4 .25 mags don’t fit properly under scope, grooves too close
Finally received my extra .25 R3M magazines late last week and was looking forward to filling all 4 of the the slots under the scope rail with magazines.
Unfortunately… if you try and put all 4 magazines into their grooves you quickly find out they don’t all fit.
Fitting two mags is no problem as long as you leave an open groove between them. But if you try cramming all 4 mags on the rifle the grooves are too close together and the magazines interfere with each other and pop the neighboring magazine out of the retaining groove. That means they aren’t retained to the rifle very well and can fall out somewhat easily.
To fit all 4 mags under the scope rail properly in the current grooves the mags would need to be smaller in diameter– not an option, then they won’t function in the breech properly. So, I see a couple of options for making things work…
1. Lengthen the “window” under the scope rail and move the grooves farther apart so 4 magazines can fit properly. That would require a few other changes to the rifle though regarding the dovetails to retain the scope rail.
2. Slightly stagger the magazines; rather than having the detents at the barrel centerline, perhaps offseting the detent to put the first mag slightly to the right side, then offset the second detent to the left side, third to the right side, etc. This would pick up some clearance as the magazines would no longer be aligned on their centerlines and would require less space. With staggered detents all 4 mags might just fit under the current “window” under the scope rail. I need to take measurements and whip up a drawing to see if this would work.
3. Simplest option… reduce the number of magazines grooves under the scope rail to 3.
I’m considering removing the scope rail and barrel shroud on my rifle and milling a new groove and center detent so the gun can properly capture 3 magazines or simply adding offset “dimples” per option #2 I gave above. Unfortunately either option would leave bare aluminum or require that I strip and reanodize the two components. For now I’ll leave the rifle as is and leave one magazine in the breech, two under the scope rail, and the remaining two in my pocket. Not what I had in mind but it will work.
Ed, you may want to have a look at this issue and consider a change for future production such that all magazines are properly captured by the grooves.
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I received my three magazines at the beginning of this week. I was very disappointed to find out they all don’t fit under the scope rail of the gun.
Took some measurements last night… there isn’t enough room to stagger the mags and get 4 of them to fit properly. They would still interfere with each other (the .25 mags anyways.)
Only remaining option that I see at this point is to machine a new groove and detent in the middle so there is room for three magazines. Of course, doing so is going to leave a nice track of bare aluminum unless I decide to strip & reanodize the two pieces– and I would want to do that for surface hardness reasons where the magazine detent balls are going to be frequently sliding in and out. The new anodize job will probably not match the rest of the gun… so there’s another can of worms.
For now it looks like I’m going to leave the rifle as is. 😐
For future production runs I’d really like to see Ed make a change; the two ideas I’d currently suggest is to either lengthen the “window” under the scope rail and space the magazine grooves further apart so 4 .25 magazines fit properly or leave the “window” as is and machine a 5th center groove so the.177 & .22 rifles can store 4 magazines and the .25 rifles can store 3 magazines. Either option would make the rail suitable for storing all magazines from .177 through .25 caliber.
Please post your fix here, I would be interested in modifying mine
I was wondering if that was the case but I didn’t have a .22 R3M sitting around to check. 😆
While I can understand Ed wanting to have parts commonality between multiple calibers of rifles (it makes sense to only make one scope rail and one barrel housing rather than caliber-specific ones) I’m a little disappointed that he didn’t choose a configuration that worked for *all* calibers and magazines. If he simply added a 5th center groove then it would work with all rifles– 4 magazine capacity for .177 and .22, 3 magazine capacity for .25.
Going to take measurements tonight and see if the offset dimple method will work. I could live with adding a couple extra dimples to stagger the magazines as it wouldn’t leave a huge bare groove as milling a new center groove would and I could still fit 4 mags on the rifle.
Yeah the rail is made for .22 mags, the .22 R3 fits 4 under the rail.
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Just received my two 22 cal mags today from Tony. They sure work nice on mine. Evenly spaced and with 4 mags it’s got about a 1/8 inch space in between the mags.the scope rail on the earlier 22 R3m don’t have all the slots milled in either.