What should the clearance be in my magazine?

[MattyG]

I have measured the AI AX magazine to be 2.975" long and was thinking .020" clearance was enough.... I loaded a few dummy rounds to this COAL and rocked them in the mag every which way and could not produce any bind....

What have other people found reliability wise?

 

[P7id10t]

Both brands of mags I use are 2.820 inside. On the DPMS mags, I cannot load longer than 2.810 or I have FtF. On the others (brand unknown) I have loaded to 2.816 without problems. However, on the unknown set, I do have to be careful in how I load the rounds into the magazine.

 

[BobinNC]

I have measured the AI AX magazine to be 2.975" long and was thinking .020" clearance was enough.... I loaded a few dummy rounds to this COAL and rocked them in the mag every which way and could not produce any bind....

What have other people found reliability wise?

Matt,

Your on the right track. Mag clearance is very bullet dependent. For example, I can run Hornady A-Max's (and most other plastic tipped bullets) very close (0.010") to the OAL of the mag box because they are very uniform in overall bullet length.

Sierra SMK's on the other hand the OAL of the bullet (measured ass to tip) vary as much as 0.015" bullet to bullet, but are still very accurate. This is a by-product of how the various bullets are made. I think your 0.020" is good save distance.

 

[MattyG]

Sounds good. I am running 208 AMAX's and they are VERY uniform compared to my 175 SMK's.

I cannot load 178 AMAXS beyond 2.910 COAL since they are seated in the lands at that COAL but the 208's are LONG and don't seat into the lands until i think 3.010 or something like that.