Quote Originally Posted by NavyVet1959 View Post
I don't think that making an insert to basically give you a thicker baseplate on the mag would be that difficult. The question would be what sort of rules that state has with respect to the reversibility of such a modification. I accidentally ordered a 10-round .38 SUPER double-stack magazine for my RIA after I bought the handgun. I didn't even *know* that they made anything other than the full capacity mags and didn't notice the difference between the two mags until I tried to load the new one and discovered that I could not load it all the way. The way that they made the mag only hold 10 rounds was to put a round dent in the mag so that the follower could only go down so far.

Here's what the normal and 10-round mags looked like:



Here's what they both look like disassembled. You can see that they look very similar. Surprisingly, the 10-round mag looks like it has a longer spring.



So, what I did was take the 10-round mag and drill out the dimple. When I contacted Mec-gar about that, they said that I would not be able to do it since it was hardened steel, but starting out with a small drill and a drill press and working my way up, I was able to drill it out.



I wanted to drill as small of a hole as possible and I got pretty close, but I was still getting a bit of resistance to movement of the follower past where the dimple used to be, so I took a dremel-type tool with a die grinder type bit on it and ground off the inside edges. That seemed to be all that was necessary. You need to get the ridges of the hole down below the level of the ribs in the mag. Looks like there are dimples on both sides of the mag, so you need to repeat these procedures for the other side.



If someone does not live in a "free state", they would be needing to go the other way. I'm thinking they could epoxy in some ridges that were a bit higher than the existing ridges in the magazine, but only go up to the point where the dimple would normally be located if they were trying to make a 10-round mag or somewhat lower if they were trying to make an only slightly restricted capacity magazine.

And here is the single stack full size RIA commemorative model that I have.




Navy,
where did you get those grips?
Blackie, USN RET