A couple of years ago I bought a Beretta AR-70 rifle for the reference collection. This was before the availability of replacement magazines for the rifle. Because of the total lack of spare magazines in this country people came up with ingenious ideas to modify existing magazines to allow them to shoot there rifles. I find it interesting to see how they did the modification. You never know about the future and what it holds for available magazines.

For those of you that may not know what an AR-70 rifle is, here are a couple of pictures of the weapon.

When I bought my rifle it came with a modified AR-15 magazine. So this is my first example of magazine modification.

What was done was to weld a piece of aluminum to the front and side of the magazine. Then they attached a locking notch on the rear of the magazine. The strip that was weld on the front allowed for positioning the magazine in the front of the magazine well for proper feeding. This was had fitted after it was welded on.

A couple of close up pictures of the conversion. You will notice that the side spacer was welded on one side one. Even doing this the magazine worked correctly.

You can also see that no magazine stops are present on the side of the magazine.

Later I was able to obtain original rifle magazines. This is what an original AR-70 magazine looks like.

This close up shows the magazine stops and what the magazine latch block looks like.

A close up review of this magazine shows four components for the  magazine body. The right and left sides of the body, the wrap around upper support assembly with the feed lips incorporated into it as well as the stops that are pressed in. The final part that was added was the magazine latch block of the rear of the magazine.

Pete, a friend of Gun Lab, sent this AR-15 magazine modification. This is a very nicely done conversion. It allows the magazine, with a bit of work, to be converted back to its original design. What was done with this magazine was to make a sheet metal housing to fit around the original AR-15 magazine to allow it to fit and operate in an AR-70 magazine housing.

You can see in this picture that the housing was hand fitted to the rifle.

You will notice that with the fitted housing that the front of the sheet metal has been machined away to allow proper fit into the rifle as well as allowing for proper lock up in the front of the magazine well.

Here are a couple of pictures showing all the magazines together for a better overall understanding.

As with all magazines that had been modified for use there is a certain amount of hand fitting that goes with the project.