Magazine Heat Treatment

I have supervised the heat treatment of above 30,000 magazines since 1993(maybe a lot MORE ???) You need to determine if you have a factory (CT or HT) magazine . Is it marked High Standard ? Does it have 5 and 10 stamped in the side? Does it have "HS" stamped on it ? Does it have a number stamped in the magazine inside at the bottom of the button slot ? Is it NICKLE or ELECTROLYSIS NICKLE or GALVANIZED ? Slant or Military grip ? After we determine what you have, THE BIG PROBLEM is going to be- WHICH MATERIAL WAS USED ? That requires finding the chemistry of the material. You can heat the lip section to cherry red and drop into cold water. NOW-you have to have a furnace to draw it back BASED on the chemistry of the material ! WITHOUT the draw at the right TEMP- you WILL break the lips off on your first touch. OR- if the completely wrong material was used(in the case of an aftermarket or FACTORY MISTAKE)- NO HARDENING WILL OCCUR. The above process(if a factory magazine) will cost more than the price of a new magazine
UNLESS you have access to a heat treat facility or heat treat equipment. - Alan

 

Ramline made stainless steel magazines, for the Ruger Mark II pistols. They give the appearance of being nickel plated. But they are stainless.

They also may have made similar magazines, for High Standards.? I have 3 of the Ruger/Ramlines. They are made from soft stainless, so the lips lose their tension constantly. Only thing I can, do is to bend the lips back in to make them work.

 

spars:

A gun with magazines that loose their lip tune is useless. It makes no sense to saddle a perfectly good gun with crap magazines. Search out good magazines (either original Connecticut Hi Std or Texas Hi Std but not Triple K or other non-real Hi Std gun show magazines) so that your Hi Std becomes a reliable tool not a frustration at the range.

LDBennett

 

spars:

A gun with magazines that loose their lip tune is useless. It makes no sense to saddle a perfectly good gun with crap magazines. Search out good magazines (either original Connecticut Hi Std or Texas Hi Std but not Triple K or other non-real Hi Std gun show magazines) so that your Hi Std becomes a reliable tool not a frustration at the range.

LDBennett

I disagree with your assessment, of recently produced Triple K magazines. Bought a number, of the US manufactured ones. Made in recent years. Worked, and held up OK.

 

Richard King:

I'm happy for you that you have found your Triple K mags to be acceptable to you.

The difference between the TX Hi Std mags and the Triple K mags is actually funny.

Triple K makes the magazines for TX Hi Std and has, I believe, since the beginning of TX Hi Std. At some point in recent years it was obvious that the Triple K magazine lips did not hold their tune. TX Hi Std entered into some kind of an agreement where the Triple K magazine were marked uniquely as the TX Hi Std version and the lips underwent a hardening process. Alan Aronstein describes that hardening process in these pages recently and it definitely adds to the cost which of course makes the TX Hi Std marked mags more expensive. The regular Triple K Hi Std mags do NOT get the hardening process because of the agreement they have with TX Hi Std, as I understand it.

If you do a search here about the Triple K mags you will note the poor assessment of Triple K mags is not mine but MANY who report here. There was a definite point in recent times when the change was made by TX Hi Std and for new magazines those newer version ones were the ones to buy with few of those resulting in complaints. They hold the tune and most come pre-tuned for CCI SV ammo right out of the box and work in most guns no problem. A small few find they still need to tweak the tune for their particular guns.

Maybe Alan will chime in with details and corrections since he was the force behind TX Hi Std at that time and these upgraded magazines. What I presented above is what I remember he told me a couple years back in a telephone conversation when he was replacing my early TX Hi Std frame for free. He also replaced my early TX Hi Std magazines for free too. I discarded a couple Triple K magazines that had failed after several lip adjustments.

LDBennett

 

Alan
It was expected that heat treating was going to involve a furnace and careful temperature monitoring, thanks for the detailed reply.

Images show the nickel magazine that has soft feed lips, original HS mag, attracts a magnet.

The other mag is aftermarket with the not so loved lime green follower. The blue mag has never given me any issues, I adjusted the feed lips and the mag works perfectly- even though it is not suppose to!

Both mags came with a used 102 sport king I purchased last month.

So who sells good HS mags?

sparx

 

magazines

Sparx,
Your original magazine is cadmium plated from the factory. These magazines were used for a few years around the time your gun was made, but HS reverted back to blued magazines in later years. The problem with the cadmium plated magazines is that the plating salt residue between the two shells can absorb moisture out of the air. The result will be corrosion forming between the shells which can cause swelling of the joint to the point that cartridges may not feed into the magazines and/or the magazine will not fit in the magazine well. I think this problem is why HS went back to blued magazines.

Your Triple K magazine is one of the recently made (since 2005) magazines. These magazines are pretty good compared to the older versions of Triple K magazines. There were at least 3 or 4 earlier versions of Triple K magazines for High Standard pistols that date back to at least the 1970s. Magazines like yours will generally feed well with perhaps minor tweaking of the feed lips. The hardness of these magazines is about the same as the military grip angle CT magazines. The earlier versions of Triple K magazines were made of thinner metal (easier to bend) and feed lips did not have the proper geometry to allow them to feed cartridges reliably.

You can obtain more magazines from Brownells, either Triple K or Houston HS hardened magazines with the HS delrin follower. If you desire to obtain an original blued CT HS magazine, you will have to find one on eBay or GunBroker, or at a local gun show. Be sure you know what you are bidding on, because many sellers do not know the differences between the magazines. To be safe, you should only buy blued magazines with the 5 and 10 round count markings on the side of the magazines.

 

Ok thanks Wayne.

Hate to give up on a magazine, but this cadmium plated one has some real soft feed lips.

Appreciate the input from all you guys.

Sparx

 

Magazine Issue

The Triple K magazines work great if they stay in adjustment. Your Galvanized magazine is supposed to be spring steel - it could have been missed in heat treating. The additional problem of rust between the shells is a REAL PROBLEM in that series of magazine. At High Standard, we scraped a lot of those magazines over the years. I have the NEW High Standard STYLE magazines in stock at $47.00- E-mail your address and I will send one to you. If you like it, you can send a check or call with a credit card. If you think that it is a problem- just mail it back.- Alan