Magazines

Talk about the AR15 style rifles chambered in 450 Bushmaster.

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Magazines

Postby engineer40 » Fri Mar 22, 2019 5:13 pm

I know the topic of magazines has been beat to death on here. It is frustrating though that nobody makes an uber reliable higher capacity magazine for the 450BM.

I have 3 mags. The Bushmaster brand 5 round has been my only very reliable magazine. The Bart's 7 rounder has never worked with over 4 rounds in it. I have a 30 round mag with the follower changed that will work well 95% of the time loaded with 8-9 rounds. But that 5% makes me not trust it.

Every time a 450BM magazine has an issue it makes me want to buy a semi auto 308 for when I want higher delivered foot pounds of energy. I do love my 450bm though and I shoot it so great. Magazines are just frustrating.
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Re: Magazines

Postby MOOSE EARS » Fri Mar 22, 2019 5:18 pm

20rd Magpul with follower replacement holds 7 rounds and runs 100% in both of my BM uppers. You sacrifice high capacity for high reliability.
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Re: Magazines

Postby Stens » Fri Mar 22, 2019 5:52 pm

Which followers are you running in your magpul? I've got some from chamber tactical that work great in steel magazines but don't work in the magpul due to the narrowing of the front of the magazine. I was just looking up the tromix followers to see if they would work and noticed that they have a 10 rnd magazine.
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Re: Magazines

Postby MOOSE EARS » Sat Mar 23, 2019 4:43 am

I make my own follower modification with 1/2" CPVC pipe and JB Weld. Easy to do actually if you have used a Dremel tool and a belt sander. I cut a piece of pipe to length, split it in half down the middle, cut the notches for the ribs, sand the stock follower flat and JB does the rest.
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Re: Magazines

Postby Stens » Tue Mar 26, 2019 12:02 pm

Nice, thanks for the heads up.
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Re: Magazines

Postby Hoot » Tue Mar 26, 2019 12:05 pm

MOOSE EARS wrote:I make my own follower modification with 1/2" CPVC pipe and JB Weld. Easy to do actually if you have used a Dremel tool and a belt sander. I cut a piece of pipe to length, split it in half down the middle, cut the notches for the ribs, sand the stock follower flat and JB does the rest.


Picture please! I love DIY solutions, especially anything that includes JB Weld.

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Re: Magazines

Postby Bmt85 » Tue Mar 26, 2019 5:52 pm

When it comes to 450B, I use the ASC’s and 5rd Bushmaster mags (which are supposedly ASC’s). I have tweaked the feedlips on all of them and never had an issue. As to high capacity 450b mags, ASC used to make 9rd mags, then went to 7rds, and now looking at their website it appears only 5rds. I like the 450b specific mags because of the side plates just below the feedlips.

I’ve modified a CPD 5.56 mag to take 12 or 13rds, but I don’t recommend it. There isnt much of a follower left and the follower tilt is pretty bad. Most I would feel comfortable modding a mag to, would be 10-11rds, I didn’t have an issue with that.
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Re: Magazines

Postby Chamber Tactical » Wed Apr 10, 2019 5:05 pm

Hey Guys, this is Chris from ChamberTactical.com As some of you know we make Followers for Mil-Spec metal magazines, and we just released a follower for Hex Mags. The reason I got into making followers is for the same reason some of you are on this blog, I couldn't find magazines for my 450 Bushmaster. Now four years later and after going through four completely different follower versions I believe that this is our best most versatile follower yet. We actually started out hand injecting silicone molds in our garage and today we are CNC milling our injection molds, still in our garage. Needless to say we have come a long way but we still can't make followers that fit all the variations of magazines out there. We are a small business with only two of us doing all the work from designing molds to injecting parts. Below I want to get into some of the things we have learned along the way. I hope some of this helps.

First let’s start with what is wrong with a standard Mil-Spec magazine. The first issue is that curved magazines are not designed for straight bore cartridges. Since there is a slight taper to the big bore cartridge a small amount of curve to the magazine would be desirable, but not to the degree that a standard 223 magazine has. Next, the lips on AR magazines are designed for a stager stacked rounds and not straight stacked rounds, therefore many magazines have lips that are too weak or too wide to hold the cartridge. Give that, when you try to load more than 6 or 7 rounds the curve in the magazine causes the rounds to start tipping up and if the lips aren’t strong enough it can cause double feeding. The 450 Bushmaster casing is just under half an inch, tapering from .478" at the neck to .499" at the base and the distance between the lips on the magazines that I have range from .46" to .51", so consistency with magazines is an issue. Since the 450 Bushmaster round is the smallest of the three big bore, by .042”, we have the hardest time finding magazines the work well. Notice that there is only .04” of lips to hold the round in my tightest mag. 458 SOCOM’s have .082” to hold the round, twice as much.

As for the Mil-Spec metal magazines we recommend Okay Brand 30 round mags. We recommend these mainly because they are an actual Mil-Spec magazine and should be held to strict tolerances. I'm sure there are better magazines out there but living in CA my choices are limited. A couple months ago we redesigned our follower to allow it to fit a wider variety of magazines. Even though we made adjustments it still doesn't work with all the different manufacturers.
We do have a distributer using D&H magazines, and customers reporting that both the 20 and 30 round D&H mags are working for them. I have not tried these personnaly.

C Products, I have had feedback that the 30 round mags work, but they have a 20 round that is Vietnam era design and has an extra spring plate clip that will not allow our follower to be inserted.

AR Stoner, the ones I have the metal is too thin and the lips are too wide for the 450.

Another issue is that some distributers just buy magazines from whomever they can get stock, so our follower might fit one magazine out of their entire line. For example I just picked up a 30 round Bushmaster magazine and it is the cheapest piece of crap I have seen yet, but we have had feedback that the 30 Bushmaster works great, so name brand isn't always the best choice when picking a magazine.

I don’t have all the answers but I hope this helps
Chris

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Re: Magazines

Postby Chamber Tactical » Wed Apr 10, 2019 5:10 pm

Hey Guys, this is Chris from ChamberTactical.com As I mentioned in the previous post, we just came out with a Follower for the series 2 Hex Mag. I know, everyone wants a follower for the Pmag, but let me explain, the answer is simple. Pmags have a rib in the front of the magazine that prevents loading pointed big bore rounds, obviously it was designed for stager stacked rounds. Also the lips on Pmags are weaker than the Hex Mag and won’t hold as many straight stacked rounds. As I mentioned in the previous post, at around 6 or 7 rounds the follower runs into the curve of the magazine and starts to force the front of the round up causing some issues. Hex Mag also advertises on the packaging of their 30 round series 2 mag that it works with 458 SOCOM and 50 Beowulf, though they don’t specify capacity.
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Re: Magazines

Postby plant_one » Thu Apr 11, 2019 10:32 am

i hate it when i see folks holding "mil spec" to such a gold standard.


in reality.... Mil-Spec = lowest common denominator

remember mil-spec on ammo = 3-4 MOA just as one example....

just saying...
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