Category: 
Hugely fun day the range. I even hit the 300 yard steel target with my 1911!
More magazine weirdness, though. This time from Triple K.
Manufacturer: Triple K 974M
Item: Triple K Colt 1911 Magazine .45 ACP 7 Rounds Stainless
UPC: 730745009746
It may be hard to see, but the yellow arrows point to bulges in the front on the magazine. To the touch, there are three distinct protrusions where the nose of the cartridges were located in the magazine.
At first, the magazine (purchased new yesterday) functioned fine. After about 10 or 12 reloads, it became progressively ‘stiffer’ to extract from the magwell / handle.
I was making sure the magwell was clear of buildup, grime, powder, etc. when I noticed the bulges which were developing – and getting larger.
Oddly enough, this only occurred with the Triple K Stainless magazines. The non-stainless magazines from Triple K showed no such disfigurement, although the edges at the feed lips were noticeably sharper when loading.
The UPC: for the ‘non-stainless’ Triple K magazine is 730745000255.
The round count through the Kimber Pro Carry was 365 today. My lesson learned: when testing new components (like the magazines) the higher the number of test rounds the better. The mysterious ‘bulging’ and stiff magazine removal did not manifest itself until ‘many’ rounds were fired today.
On a more positive note:
I may have actually provided a helpful pointer to fellow shooter Bill (or it may have been just a lucky coincidence):
After several failure-to-fire events, Bill’s rifle seemed to be having a malfunction. My advice was to pull the bolt all the way to the back and let the spring ‘slap it’ closed. It seemed to work. Yea!
Sure miss being there this year. Tell everyone Hi for me.
[...] POV From the Gun Blogger Rendesvous Posted on September 8, 2012 11:30 am by Bill Quick GBR VII: Day 2, Part 2 at Traction Control On a more positive [...]
It appears that the bumps get bigger higher in the magazine, where there would be a bullet nose more of the time. This suggests that the metal is very soft, or thin, or both.
The metal in those magazines was too soft. Perhaps they skipped a heat-treating step in their construction.
Hello GBR guy,
1. Is your ammo factory loads or recycled? Could this be “bullet jump” that we usually worry about in revolvers? How’s the crimp?
2. But more likely it’s as discussed above.
ML27
Ammo was factory American Eagle and some Fiocchi for ‘diversity’. The other mags showed no such effect with the same ammo. Most likely the metal was improperly hardened at the time of manufacture.