El Chapo

I know when I see AI edited nonsense and so does everyone else. Boggus was banned for this forum or he probably would be saying the same thing I am, that AI edited nonsense with no bearing on the question presented here is not helpful.

What I'd really like for you to do is stop posting AI-edited nonsense instead of sharing your actual experience, you know, kinda like everyone else who posted in this thread, including me.

The slide is supposed to impact the frame (guide rod actually) when the gun cycles. The recoil spring is not there to prevent this, it is there to store energy to push the slide forward. I'm not sure where you got the idea that the slide magically stops before its cycle with the right springs, but that is not the case.

The reason I'm asking is primarily to identify the feed lip design and dimensions, and if they're made by someone else, if they're similar to those. The brand on the bottom doesn't make them feed or determine when they release. FWIW I have a suspicion that Wilson Combat doesn't make their GI style mags either, but I have zero to back that up. It would be interesting to see a comparison though, because not too many people are buying GI style mags these days, so I wouldn't be surprised if there are much fewer manufacturers and designs than there are brands.

Does Colt even make magazines? I'm not a Colt fan so I honestly have no idea.

Yep, let's keep it an exclusive game that nobody from anywhere else wants to join for as long as possible. I'm sure that'll fix the problem.

I don't really care for stainless but the mags I'm using now are stainless because that's what was available. It's really just a vanity thing, I don't think either material is superior or works better; stainless is perhaps easier to keep clean because you can see when it's dirty. I don't think you'll see a difference in the feed lips holding up on stainless vs. regular steel, the heat treat probably matters more with regard to that. I have never really had a problem with my 1911 mags holding up, I did wear out a set of 9mm mags over a 10+ year period but I shot many thousands of rounds through them in that time. 45 mags have generally been good for me although after about 2012, I stopped shooting 45 completely except for wild bunch now. I have a set of Wilson Combat mags for WB and a set of Tripps. Both work in my gun, but I like that the Tripps have feed lips that hold the round for longer as the slide cycles, which is why I switched to them. I know some prefer other mags and I hope to try some others eventually. In USPSA, I used Chip McCormick mags from about 2004-2008, then I switched to Tripp Research mags and I have been using those since. When I started WB I bought a set of Wilsons because they were on sale and this year, after comparing them to my USPSA 45 mags that I have had forever, I got a set of GI style Tripps for WB and shot two matches with them over the last two months. My gun feeds with both but I think my gun feeds better with the Tripps because they release further forward. I loaned my gun and mags to another shooter last month and he shot the Wilsons and I shot the Tripps just so we didn't have to trade mags back and forth; neither of us had any gun related issues. I have not had a whole lot of problems with feed lip tuning in 1911s nor having them go out of spec, contrast that with 2011 mags that have a lot of problems feeding and mag tuning is required. Because of that, I don't know the feed lip dimensions that are ideal for 45 Auto, I haven't moved mine. In your case I'd measure all your mags at the front and back of the feed lips and set the dimensions, to start, at the smallest numbers you see among your mags as long as that one fed reliably. I bet you find that a few of your mags are a little wider at the front and release earlier, which in my experience, all my Wilson mags release earlier than I'd like, not because they are bent but because it's part of their design to have shorter feed lips than my other mags. If your tightest mag feeds reliably, just set them all to that number. You'll know right away if they are too tight because the round will hit the feed ramp too low and it may cause feeding issues. That's why I don't recommend going any tighter than that, just set them to exactly 1x your tightest mag and test fire. Tripp calls the situation you're experiencing "mag squirt" and some very minor adjustment to your mags will likely restore normal functioning for a long time. Write down the numbers that work and check them once a year and you'll be good.

Why should it be? Because that's the only way we're going to save Wild Bunch from dying. Considering SASS was born out of IPSC and founded by IPSC shooters, I think "disingenuous" is a bit of a stretch. That's a pretty despicable way to refer to someone who simply has a different preference than you. There is nothing fundamentally dishonest about preferring something other than what you prefer. There were no beavertails, bomar sights, ambidextrous thumb safeties, dovetail sights, frontstrap checkering, and a laundry list of other permitted modern 1911 features in 1913 nor in the Wild Bunch film. To suggest that is the standard, is, in a word, disingenuous. We have a modern category that is obviously not limited to what is in the film or what existed in 1913. This one small rule difference isn't going to be made different by that. Until you dig up an example of a 1911 with any of these features in the movie, I'll regard your opinion as simply uninformed about what we're doing at Wild Bunch matches, because plenty goes on there that is not in the film. I really hope someday we can apply some common sense for the rules for this game. We are doing ourselves a massive disservice by not trying to compete with other shooting sports, especially because the number of people who want to compete with any iron sight pistol drops more and more every day. The Single Stack division is, at present, about 5% of USPSA. If we can't all get along, we might find ourselves with a world that has neither one. A lot of CAS shooters don't care for wild bunch and a lot of match directors won't give us equal recognition. If we can't ally with other SASS shooters nor other shooters from other 1911 shooting sports, what do we have left? I think I know the answer to that.

