Just thought I'd pass along a few comments from a smith who is a lot more knowledgeable than me about 1911 magazines, however, I agree with him completely and have had the same experiences:
Magazine Observations
This debate has fueled many flame wars...and it will likely rage on until end times...but here's my twist on it.
An old engineering axiom states that there's no such thing as a free lunch. When you change one thing, you change many things at the same time...and when you gain something, you lose something else in the process.
I experimented with creating 8-round magazines back in the mid-70s, fully 5 years before Devel went public with the first commercially-produced 8-round single stack magazine for the 1911, and I've tried every 8-round magazine to hit the market in an honest attempt to find one that I would trust to function in a pistol that i'd carry for the off-chance that I'd find myself up to my kiester in Komodos...and I haven't been able to do that.
Seen many that worked fine...for a while. Some, longer than others. Some not long at all. Some hit the ground burpin'...but by and large, the ones that functioned perfectly tended to lull me into a false sense of security...and
choke like a pukin' buzzard without prior warning...and then go back to perfect function...and then back to Choke & Puke...and then finally settled in to not being reliable enough for a Saturday afternoon plinking fest.
Let me go ahead and say that...while I'm not a major player on the custom smith circuit...I'm no kitchen-table wannabe armed with a Dremel and Kuhnhausen's shop manuals, either. I know a little about the 1911 pattern pistol, gained over the course of over 42 years of wrenchin' on'em...and functional reliability is my thing. That comprises about 95% of all work that I do on the guns, and leave the wicked accurate bullseye/raceguns/custom pistols to the artists who do that. I'm just a mechanic...but I'm a pretty good one. My abused range beaters go for years and tens of thousands of rounds without a malfunction. One in particular hasn't had a stoppage in 15 years and over a 130,000 rounds. I've been using the same extractor in it through 3 barrels and one complete rebuild, with exactly one retensioning at the 75,000 round mark, right after the rebuild...and I attribute most of that to the fact that there's never been an 8-round magazine in the gun. The other 5 in the battery malfunction maybe once a year or so...mainly because of my old funky reloads with home-cast bullets and because I'm not a stickler on gettin' the guns squeaky clean after every range trip.
When you stuff 8 rounds into a space designed for 7, you have to sacrifice something in order to make room. Spring length and follower stability are two.
Redesigned followers are the rule, and some work better than others...but all are essentially compromises in an attempt to make up for what was lost in changing things around. Compromises in proven designs rarely work well.
So many have tried for so long to outsmart John Browning...that they really believe they have...but he did know what he was doing. He covered pretty much everything else, including some minor points that few ever take the time to study and ask: "Now, why did he do that?" ...and figure it out.
I have...and many years ago, I came to the conclusion that he was a whole lot sharper than most give him full credit for.
So...assuming that we can accept the fact that a man born in the middle of the 19th century has trumped us all...(and he has)...wouldn't it seem reasonable to believe that if there had been a way to make an 8-round, flush-fit magazine as reliable as his 7-rounder...that it would have been done?
Studying the minor details of the gun...and understanding what their purpose was and is reveals the genius of a man who didn't miss a trick. How about a show of hands for any who believe that he didn't notice that the magazine had room for 8 rounds...and tried it in a pistol that was essentially headed for
war...where an extra round could save a life. Anybody?
So...Second guess the man who knew more about his gun than anybody alive today if you want. I conceded defeat on that point 25 years ago...
Dead
