Keeping Your Pistol Magazines in Shooting Shape

Like your recoil spring, firing pin and barrel, your pistol’s magazine takes a lot of heat (figuratively and sometimes literally). 

Plus, it cannot be understated how finely tuned pistol magazines are. Their dimensions and operation must be precise if they are to smoothly feed rounds. 

That said, when little things go wrong, it can interrupt a mag’s ability to seat, feed, or drop correctly, which can have severe, adverse downstream effects. 

In that case, you will sometimes need to replace your mags. But before you look at pistol magazines for sale, keep to the following suggestions to keep your mags in better shape. 

Don’t Abuse Them 

First and foremost, be ginger with your pistol mags, at least to the degree to which you would be with your gun. Try not to drop them, don’t put them down on dirty surfaces, and don’t store them anywhere they will be exposed to harsh conditions. 

If you wouldn’t do it with your gun, don’t do it with (or to) your magazines.

Don’t Let Them Get Dirty

Another huge thing about magazine performance is keeping them clean, but along the same lines, you shouldn’t let them get dirty in the first place if you can help it. Of course this doesn’t account for fouling accumulated as a direct result of routine use. 

The best policy here is prevention. Don’t store your mags anywhere they’ll get dirty or handle them irresponsibly and you will skirt most issues. 

Keep Them on the Same Cleaning Schedule at Your Guns 

One good piece of advice is to actively clean your pistol magazines. The likelihood is that far too many responsible gun owners do as much. It’s second nature to clean your gun, but not so much to clean your magazines. 

The best way not to let this important piece of magazine maintenance slip through the cracks is to keep your mags on the same cleaning schedule as your handgun itself. 

Most magazines are moreover fairly easy to clean. In the vast majority of pistol magazines, you can either remove the base plate and pull out the spring and follower, and if not, you can just pull the spring and follower out the space at the top.

Clean each of these components separately, then dry thoroughly before reassembly. Doing so will help prevent the vast majority of issues associated with wear and tear on magazines.

Cycle Through Them 

Generally speaking, shooters have habits, and among these habits might be a propensity to use a certain, specific magazine more than others, even if it is the exact same magazine model. 

Think of it this way. Have you ever dumped a mag, then dropped the mag and manually recharged it before resuming shooting, even if you had spare or several in your range bag that were already loaded?

If so you’re not alone and that behavior is commonly witnessed at ranges. There’s also nothing wrong with it, except the irrefutable truth that it results in accelerated wear on that one mag. 

The best way to extend magazine life when you have several spares is to cycle evenly through them. When you’re at the range shooting and dump one mag, put it in your range bag and shoot through all the others. Then, when they’re all dry, reload them all and cycle through them.

Something as simple as this will help even out the wear on each of your mags so they each last longer. 

Pay Attention and Address Malfunctions Immediately

If you have a pistol magazine that’s feeding sluggishly or jamming, look into that problem as soon as possible. Ignoring the issue will only make it worse. And if it means you need to start looking at pistol magazines for sale, just get some spares before the mag fails utterly. 

You May Not Need a New Pistol Mag, You Might Just Need a Spring 

Much of the time (but not all of the time) when you have issues with a pistol magazine feeding, the issue is that the magazine spring is starting to go. When the mag spring fails, the magazine will seat and drop, but it will not feed. 

Properly maintained, a magazine tube and follower will last effectively forever. The spring will however wear out. When that happens, if you can, just get a new mag spring and replace that; it should restore the functionality of your magazine.

Shop Spare Pistol Magazines for Sale at SARCO 

Here because you need to replace a magazine? Explore pistol magazines for sale in our collection. We carry a wide range of pistol magazines for sale, including Rock Island magazines for their 1911 clones. Shop our collection and get in touch with us if you have questions or are looking for something specific and we will be more than happy to help.