I believe that some previous posts here and/or on the Yahoo Detonics Collectors board have described how some upper brass in the company who thought they "knew it all" had changed the feed lip angle from the John M. Browning design (18.5 degrees) to 21.5 degrees, figuring that an extra 3 degrees would help the feeding. I guess you could say that it helped feeding alright... according to the headgunsmith it helped cartridges to start feeding prematurely (during the rearward impact of recoil; i.e. via inertia) rather than waiting for the slide to come forward and strip the round for feeding at the proper time. This can result in a malfunction, particularly on the last round. The smith said that this doesn't happen to everyone, (obviously not for you either). But it happened for a large enough percentage of customers, who then sent their guns back in for repair. Drove him nuts! He could never get the management to change back. Changing the tooling would not only be expensive, but would also be tantamount to admitting they made an error in judgment, (which he said they would certainly never do). So anytime a gun came in for repair, just to make sure there would be no further magazine related problems, (even if the customer didn't complain about that "certain kind of problem"), the smith would handform the feed lips back to the original angle. During the forming process the geometry was such that he was also able to lengthen the feed lips a little bit, which he said also helped in the smaller 45's. If a customer on the phone described that "certain kind of problem", he would just have them send the magazine(s) back, and fix the problem. It's my understanding that at Detonics USA he's had new magazine tooling created to duplicate the dimensions he used. I've been using some of those new magazines in my old Combat Master and they work great. I've also heard that Sid Woodcock, co-designer of the gun, has tested the new mags and gives them his approval. I guess the smith knows his stuff.
...Deeton