4506 mags with metal bottom plate?

[preventec47]

Is there a conclusion or summary to the advice on magazines
that new 4506 owners should know about?

I think SW now offers the brand new mags for about $42 each now.

What about the 4506 magazines that have orange followers
and a steel bottom plate instead of a plastic bottom cap
and the current black followers in new mags ?

I believe somewhere in the evolution the followers were yellow.
Is that right ?

Put another way, are there any magazines or components
that should be avoided in terms of reliability and related
safety of use?

 

[retired2006]

I checked into this some time back, and was told that the latest and best mag's were the ones with the black followers and the plastic bottoms. The mag's with the metal bottoms were the original mags for these guns, and if I remember right, they had issues with the metal bottoms coming loose, and releasing the contents of the mag.
Maybe someone else will comment and correct me if I am wrong.

 

[18DAI]

Every 8 round S&W OEM 45XX series mags I used in my 4506-1 worked fine.

The 8 round mags with red follower and metal base plate were early 4506 no dash mags, IIRC. The only OEM mags with metal base plates I have currently are 645 mags with metal followers. These work in the 4506 as well.

The only mags I've ever come across for the S&W 45XX series which did not work were some Pro Mags I picked up at a gunshow. Regards 18DAI.

 

[BUFF]

The metal floorplate S&W .45 magazines were made for the Model 645. They had sheet metal followers. They were held in place by one or two (I forget which) very small portions of the floorplate edge that were cut and bent somewhat forming little tabs. Hard to describe verbally. The very first S&W .45 ACP magazines, for their first .45 ACP semiautomatic.

When doing a fast reload, one could slap the magazine into place with the palm of the support hand and if you failed to take your palm away from the bottom of the mag and you moved your hand forward much, the floorplates would sometimes slide forward off of the magazine body, thus ejecting the spring, follower and cartridges. Sliding the floorplates forward while depressing the two little cut and bent flaps was how you disassembled the magazine to clean it.

If it has a yellow follower, the follower was replaced.

The change to a plastic floorplate was part of the upgrade to the M-4506.

 

[ColColt]

When my 4506 was new(1990) it came with two mags and both had the plastic floor plate and orange followers. Somewhere soon after I bought it, I acquired another magazine but it had a yellow follower. From another thread I was told that doesn't matter and you can replace the orange or yellow followers with the black ones-something I'm doing soon along with new springs.

One thing I remember early on was that S&W had a recall on the grips due to the possibility of a dropped discharge. They replaced those with another that had a "dimple" on the bottom right about under where the mainspring plunger is located. I have two sets of grips-the straight ones and the curved variety and they both have the dimple.