they are pretty hard to come by but I think after such torture testing the term "High-Reliability" is pretty much deserved.  

Here's a couple of pitures of the gas system of the weapon after the 1,500 rounds (it's up to 6,500 now).  



By the way.  I dumped 300 rounds through them full-auto on one of our 10.3" guns and they still worked.  

Quoted: Do those come with the usual HK Hostile Environment finish or is it something else?   I'd forward this story to HK if I were you, it makes the "torture tests" that Glock likes to brag about look like recess at kindergarden.

I'm not that up on HK finishes, it seems to be some sort of baked on finish and is very tough.  I suppose the conditions they went through could be termed "hostile", by the way, we have no intention of repeating these tests.  
LOL on the HK link!  

Quoted: My that's a clean  bolt and carrier....and after 1500 rounds.

No, I need to correct that, it's after 6,500 rounds - we don't clean the gas system or bolt in test or demo weapons.  This bolt by the way has the 'O' ring.  

Yes, not the Crane 'O' ring or the Defender but a similar item which goes around the extractor spring.  We got fed up with changing them every 7,000 rounds or so.  

One thing I forgot to mention was that there were other mags in the area.  The aluminum USGI mags were badly deformed and a couple of them had started to burn, the .499 mags had rusted worse than the HK's (surface coating) but appear to still function.  

I REALLY don't want to know anything about your damp crawl space.  

What I find really interesting is the fact that the followers on the mags are pretty nasty now - how important therefore is the top surface of the follower - provided it's supported, I guess the follower could be a piece of wood bark!  What do you think?  

Well with the follower it really depends upon how much friction it exerts.  I guess your bolt has enough pressure to compensate for it...

Kevin, the rounds slipped out no problem, look at the pictures of the follower surface and then note that we use a standard buffer and spring, this is really interesting because I'm looking at a number of followers for some specific applications at this time.