What does "floating around in the breach" mean? It is not uncommon for 1911s to lock back with one round in the magazine, and for that, you may have to adjust the fit of your slide stop to the magazines you're using if that's happening. If your feed lips are out of spec, it's also not uncommon for a round to "squirt" out of the top of the magazine sometimes, although that is more common with 9mm magazines than 45. What exactly is it doing? If I understand your symptom correctly, it sounds like a feed lip problem to me. The easiest way to diagnose is to identify the problem magazines and compare feed lip dimensions.

They are removable and after you remove them, the spring will spew right out of the bottom of the magazine. They are also not standard GI length or there'd be no way to attach the basepad. Those are the magazines I use for other sports and they are NOT SASS legal.

The requirement is "magazines must be standard length" and other references to a "baseplate." Magazines that use slide on basepads are longer than normal magazines. Magazines that use screw on basepads are welded baseplate magazines and would be WBAS without the pads. The magazines I'm talking about, which are commonplace in ALL other types of shooting that use 1911s, do not have any kind of baseplate. If there was any rational reading of portion of the rules that let me use my Tripps with Dawson basepads, this whole thread wouldn't need to exist.

If they let me have a magazine with a slide off basepad, I'll make it out of bamboo if they want.

They don't have to be plastic. My dawsons are aluminum. If you didn't know what you were looking for, you wouldn't even notice them if they had a sheet of leather over them. There were no beavertails, Bomars, skeletonized hammers, dovetail sights, and a whole list of other things in 1913. It's just this one issue WBAS seems to have a hangup with.

I am lobbying to have them changed. TGs read this forum. Major calibers just have to be larger than .400. Minor calibers have to be larger than .355. You are correct about the commonly chosen cartridges. .40 S&W Single Stack mags usually hold 9 rounds, they are simply restricted to 8 in the mag after the start signal if they shoot major, but they can still shoot minor if they want and load 9. I've never seen someone shoot a 38 super but there's no rule prohibiting it. And there's no rule loading 185 grain bullets to 126 pf and running a .45 in minor if you want. Unlike us, they check your guns and chrono your ammo, so they don't care. I'm surprised the mix of minor/major has changed so much. When I shot the SS Nats in 2013, the ratio was far more toward the major side. Some people bring both and pick based on the stages; I've done the analysis and it's about 3% for me which isn't worth the mag capacity issue and slide lock reloads for the rest of the stage since the game is almost always 8 round arrays. The one stage at the WSSS where my (fixed) rear sight decided to come loose cost me way more than that, probably over 10 positions in the match results. I came back the next day and shot as clean as I could and a lot of As to try to make up for that! Modern magazines generally don't use a welded baseplate as you call them, most are open on the bottom so that they can be cleaned. Basepads can be used with either, the ones used with the welded style magazines are usually screwed on compared to the ones with open mags where they slide on and are retained by the spring and a plate with a tab. One of the most annoying parts of not being able to use modern magazines is that they are a total pain to clean out on the range, whereas I have brushes in my range bag to clean magazines. In the other divisions, I use mags that can be disassembled without tools and cleaned very quickly between stages. This is a major advantage, especially on ranges that have sand in the bays. CAS shooters probably never think about dust and dirt in feeding devices, but for WBAS, it can cost a shooter a whole stage if it jams your gun up good enough. My USPSA mags are Tripp Research with Dawson aluminum slide on basepads. If they'd change the rules, I could glue the same piece of leather on the bottom for the look and not have to deal with the flush fitting magazines. My hands are tiny compared to some bigger guys, I imagine they're pinching their hands on every reload without a thick basepad all to satisfy some rule with no reason for existing. My beef isn't so much with the material, but the thickness, and the requirement to use GI style welded baseplate mags. Nobody in their right mind is using those in any other kind of competition, they were superseded 30+ years ago by modern magazines. I maintain two sets of ancient mags for my WBAS gun. Right before our annual match here I shot USPSA SS Major with my WB gun, and while I didn't miss my fiber optic sight much (my all black one is the same dimensions), or even my magwell, the magazines are incredibly annoying.

USPSA multi-gun is essentially dead. The serious shooters are using other rules, not a good comparison. For whatever reason, people who enjoy that sport prefer not to use hit factor scoring. I don't know a single person who is shooting USPSA multi gun anymore and I haven't heard anyone talking about it in years, maybe a decade or more. Personally, I abandoned all forms of multi gun shooting outside of SASS a long time ago. I decided that stuffing shotgun shells into a magazine tube was not something I want to be timed doing. By "basepad" I mean something that actually makes a difference, not a 1/4" piece of leather. It helps, but it's not even remotely comparable to a modern magazine with an actual basepad. And just FYI, almost all of the major pf shooters there were shooting a .45 ACP. A few here and there might be shooting 40 S&W but it is not popular, I only saw one person doing it. The "Classic .45 ACP" distinction is not a USPSA category and I don't know why that box was even on the application. "Single Stack" is the name of the division, but it is 100% 1911 Single Stacks, no other gun is allowed.