PM40 Magazine plastic flat baseplate trim?

[Joe L]

I bought a PM40 used and it had the extended base plate with the standard mag but no flat base plate. I ordered the flat mag base plate for carry, it arrived this week, I tried it, and there was some interference at the base of the frame. This interference prevented latching the magazine without a swat to the bottom. Too tight.

I cleared it up easily by taking about 0.070" off the plastic base plate, now I have a tiny gap when the magazine is retained by the mag release and the mag latches in place easily. Fits perfectly now. Easy to latch yet looks good.

Is this normal? I was surprised that I had to modify what appeared to me to be a stock base plate. Are there variations in the magazines or in the base plates? Perhaps I have an oddball combination of parts?

Joe

[jocko]

I think ur Ok with what you did, hard telling why it didn't match up correctly. Maybe that polyjmer base plate is not really designed to fit like the steel base plate does..

[TucsonMTB]

Yep! That's normal. The standard PM40 flush fit mags have metal base plates. If you installed a plastic base plate from Kahr, it was probably designed for a CW40, which features with a plastic base.

I have both a CW40 and a PM40. I thought I might like the plastic base better on on the PM40. So installed the base plate from one of my spare CW40 mags. Like you, I found it necessary to sand off material from the top surface to make the magazine latch into the PM40.

[jocko]

nice info tucson

[Joe L]

Thanks, gentlemen. I thought I was ordering a metal flat base plate but I received a plastic one. After fitting it up, I kinda like it better than the flat metal one on the PM9 anyway. I will post some pics later just in case this comes up again.

On the Kahr site, the metal base plate is shown as a part 038PM4. What I received had that part number on the sack but it looks like a 038CW4 and 038P4 and 038K4S. I trimmed the lip off the front and smoothed everything out and it fills the gap from the bottom of the magazine to the frame perfectly. It is about 1/2 finger width too short but will conceal better this way than with the mag finger grip or with the 6 cartridge magazines, of which I have two to carry.

[Joe L]

Here is what the modified base plate looks like, in combination with a Hogue Handall Jr. trimmed for the P40 so that the one finger groove would be far enough down from the trigger guard to allow good clearance for the middle finger.
http://joelynch.smugmug.com/photos/i-HtJdpzF/0/M/i-HtJdpzF-M.jpg
Here is a close up.
http://joelynch.smugmug.com/photos/i-bJX8Dfs/0/M/i-bJX8Dfs-M.jpg

[TucsonMTB]

If you can find some 600 grit Wet-or-Dry sandpaper, you can achieve a finish on the ground down areas that matches the surface on the rest of the base plate. To my eye, the results justify the effort. YMMV ;)

[Joe L]

Yep, I took TucsonMTB's advice and put some 600 grit to the plastic mag plate and this is the finished product.
http://joelynch.smugmug.com/photos/i-9tfTSNs/1/M/i-9tfTSNs-M.jpg
Joe

[Joe L]

Sorry about the sloppy cut on the Hogue slip on grip in the photo above. I will clean it up as well. So I guess what has happened here is that the metal base plate shown on the Kahr site is not sent if ordered. Instead the plastic one used on the other 40 cal pistols is sent and it can be easily modified to work fine on a PM40.
Joe

[crazymailman]

Looks great, Joe. I had cut down a baseplate off one of the extended mags,(visible in my avatar) but like your work better.