69

By Duane ThomasThe combination of the 9mm Parabellum car-

tridge and the 1911 auto pistol has recentlybecome quite popular. It has much to offer: theunbeaten trigger pulls of the 1911, with the lightrecoil and extremely affordable ammunition of the9mm. Problem: Most such guns don’t work reli-ably. This may be traced to the design of the maga-zines. The solution is the single-stack 9mm 1911magazines made for Springfield by OEM manufac-turer Metalform, and sold (naturally) through Dil-lon’s Blue Press (on Page 57, to be specific).

The 9mm Parabellum is considerably shorter inlength than the .45 ACP cartridge around which the1911 magazine was designed. When the breech-face hits the base of the cartridge in the feedingcycle, pushing it for-ward and (ideally) outof the magazine andinto the firing cham-ber, the cartridge nose-dives. With a longerround like the .45, thebullet nose hits theangled feed rampbefore it’s had time tonosedive much andeverything proceedsfrom there beautifully.With a 9mm, the dis-tance from the maga-zine to the feed rampis so long that doesn’talways happen. Theclassic malfunctionwith a 9mm-cham-bered 1911 is very dis-tinctive: The roundwinds up driving straight into the feed ramp and itstops, partway out of the magazine.

To get around this problem, the classic 1911single-stack 9mm magazine has a spacer in back.This moves the cartridge forward in the maga-zine, so it will hit the feed ramp before it’s had achance to nosedive enough to cause a problem.At least that’s the theory. In reality, this systemjust doesn’t work very well.

I recently was trying to debug a 9mm 1911with serious nosedive/failure-to-feed issues. Itried everything, new barrel, new extractor. Noth-ing worked. But people deeply into the 9mm1911 kept saying to me, “Springfield magazines,Springfield magazines.” Examining this design, Idiscovered it’s quite different than the classicspacer-at-the-rear approach. The Springfield/Met-alform 9mm mag was actually designed by GrandMaster Rob Leatham. According to Derek Dibbleof Metalform, Rob came up to him at the SHOTShow with a magazine he’d kind of jury-riggedup, and said to him, basically, “9mm 1911 maga-zines suck. Why don’t you build this instead? Thiswould work.” They looked it over, they tried it,

they liked it, they built it. It works. These are themagazines currently supplied with all Spring-field’s full-sized 9mm 1911s.

In the Leatham/Springfield/Metalform single-stack 9mm 1911 magazine, rather than having aspacer in back, the round inserts all the way intothe mag just like normal with no spacer. But inorder to decrease the front-to-rear length of thetube down to 9mm length, Robbie figured out thatyou could accomplish the same thing by groovingthe front of the tube, like the grooves you see onthe sides of 9mm/.38 Super/.40 S&W/10mm 1911mags. This also allows us to take the very upperfront of the mag tube, where it’s been grooved in,then bend it back out. This in effect forms a sort of“pre-feed ramp,” an angled piece of metal that

catches the front ofthe 9mm cartridgebefore it can nosedivevery far at all, andfunnels it up and intothe chamber.

My previouslymentioned 9mm1911, with standarddesign magazines,when hand cyclingloaded rounds throughthe gun had a seriousexample of the so-called “chunk-chunkeffect” as roundsslammed hard into thefeed ramp and then(usually) chambered.When firing the gunwith live ammo it wasthe same thing; some-

times it cycled, sometimes I got a nosedive mal-function. With the Metalform magazines, by con-trast, and changing nothing else (I even reinstalledthe original barrel and extractor) the gun handcycles loaded rounds so smoothly it feels like theaction is closing on air. Literally, the only way youcan tell you’re cycling loaded rounds instead of justexercising an empty gun is the sound.

Man, you’d think that Rob Leatham guy actual-ly knows what he’s doing.

Since switching to Metalform 9mm maga-zines, the only malfunction I’ve experienced waswith one magazine that actually came from thevendor (not Dillon) with a crushed-in feed lip.Those who think gunwriters get specially select-ed, perfect products, take note. Though I straight-ened that feed lip with a pair of parallel jaw pli-ers, still I wasn’t able to restore the mag to fullfunctionality. I donated that particular magazineto the garbage can, and my 9mm 1911 hasworked perfectly ever since.

So if you have a malfunctioning 9mm 1911 andcan’t figure out what to do, I have two words for you:Metalform magazines. You’ll thank me later.

Metalform 9mm MagazinesMetalform 9mm Magazines

DP

March 07 Blue Press 56-72 1/16/07 12:16 PM Page 69