Pride goes before the fall and all that.  I decided to check a couple of the small sidearms I had not done any maintenance in a while and one was a regular carry piece.

Guns were taken apart, cleaned, lubricated, reassembled and checked for function. No problem, smooth as heck. Then I look at the spare magazine and figure, hey, why not a bit of oil? So I unload one round, two rounds and… Maraca! rounds rattling inside the mag. I tilt it and the ammo falls free with no pressure from the follower and the spring. Of course, I have to do the smart thing and bump the bottom of the mag against the workbench and sproing!

So now the follower is doing something it was not designed to do like protruding and being stuck on the magazine lips and I am not feeling like the smartest person out on South Florida.

Disassembly, fighting with the follower to get it dislodged without screwing the lips, polishing the not so nice shaving of plastic I managed to make on the follower. Then I looked inside the mag and there was some sort of congealed mixture of dirt and gun oil about less than quarter of the size of a grain of short rice stuck to a corner. I doused with cleaner and used a dental pick to remove it. Re oiled, cleaned and assembled everything back. Perfect function.

Seriously, it ws barely bigger than a speck and yet managed to stop the follower and be a major malfunction in waiting. I’ll be rechecking the rest of the magazines in the next few days for giggles and to avoid invitations from Mr. Murphy.

When was the last time you check your mags?