Silly Magazines

A Marlin Camp Carbine in 9x19mm uses the same magazines as a S&W 59 series pistol.

10 (ick), 15, 17 and 20 round magazines are available from Mec-Gar, assuming you can get their web page to work, which it wasn't at the time I tried to check on this.

It seems silly that the 20 rounder is so much longer than the 17 and only holds three more rounds.

 

Looks like 5 more rounds, at least, would fit, no?

 

They're built very differently internally.

The 17 rounder has a shorter follower and the top of the spring is designed to telescope inside itself; that's how it gets 17 rounds where S&W designed 15 to go.

The 20 rounder reminds me more of the S&W 15 rounder they introduced with the 3rd gen.  Tall follower, normal spring geometry, it just eats the space up inside.

 

 

The original Model 59 magazines only held 14, but S&W changed the baseplate from metal to plastic and let it sit a little outside the gun giving just enough more space for a 15th round.  When the 59 was introduced, it was a selling point to have one more round than the competition, the Browning Hi-Power.  By the time the 3rd generation guns came out, the competition was the Beretta 92 and they needed to have at least as many rounds as them.

I think Mec-Gar figured out the additional two rounds to have parity with Glock.