10-Round Mags: Buy Metalform, Brown

In our tests, aftermarket cartridge units from Wilson and McCormick caused more feeding problems.

Followers made the magazines work, or not work, we found. The Ed Brown and Metalform mags (center right and left) showed fewer malfunctions than the Wilson (right) and Mc- Cormick mags (left).

It wasn’t long ago you could go to the store and purchase a handgun with no restriction on capacity. In the context of practical shooting competition, this precipitated courses of fire with high-round counts that favor the highest-capacity gun. In a between-stage interview at World Shoot IX, the tri-annual world IPSC championship, Team USA shooter Matt Burkett admitted shooting a gun fed by a 26-round mag. The resulting 27-round capacity enabled him to shoot every stage in the tournament with only one mag!

In response, USPSA/IPSC limited the maximum length for magazines to 170mm. Where does this expanding-magazine trend leave the owner of a single-column 1911, the gun the practical shooting game was built around? From the bottom of the stack, the .45 single-column shooter can barely count the rounds available to Limited and Open class shooters today.

Purists among us can remain competitive in some classes by using ten-round mags for single-stack 1911s. Legal for Limited class use, these aftermarket items enable such guns to hold a total of 11 rounds, which keeps the number of reloads down somewhat from standard-issue mags that hold seven or eight rounds. Moreover, 10-round mags will be the difference maker in the just-announced USPSA Practical Carry class, which is scheduled to begin in 1998. The class will limit the number of loaded rounds in each gun to 11, and extra points will not be awarded for shooting ammunition producing a major power factor. To be scored, the equation of bullet weight times velocity divided by 1000 need only be 125. For the competitor, this means our $1,400 single stack need not be put aside in favor of a $2,000+ high-cap Limited class gun. Also, it means shooters can simultaneously set up a gun and ammo for three games: Action pistol, Bullseye, and IPSC. All we need are dependable 10-round mags.

However, finding dependable magazines may not be so easy, as we found recently when we bought Metalform, Wilson Combat, Ed Brown, and Chip McCormick magazines from Brownells.

• The Metalform unit was the company’s stainless 1911 Auto 10-Round Magazine, which Brownells sells for $25.55 each plus $4.95 for boots (product numbers 9J18D38 and 9J03B30 respectively).
• The Wilson Combat 1911 Auto Bureaucrat 10-Round Magazine (product number 9Y23L96) listed at $31.95.
• The Ed Brown 1911 Auto 10-Round Magazine, product number 7T25B56, also sold for $31.95.
• The Chip McCormick 1911 Auto 10-Round Magazine (product number 9Y16P76) carried the cheapest retail price of $23.95.

We acquired four samples of each brand and tested them in a variety of guns and in the hands of several shooters for reliability, durability, ease of handling, and ease of maintenance. Of the quartet, we thought the Metalform and Ed Brown products performed more reliably than the Wilson and McCormick items. More detailed criticisms of the products appear below:

How We Tested
At five different local matches, Handgun Editor Roger Eckstine stood up and said, “Excuse me. Before you continue with the match description, could I see a show of hands of everybody shooting a single-stack 45? Would you guys like to try any of these 10-rounders?” We would then distribute the samples and collect them later, gathering comments from the testers.

Under a more controlled environment, we used two different guns and 1,000 rounds of ammo to blast away over a two-day period to determine the shortcomings of these long-bodied mags. We set four IPSC targets 10 yards downrange and loaded four mags with the same ammo brand. Then we would try a single draw and fire, with the Pact timer on 3-second delay. Then, the shooter would draw and fire two rounds on each target, reload, re-engage each target with two rounds each, continuing to do so until all four mags had been plucked from the Ernie Hill rig and run dry. We used typical practice ammo, reloads in shell cases of various ages and headstamps. The two guns used were a Briley Versatility and a Springfield built by Clark Custom Guns.

Physical Descriptions
All four magazines were constructed of brushed stainless steel measuring .0125 inches in gauge.

