guzma393
Active Member
This has been a long going project of myns to accurize an early serial # mini 30 that shot minute of berm with factory steel cased ammo and minute of paper at best with the brass stuff (100 yards). Some early serial mini 30s are notorious for having barrels cut to .308" rather than .310". On top of this the barrel is susceptable to barrel whip with full power loads. I figured reduced cast loads can alleviate these issues.
I had good luck with running reduced load casts to address these shortcomings. My current load is a lee .311" sized/160/2R gas checked, powder coated cast pushing at ~1600 fps.
During that time, id only had 5 round mags to work with. I recently acquired some 20 rounders and noticed right out the bat that the front support tabs are colliding with the ogive profile of the casts preventing the rounds from seating all the way up the feed lip of the magazine.
Rather than call it quits and try and work up an fmj reload, I decided to take a gamble and grind down the tabs to see if it will feed properly. Tested it out at the range and it fed great, but only tested out about 40 rounds. I tried some factory ammo and they seem to feed just fine even with the tabs grinded down.
Question to all you mechanical savvy/ gunsmiths out there; would grinding down these tabs pose a risk of premature wear or am I just overthinking it? At 40 bucks a mag, I only plan on doing this to 3 of them as range mags and keep the rest loaded up with factory ammo (I got a Ruger American bolt action x39 that takes the same mags and that runs anything for those). Pics below for reference showing unmodified mag working well with factory ammo vs. modified mag with cast reloads, plus a group at 100 yards (pretty happy with this, considering it wasn't hitting paper with steel cased factory ammo) Any input is appreciated, thanks
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I had good luck with running reduced load casts to address these shortcomings. My current load is a lee .311" sized/160/2R gas checked, powder coated cast pushing at ~1600 fps.
During that time, id only had 5 round mags to work with. I recently acquired some 20 rounders and noticed right out the bat that the front support tabs are colliding with the ogive profile of the casts preventing the rounds from seating all the way up the feed lip of the magazine.
Rather than call it quits and try and work up an fmj reload, I decided to take a gamble and grind down the tabs to see if it will feed properly. Tested it out at the range and it fed great, but only tested out about 40 rounds. I tried some factory ammo and they seem to feed just fine even with the tabs grinded down.
Question to all you mechanical savvy/ gunsmiths out there; would grinding down these tabs pose a risk of premature wear or am I just overthinking it? At 40 bucks a mag, I only plan on doing this to 3 of them as range mags and keep the rest loaded up with factory ammo (I got a Ruger American bolt action x39 that takes the same mags and that runs anything for those). Pics below for reference showing unmodified mag working well with factory ammo vs. modified mag with cast reloads, plus a group at 100 yards (pretty happy with this, considering it wasn't hitting paper with steel cased factory ammo) Any input is appreciated, thanks
Sent from my Moto G (5) Plus using Tapatalk