New bottom metal on your rifle, AICS mag style, is an excellent option to add. The "drawback" if you want to call it that is the price of magazines, especially if you want to have a few preloaded and ready for use. There is no doubt a quality magazine for use in matches or while hunting is paramount for reliability, but for general range use you can easily spend a lot of dough quickly.
There are many threads concerning if the Ruger Scout Rifle poly magazine will work, it will not in it's unmodified state. I do not know about the Ruger metal magazines, however as the metal ones are about the same price as the already known to work offerings, might as well stick to the regular magazines by Alpha, Accurate, AICS, etc.
Enter the Ruger poly magazine - very affordable ($30.00 - $35.00 at the time of this writing), and being of a synthetic material it's easy to modify to fit the AICS style bottom metal using sandpaper, a file, or preferably a rotary power tool of some sort.
First a quick look at the Ruger 10 round magazine, a very sturdy piece with plenty of gripping "girth" and recessed areas on it to improve grip. The mag also comes with a dust cover. Shown below compared to an Alpha metal magazine. The Ruger is a stagger feed, just like the Alpha which makes it shorter than other mags, and it's just a little longer than the Alpha by about a measly 1/8". The biggest part of the modification is the magazine "lips" on top, note the difference between the two:
Trying the mag in the well before any modifications, it will only go so far. The biggest hangup stopping it are the ridges that fully run around the sides of the mag, that was the first thing that had to be sanded down. At first I though going to the highest ridge to the top would do it, however on the 10 rounder, the ridges on the sides have to be sanded down to the middle ridge. The top ridge has to be sanded flush with the body of the mag on the front and back, and just the raised parts on the side to the middle ridge. Be extremely careful not to sand through the magazine body.
Now it will be able to be moved in more. Not fully seated in the picture, there is still some interference with the feed ramp and lips.
CONTINUED BELOW
There are many threads concerning if the Ruger Scout Rifle poly magazine will work, it will not in it's unmodified state. I do not know about the Ruger metal magazines, however as the metal ones are about the same price as the already known to work offerings, might as well stick to the regular magazines by Alpha, Accurate, AICS, etc.
Enter the Ruger poly magazine - very affordable ($30.00 - $35.00 at the time of this writing), and being of a synthetic material it's easy to modify to fit the AICS style bottom metal using sandpaper, a file, or preferably a rotary power tool of some sort.
First a quick look at the Ruger 10 round magazine, a very sturdy piece with plenty of gripping "girth" and recessed areas on it to improve grip. The mag also comes with a dust cover. Shown below compared to an Alpha metal magazine. The Ruger is a stagger feed, just like the Alpha which makes it shorter than other mags, and it's just a little longer than the Alpha by about a measly 1/8". The biggest part of the modification is the magazine "lips" on top, note the difference between the two:
Trying the mag in the well before any modifications, it will only go so far. The biggest hangup stopping it are the ridges that fully run around the sides of the mag, that was the first thing that had to be sanded down. At first I though going to the highest ridge to the top would do it, however on the 10 rounder, the ridges on the sides have to be sanded down to the middle ridge. The top ridge has to be sanded flush with the body of the mag on the front and back, and just the raised parts on the side to the middle ridge. Be extremely careful not to sand through the magazine body.
Now it will be able to be moved in more. Not fully seated in the picture, there is still some interference with the feed ramp and lips.
CONTINUED BELOW
