Venge
Active Member
I'm creating this thread in the hopes that it will save someone some money one day.
When I was at a gun show in VA, I wanted to pick up some ruger 10/22 mags. My plan was to just get a couple of those new ruger made 25 round banana mags, but when I was at a magazine vendor, something beautiful caught my eye...
It was a drum magazine for my 10/22. Specifically, a Promag 50 round black poly drum.
Now, honestly, I think drum magazines are pretty silly. I absolutely see the utility of having that much ammo all ready to go, but they're bulky and kind of defeat the point of a light maneuverable rifle. That's all opinion and your milage may vary.
Nevertheless, it was soooo cool looking that I stupidly bought it on impulse. Got one of the 25 round mags too, thankfully.
Got home, read the 1 page manual, and started loading it.
Here's where the fun began:
1. As soon as I started loading, I noticed that each round I fed would tip a little further down. By the time I Was 10-15 rounds in, the bullets were obviously tilting such that they would drive into the magazine wall instead of up the feed ramp. Shaking and smacking of all kinds didn't help.
2. So, I started feeding the bullets out. Once the follower got to the end of the "Drum" part of the drum, there was no longer spring pressure on the remaining rounds. They fell out easily via gravity, and the follower was stuck down in the magazine.
I released the follower by pulling the spring compression lever back a little and letting it fly, so I know the stupid follower can make it back up the magazine. Once I clear this up, the follower doesn't stick in the drum anymore, even when I pull it down into the drum using the lever.
It's only when I, God forbid, "Load bullets" that the follower tilts and gets stuck this way.
So, reread everything I could find, and learned that, assuming my magazine isn't completely defective, using the correct ammo (CCI and Federal or something) is the only way to get the magazine to work. Since .22 is so scarce, I bought the first 2000 round box I could find for a decent price, and guess what? It's not one of those two magic brands.
My ammo feeds perfectly out of the stock magazine and the 25 round banana, so I'm not exactly in a hurry to buy more .22 (unless I can find a deal, then yeah I'm gonna jump on that s***).
I'll probably buy a small box of federal or CCI just to confirm that I don't have a defective product, but in summary, I cannot recommend this product to ANYONE. It fits weird in the mag well so it's hard to swap out. It looks really cool and feels very sturdy, but that's about it.
Ok, I've ranted. To be fair, the manual does state very clearly that the magazine only works properly when used with certain brands of ammo
. If anyone has any experience with it and can tell me what brands of ammo have worked, I'd love to hear about them so I know what to buy. If I can get this thing out to the range and shoot with it, I won't feel quite as awful about buying.
When I was at a gun show in VA, I wanted to pick up some ruger 10/22 mags. My plan was to just get a couple of those new ruger made 25 round banana mags, but when I was at a magazine vendor, something beautiful caught my eye...
It was a drum magazine for my 10/22. Specifically, a Promag 50 round black poly drum.
Now, honestly, I think drum magazines are pretty silly. I absolutely see the utility of having that much ammo all ready to go, but they're bulky and kind of defeat the point of a light maneuverable rifle. That's all opinion and your milage may vary.
Nevertheless, it was soooo cool looking that I stupidly bought it on impulse. Got one of the 25 round mags too, thankfully.
Got home, read the 1 page manual, and started loading it.
Here's where the fun began:
1. As soon as I started loading, I noticed that each round I fed would tip a little further down. By the time I Was 10-15 rounds in, the bullets were obviously tilting such that they would drive into the magazine wall instead of up the feed ramp. Shaking and smacking of all kinds didn't help.
2. So, I started feeding the bullets out. Once the follower got to the end of the "Drum" part of the drum, there was no longer spring pressure on the remaining rounds. They fell out easily via gravity, and the follower was stuck down in the magazine.
I released the follower by pulling the spring compression lever back a little and letting it fly, so I know the stupid follower can make it back up the magazine. Once I clear this up, the follower doesn't stick in the drum anymore, even when I pull it down into the drum using the lever.
It's only when I, God forbid, "Load bullets" that the follower tilts and gets stuck this way.
So, reread everything I could find, and learned that, assuming my magazine isn't completely defective, using the correct ammo (CCI and Federal or something) is the only way to get the magazine to work. Since .22 is so scarce, I bought the first 2000 round box I could find for a decent price, and guess what? It's not one of those two magic brands.
My ammo feeds perfectly out of the stock magazine and the 25 round banana, so I'm not exactly in a hurry to buy more .22 (unless I can find a deal, then yeah I'm gonna jump on that s***).
I'll probably buy a small box of federal or CCI just to confirm that I don't have a defective product, but in summary, I cannot recommend this product to ANYONE. It fits weird in the mag well so it's hard to swap out. It looks really cool and feels very sturdy, but that's about it.
Ok, I've ranted. To be fair, the manual does state very clearly that the magazine only works properly when used with certain brands of ammo
. If anyone has any experience with it and can tell me what brands of ammo have worked, I'd love to hear about them so I know what to buy. If I can get this thing out to the range and shoot with it, I won't feel quite as awful about buying.
