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
ChamberTactical.com
Chanbertactical@gmail.com