Wondering what Red Base or other color codes on SW magazines means - specifically I have seen 4006 Red Base and some with yellow followers. Have also seen other magazines with red base - some painted red (Walther P38)

I don’t 100% understand your question. But if it is about the color of magazine followers then I understand that they change the color when they do an update to the follower. That way you can tell the generation of the follower and thus how old they might be. For example the latest 10xx follower is white. The previous generation was yellow. There were other colors I believe.

My understanding is that the used surplus 4006 magazines with red bases (available from various sources over the past few years) were used for training purposes by the California Highway Patrol. The base color differentiates them from the duty magazines with the standard black bases.

There is no functional difference between the two. I also suspect that the color difference kept the training magazines from walking out of the range...

Sent from my SM-G930U using Tapatalk

Thanks for response


Actually 2 questions



Baseplates:


The ones I have are factory 4006 SW molded red baseplates with SW marking in molding - appear identical to black molded baseplates except for color.


Have also seen painted baseplates on other magazines (Walther) with metal baseplates


Range use makes sense, especially if painted, but SW would have had to make these special for Range Use (CHP?)


Followers: Have seen both yellow and blue followers on 4006 magazines

Blue is the latest 40 mag follower color.

John

I bought a 5 pack of used m&p40 mags with red baseplates. Could these be chp training mags as well?

__________________
3906,659,4006,5946,4013,3904.

At the risk of summoning the Devil.

Glock used to make entire Blaze orange training magazine for this purpose.

Identical in every aspect, except for the color.

Later they made Blaze Orange base plates for the same purpose.

They also made a Sky Blue base plate fore use with Simunitions.

Lots of people and places use colored base plates for all sorts of reasons, such as training only, range property or personal property. There's even one company that sells their pricey CNC aluminum bases in colors.

Sounds logical--keep grit etc from range work, out of duty
mags. OTOH--it's nice to shoot your duty mags occasionally,
to know they still feed.

AFA different colors on the CHP 4006TSW mags--some have
red paint or nail polish (?) on the front bump (that keeps it
from fitting into a S&W 9mm gun). Guessing that was marked
to show the bump was checked for fit, and good to go? Some
show file marks, on the bump...

It is my understanding (from a CHP armorer) that when the guns were originally issued they were issued with six magazines. Three were "carry" magazines and were typically only shot once a year. The other three were "range" magazines and those were the ones that got dropped in the goop, stepped on and otherwise abused during other range use. They were differentiated by the color of the magazine follower.

We originally bought the orange Glock base plates for use on the training magazines, but found it easier, and cheaper, to just paint the black ones. For three of the yearly training/qualifications we would use the training magazines, and for one session they would shoot their duty ammo out of their duty magazines.

For the original 4006 that CHP had there were 6 engineering changes. They all had yellow followers. The changes were the bumps on the side, feed lip design,follower design,etc... these changes were marked on the front at the bottom of the mag.Plain, I, II, III, IIII, + . A couple of years before the TSWs came around the accuguide mag came in. With blue followers.these had engineering changes too. Hence the red dycum on the front.the TSWs tolerantly were much greater than the old 4006 and mags would get stuck. So, some 60000 mag were sent back to smith to be retrofitted. The red butt plate is for training so ofc. Can drop them while training and not damage their black bottoms. Average ofc. 50 rounds a month times 12 years

__________________
viking

The magazines that were included with the turned-in CHP 4013TSW I bought had red base plates in them.

.

__________________
Waiting for the break of day

My CHP 4006TSW came with red base mags.

__________________
Pine_Worker
Ex-LEO, NRA Life

Interesting!

I have never seen red 40 s&w mag followers.

John

Oops! Guess I remembered wrong.

Must be staying up too late.

I found my original post from 3yrs ago.

I stand corrected.

__________________
Waiting for the break of day