Sten Magazine Mandrel

[stencollector]

I have many thousands of demilled magazines, mostly struck with a hammer or an axe on the body somewhere. I have, on an as needed basis, cut the magazine bodies short so they have a 5 round capacity, which is the maximum capacity here in Canada. I use these in my Sterling police carbine, and up to date, everyone has performed flawlessly. It would almost seem like the Sterling is more forgiving of the magazines than the sten.

[madkiwi]

I imported 4000 Sten magazines back in the early 2000's. All were near new, assorted British manufacture and from Finland where they obviously didn't see much use. I still have a couple hundred here if anyone is in need. I bought an Erb tube Sten Mk.V that was a total piece of crap. I sent it out to Paul Krogh in Colorado who cured all of it's problems with distinction. I refinished it when he returned it and still have and enjoy it. One of my few transferable guns.

I've never had a problem with Sterling magazines in my Mk.4/L2A3 and Mk.6 guns. Old and beat up or new in the wrap, they all seem to work perfectly every time.

I just ran across this thread when Googling "Sten magazine repair tools".

First off I couldn't believe I wasn't a member of this forum already, I had a C&R forever and had signed up for most collector boards.

Second, I just had John Andrewski build me a Sten Mk II from an unbuilt Wilson in-the-white receiver that I purchased last year. Got it back on Thursday, was at the range within 3 hours. Found that of the 12 magazines I had accumulated 7 had all sorts of issues. So that got me started on trying to figure out how to get mine right. Already found and ordered a Sten magazine gauge from Marstar, really hoping to find a repair tool set, guessing that may be a long shot.

I definitely could use some more magazines, if you still have some available please PM me and let me know what you would sell 6 for.

Mark

PS I had also purchased a Charles Erb MP40 receiver. John said it was the roughest Erb receiver that had ever been in his shop. But you wouldn't know that from looking at it now, he told me he had probably 14 hours just cleaning up the rough machine tooling marks. The gun is beautiful.