The Down Range Forum
Member Section => Building America's Rifle => Topic started by: MikeBjerum on January 13, 2019, 04:50:10 PM
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Been a quiet 364 days on here.
Is anyone working on something new, or doing the same thing in a new way?
Now that I have my ethnically diverse friends with me, I am looking at doing some fine tuning. When I get them on the bench and remember some of my peeves with them, I will post some plans, and there will be several wishes with questions about how.
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Nothing new but I've been playing with something old. Several years ago I bought a Choate Magazine Connector. Instead of using it on my 30-round mags I modified it for use with 20-round mags. My Colt AR came with 2 20-round mags with spacers to block them off at 5 rounds. The Colt floorplates were made just for these mags that had flat springs in the bottom held on with rivets. Of course I removed the rivets and spacers, but then there were no spring latches to lock the floorplates in place. Brownells to the rescue! Two of their G.I. style floorplates and I was good to go.
But the magazine connector was way too long to clamp the 20-round mags together and be able to use them. I cut the top and bottom off of the steel plates so there's just a hairline of metal between the edges and the reinforcement ribs. I cut down the plastic filler block so it's now flat and just slightly below the edges of the steel plates. I clamped my mags together with the edge of the front plate sticking ever so slightly below the edge of the mags. That gives me 1/8" of space between the top of the rear plate and the mag well.
It's easy to eject the empty mag, move it over an inch and insert the other one. When the left mag is in with the dust cover previously opened, the right mag makes contact with the part of the cover containing the spring and detent. It should keep them from rattling against each other. I can keep the magazines blocked at 5 rounds with a quick reload if I start hunting again, or take the spacers out and have 20 rounds in each. I have G.I. magazine pouches that I carefully removed the grenade pockets from. 2 mags clamped together fit great in the pouches made for 3 mags when the dividers are cut out. If you get cheap used military surplus mag pouches, someone probably cut them out already. But the 20-round mags go down so far in 30-round mag pouches that they're hard to reach. That's where my sponge rubber stress ball comes in. I keep it in the bottom of one mag pouch to avoid the stress of fishing out my mags. It weighs next to nothing and makes a good spacer.
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I built one more 10.5" AR pistol last year... fixed front sight tower, and carry handle sight with the 8 1/2" KAK buffer tube... found a pair of old carbine small diameter hand guards to replace the oblong large ones that came on the upper.... it is my idea of a handy, rugged, defensive firearm with 100m+ capability
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I was looking at my mag coupler again and realized Brownells wasn't selling their own AR mags and parts until a long time after I had the mags clamped together. At some point I replaced the black magazine followers in my 30-round mags with green ones. Then I drilled out the rivets for the flat spring latches on each of the 20-round mags to see if I could put different followers in them. That's when I needed the new G.I. style baseplates. I also put David Tubb's magazine springs in them because the original springs were kind of weak and his are extra strong. IIRC it cut the magazine capacity from 20 to 19, but 5 still fit with with the spacers in place. I'll check them later.
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I checked and both of my 20-round mags do only hold 19 rounds. Believe me I tried getting the 20th round in them in but they didn't even come close to going in. I left them loaded and smacked the back of the mags on the floor several times to make sure the bullet tips won't drag they feed. I don't keep my other mags loaded but the chrome silicon springs in these should last a lifetime without taking a set. It was hard putting the floorplates back on with the spacers in because the end of the spring would stick out between the spacer and the side of the mag. They stuck out without the spacers in too, so I tried bending the last ~3/16" in with needle-nose pliers but nothing happened. Then I squeezed the entire last 1/2 coil inward a little, and now the tails of the springs stay under the floorplates when I slide them on.