I purchased two brand new S&W model 41 Magazines today and when I got home and opened them up I could not believe how chincy they felt and looked. Then I got my M41 out of the safe and found that both of the new Mag's would not even seat into the gun! I was really P'd -off and was going to send them off to S&W in the morning and request two new replacements be sent out - but then I figured they'll probably just send me two new ones that are exactly the same.

After studying the Mag's for a few minutes I figured I'd just fix them instead of the hassle of returning and exchanging. I had to tighten up the base of the Mag's in a Vise with wooden jaw protectors (the bases were not sitting flush with the sides), file off the excess metal on the bottom and de-burr. OK, so now the Mag's would move up into position but would not release when the Mag. Release was pushed. I worked on properly shaping & polishing the engagement notch and had to de-burr that as well. Bottom line was that after a little over an hour I got them to function correctly but this is just plain wrong!

I would bet that S&W does not even make their Mag's anymore and just farm them out to the lowest bidder. That in it self would not have bothered me so much if they actually worked! Many Company's do the same these days. The M41 is no cheap entry level gun and you would think they would at least sell quality made Mag's for it.

So now I got them functioning 100% but will say that if I knew this morning what I know now I would have found some vintage Magazines instead. They probably would have cost even more but at least they would have been better quality and worked properly.

I remember reading some rants about the M41 Mag's a few weeks ago here on the Forum but did not realize this was not an isolated incident. So anyone looking for some spare M41 Mag's might want to consider buying older ones in good shape.

Rant over.........