Question on replacement magazines for handgun

Thanks for the recommendation. I'm a big fan of Midway, I used to buy a lot of their supplies, and great luck with their "StarLine" brass. I visited them once many years ago while I was near Columbia, MO, shooting a match @ Chapman. Very cool place, back in the day.

When I checked their site for the Star mag, their site showed it out of stock.

Thanks again!

Mark

Would a spring change fix your problems? Seem they would be much easier to replace.

Yes & no. It might help, but a really big problem for the FireStar is that over the years, I seem to have misplaced all but one of my magazines during multiple moves, and I did have a misfeed the last time I tried firing it. So a new spring might help, but I'd certainly like to have more than one 6 round magazine.

The biggest problem is that it seems Star has been out of business for nearly 20 years.

Mark

Magazines are notoriously fickle and problematic, but when it comes to buying magazines for my Ruger Mini-14, I only bought them directly from Ruger (I had heard stories of counterfeits many years ago,) so I never bought any from a dealer, and have never had a problem.

Back before I bought my 1911 (in the late 80s,) I had great luck with Ramline mags for my Taurus, but I was always worried about the spring tension, it never felt as heavy as that of the factory mags, but I never had a failure to feed in many thousands of rounds. It had a very odd mechanism, a coil spring was riveted near the feed lips of the mag, and it pulled UP on the follower, allowing a couple of extra rounds, since there was no compressed spring under the follower. You could shoot it with the floorplate removed! I never had a problem with mine, but I had heard of a lot of problems from other people.

Mark

Thanks!

Beautiful pistol!

I’ve always had perfect feeding from my “Shooting Stars” 1911 mags, back when I was competing in bowling pin and USPSA competitions.

Funny how once you find something you like and trust, you never want to go to anything else. I’ve got an old buddy who won’t use anything but Wilson Combat mags in his 1911s.

Mark

Factory magazines are simply no longer an option for either. The most commonly available magazines for both are Meg-Gar or Promag. In the case of the Firestar, it appears that the only choice IS Promag, though I've seen references to "Tripple-K" but haven't actually

Triple K, located [or they were] in San Diego, iwas at one time really, really bad, and primarily existed as a supplier for Star, Llama and M1911 magazines intended for the Mexican market. No big surprise that much of their labor force, from the San Diego area, was Mexican as well.

They added a holster line in the early 1970s, some of which wasn't too bad. And they got some contracts for the Mexican military, whose inspection/rejection criteria was reasonably stiff, and their entire line improved as a result. Nowadays I wouldn't reject the idea of sourcing from them out of hand, but it's pretty much a last-possibility choice for me.

However, you're in luck with the Firestar. Magazines for them and most other Star/ FI Imports handguns are available from High Standard/IAC.

And if you can't get them from HS, give Joe Lowe a try.

The FireStar, not so much. It's quite literally a pain to shoot - Not comfortable at all.

Concur. I always thought the Firestar was okay to carry, less fun for practice- so I shot it enough to be familiar and confident with it, and that was about it. I traded it to a cop who found a Glock 30 was WAY too big for his hand...and really, too large for mine as well, but I gave it a tryout.

The old Star PD .45 worked well for me, but they're not common and pricy when found.

The biggest problem is that it seems Star has been out of business for nearly 20 years.

Firearms International, the longtime Star importer, has long been out of business, as has the Spanish manufacturer, Star Bonifacio Echeverria. But the remnants of those giants have combines as ASTAR, and there's still a Star/Astra informational presence on the web, much as with some long-discontinued classic sports cars or motorbikes.

True, there's not much out there for those of us who are fans of the Spanish copies of the Mauser C96 *Broomhandle,* and we do not get to look forward to new model changes every year or two.

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