12 Rounders as carry magsBack to Kel-Tec stuffI first liked the idea of the finger rest for the P-11, then noticed that the P-40 +1 finger rest did not stick out quite as much at the tip and liked the feel of that better. But the P-40 +1 extension is not legal to just put on a P-11 mag, because if you do so so you have just made an 11 round post ban mag. So I made some spacers for them (which I now think that even the spacers are not legal, more on that here). After taking a closer look at the way the stupid capacity ban law is worded I now believe that the P-40 mag even with the spacers to limit it to 10 rounds could still be argued as being illegal, I was back to the P-11 finger rest or possibly making the spacers more permanent. Then I noticed that if it were not for that huge finger rest/bottom plate on the bottom of the S&W pre-ban 12 round mags, they would be about the same length as the P-11/P-40 mags with the P-40 +1 extension, and even shorter than the P-11 mag with the finger rest!! I could have just modified the S&W bottom plate, but decided to leave it alone in case I ever wanted to sell it for some reason, I could put it back to stock. I also could have just used a flat base plate taken off of a P-11 mag, but they stick out to far in the front (of course you could always trim that too). So I got a P-11 finger extension, and trimmed it to be a flat bottom plate. I also had to do a little bit of trimming to get it to fit the 12 round adapter sleeve from KT for the 12 round magazines. This gave the most flush bottom plate for the mag. Now I have 12+1 rounds in a package that is actually shorter than the 10 +1 rounds you get with the P-11 finger rest. Here are some pics showing the height comparison of some different mag setups:
What a normal 12 round base plate looks like with the KT sleeve 
click to enlarge what you get if you just replace that base plate/finger rest on the 12 rounder with a flat one off of a P-11 mag 
click to enlarge This is my trimmed P-11 finger rest as a flat base plate for the S&W 12 round mags 
click to enlarge a comparison of the last 2:
A couple of pics to give you an idea of how much trimming is involved. The first pic is a P-11 finger rest on a 12 round mag with the KT sleeve on it. You can tell what needs to be trimmed by looking at where they touch and where the gaps are. The second pic is a before and after of what I trimmed off. I of course had to make the bottom flush by cutting off the finger rest portion with a dremel, then using a grinding wheel to flatten it more. Then sanding to a decently smooth surface. (I did go a little too deep a few places with the dremel, opps...). You can see I had to cut off the side "rails" (arrow) and also had to bring the slit a little further up (red line). You could also trim the sleeve to fit the finger rest, I just chose to do it this way...
And finally a comparison of the complete pistol with the mags in. The straight edges were not moved for the three pics, and in each of them the sites were up against the top straight edge all the way (as shown in the top pic).
| ||||||||||
