Identification of Detachable, Internal Magazine

[brickie501]

'Bump' for any thoughts on my unidentified 'AR15' (style) magazines... the fact it doesn't seem to have been instantly recognisable makes me feel slightly better about not being able to identify it myself!

In the meantime, another question (with a little more to go on) if I may...

I've added a Madsen machine gun, or "machine rifle" in early terminology, magazine to my collection but don't know what sort it is. As an extremely long-running MG design, produced for many user nations, there were a lot of variations of magazine produced. To make matters worse for me, it may be in good used condition but mine has no obvious identifying features...



I've tried a few rounds (all 'drill purpose' / inert) for size, in an attempt to narrow things down:


L to R: 30-06, .303 'British', 7.62x54mm NATO.

The 30-06 is a definite possibility but there isn't a huge amount of 'clearance' to my mind. At the other end of the scale, 7.62 NATO is almost certainly too short. As an approximate 'median' of these two, .303 works; at least in small quantities. However, I believe actual .303 Madsen mags (as well as those for 8mm Lebel) had a much more pronounced curve to accommodate rimmed cartridges. One that definitely does NOT fit is 7.62x54R; because of the very pronounced rim.

So these serve to show the likely 'extremes', in overall length of cartridge, of chambering that it may be for. My current conclusion is that it is likely to be for either 30-06 (but only having one example stops me being sure whether the fit is actually too 'tight' to feed reliably in quantity) or one of the various 'Mauser' calibres (though I don't have any examples to try).

All of the above may or may not help much on its own... However, there seem to have been quite large quantities of very similar ones on the surplus market recently. Does anyone know which user nation(s) might have disposed of significant reserve stocks in the last few years? Any suggestions gratefully received as, in combination with my 'measuring', that may at least narrow the field for me!

[brickie501]

I wonder if a Mod would be so kind as to change the Thread Title to something like "Firearms Component & Accessory Identification Requests"... rather than create separate threads each time to request assistance, it seems like a good idea to re-use this one, but I didn't think about that when I created title

My collecting interests (mostly) centre around British military Small Arms & their accessories but, as you might have gathered by now, I often come across other interesting & sometimes unknown similar items

Its really helpful to have a resource like this with such wide expertise - so I really appreciate & thank you in advance for any identification / assistance as I continue using this thread to find out more about such things!

'Bump' for any assistance with the AR15 variant mags or more info on Madsen types.

...& a new question - No markings unfortunately, but does anyone recognise these (most likely) pistol cleaning 'rods'? In particular the 'twisted wire', 'corkscrew' ended one... its pretty distinctive, yet I've never seen one like it before:

[brickie501]

L to R: 30-06, .303 'British', 7.62x54mm NATO.

As there's a chance the following info, from an ID request I put on a Facebook page, might be helpful to others - I have been told this mag is a Portuguese 7.92x57mm one.

'Bump' for any IDs on other items by all the experts out there? Any help is much appreciated.