The Chip McCormick 1911 Auto 10-Round Magazine’s body measured just under 5.70 inches in length and featured a flat follower to push along the stored rounds. Sold without a base pad, a hard rubber cuff was connected on the front and sides covering the bottom inch of the mag. The front portion of the cuff also served as a stop to prevent overinsertion. Cleaning the interior is accomplished by capturing the spring, an operation performed by inserting a rod through the mag body and removing the follower from the top.

The Wilson Combat 1911 Auto Bureaucrat 10-Round Magazine’s body was 6.9 inches high with a black plastic follower that juts out another 0.9 inch. From the side, it has the same profile as the Prudential rock logo. Access for cleaning is from the bottom. The shooter removes the thin, black-plastic base pad by inserting a rod through the seating hole and sliding the pad off. A metal stop is welded to the front of the mag.

The Metalform 1911 Auto 10-Round Magazine and Ed Brown 1911 Auto 10-Round Magazine each measured 6.75 inches in length and otherwise appeared to be identical, except for the following differences. The Metalform had a small stop stamped to its front side, while the Ed Brown stop was longer, reaching all the way down to the base plate. Cleaning them was accomplished by capturing the spring and removing the follower from the top, but we found it much easier to simply swab out the mag by pushing down on the follower with a mag brush.

The Metalform was sold without a bumper pad, but add-on booties are available. The Ed Brown product came with a standard two-screw basepad attached. With the exception of the Wilsons, the other three will all accept this standard bumper. The McCormick had ten holes in the sides for checking capacity; the Brown and Metalforms only showed eight. Wilson showed only two, the fifth and the tenth.

The followers on the Metalform and the Ed Brown units were the same. They were rounded, touching the ammo with only the crest of its 3mm-high arc. The sides of the follower were firmly supported, seated well down into the mag body. The Wilson follower was black plastic and held the ammo in a round indentation. The McCormick follower was flat and made of steel.

What We Found
None of the mags failed outright during the test, but a definite pattern did emerge. We encountered no malfunctions using the Ed Brown mags. One malfunction was reported with one of the Metalform units. We believe the Wilsons caused three failure-to-feed malfunctions, one with the Briley and two with the Springfield. The worst of the lot were the McCormick mags, which accounted for ten stoppages—all of them the same. The rounds didn’t seem to climb the McCormick’s ramp and chamber smoothly.

Otherwise, we believe the McCormicks have the best design for quick handling. Most testers’ reloads were always 0.2 seconds faster with the McCormicks.

The Metalform without a base pad produced a bruise on shooters’ palms. The booties helped, but they seemed clumsy when lined up in the belt holder. Going from the Ernie Hill three-mag loop to individual holders spaced further apart on the belt made these mags handle better. The Wilsons were painless to use but a little slippery.

Performance Shooter Recommends
Based on the results of our testing, we can only conclude that the hemispherical follower makes the difference in the longer-bodied 10-round mags. Jams with any seven- or eight-round mags rarely plague our test 1911s, but the Springfield seems especially sensitive to the flat follower on the McCormick magazines.

Thus, based on the testing we performed with our .45 ACPs, we don’t recommend the $23.95 Chip McCormick 1911 Auto 10-Round Magazine. It caused significantly more functioning problems than the others.

The Wilson Combat 1911 Auto Bureaucrat 10-Round Magazine, $31.95, also had more than its share of problems. We see no reason to purchase it, since the Metalform and Brown units performed better. We think that a rounded follower would improve the reliability of the Wilson and McCormick products.

The Metalform 1911 Auto 10-Round Magazine, $25.55, functioned better than the McCormick and Wilson units in our tests. We recommend it.

The Ed Brown 1911 Auto 10-Round Magazine, $31.95, performed flawlessly in our evaluation. We recommend it along with the Metalform product.

Also With This Article
Click here to view "Briley Versatility Update."
Click here to view "Contacts."

-By Roger Eckstine