Video Transcript
Why Base Pads? (00:00)
If you don't have base pads on your Glock magazines, you should consider having some. And there's a lot of reasons for this. First off, they give you a bunch of extra bolts in your magazines. And second, they make reloading a little bit easier. So if you're running something like a Sidecar and you have a traditional, for demonstration, I will show a traditional Glock 17 magazine or a Glock magazine 19—I don't know why you would wanna do that, if you're already carrying an extra mag, carry the extra bullets—but you have your 17 round magazine. You have this awkward little slant in the mag that Glock has done for the harsh angle of their frame. When you go to index the magazine, you find that this angle isn't super intuitive with your hand. If you replace it with a squared-off base pad like this plus two, what you end up having is something that fills the palm of your hand a little bit easier. And it's something that we've been doing for a long time. And if you're carrying an extra mag to begin with, why not have it carry a couple extra bullets?
OEM Mags (00:55)
Now I know there's aftermarket magazines out there, like the PMAG 20s, and there's some other ones out there. And what we found in shooting a lot of the aftermarket Glock magazines is we're just going back to the OEMs. They're much more reliable, or at least more reliable in general. And they're not that much more expensive than the other magazines out there. Now, if you want some of the, you know, 22 rounders, 21 rounders out there that are aftermarket, go buy those, try them out and use 'em. But for carry, we're sticking with our OEM Glock magazines, and those work really well.
Recommended Base Pads (01:25)
So what base pads do we recommend for those OEM Glock magazines? Well, we sell two here at T.REX ARMS. We have the OEM plus two that Glock has been making for a very long time. They don't require having a different spring. You literally just drop it right on there, and you're good to go. If you wanna go with a little more spice and you wanna have a little bit more bullets with a plus-five or some of the other ones out there, they generally come with a more powerful spring to enable reliability with the magazine, cuz you're, you know, lengthening the entire magazine itself and you're gonna need a little more sproing in the spring to keep the gun running.
Removing the OEM Base Pad (02:00)
So let's actually talk about putting these base pads on a couple of Glock magazines. So we've got the Arredondo right here, which has the plus five in the spring and the little tool that we're gonna use, but we'll get into that later. First thing, we're gonna have to remove the OEM base pads on the Glock 17 magazines. Now, if you don't know, there are these little ears on the sides that have to be depressed inwards of the magazine to get the base pad off. But typically, if you're using a strong enough punch or the Glock tool, in some cases, you can ram through the small little hole, the little sort of retaining pin from the little plate that's holding everything together. If you deactivate that and shove the mag with enough force forward, that is actually going to defeat those little ears and pop the pad right off. If you're having trouble, you may have to get pliers. I don't necessarily recommend it to actually pinch the body of the magazine while also pushing on the pad itself. There are also some cool little tools out there that make removing base plates super easy. But unless you're doing hundreds of magazines, I'm not sure why you'd wanna go spend a bunch of money on one of those tools.
So punch into the base pad. You defeat that. As you can hear, the little plastic plate has now moved, probably shifted down to right here. We will see, and then we push forward, and I have the plate off. And this is where I want to keep my thumb over the top. So the entire thing doesn't go shooting to the ceiling, to the moon. And it actually didn't because the plastic plate you will see is jammed down here in the side, and it's actually kind of catching on the spring. That's fine. The entire thing will still come out like so.
Installing the OEM Glock +2 Base Pad (03:54)
So, to begin with, we'll do the OEM. So we have the follower on the spring. You're not gonna have to worry about that. The little pad that came outta the magazine and the pad won't need those anymore. So now we have the body of the magazine spring goes in, follower facing forward, obviously. The base pad is going to sit in such a way that it is flat. So we are going to position this insert piece. This goes inside of the pad. It's the, basically, the new little retaining plate is going to be positioned so that it is flat on the top. And then we are going to slide the base pad on from the front, and we're good to go. Then we check the magazine to make sure everything's in working order. Yep. And we are good to go. So no extra spring has to be added. And now I have that plus two that's squared off pad. And the entire thing is OEM made by Glock, which is pretty rad.
Installing the Arredondo Glock Base Pad (04:56)
Now for the Arredondo. So again, removing the pad on the Glock magazine, shoving all the way down, pushing forward. Oh geez. It will pass. And this time… Launched all the way over there and the pad's over there. But the good news is we don't need those anymore because we're using—actually no, I do need that. We're gonna be using the big spring for the Arredondo. So the follower on the OEM spring is gonna have to come off, pulls right off. Using the tool that comes with the Arredondo we are going to separate the base plate from the base pad. Now the overall design of how this is functioning is the base plate has these two little arms that come up inside of the base pad that clip into these indents. And that's what keeps the entire magazine together and the spring and all the guts from flying around and doing its thing. And I've never had to this day, I haven't had an Arredondo pop. I've had other mags and other extensions come off and the spring goes flying and the bolts all fall the ground. I have yet to have one of these mags fail. I'm sure they can at some point. I haven't seen it yet.
So we're gonna take the tool. We're gonna indent our two little teeths into the notches. And then, with a lot of force, it's gonna pop forward, like so. And now it could be separated. It does require a bit of force. The inside of the base plate from the base pad. So now we take the base plate, the base pad, and this is pretty, pretty cool. We are gonna position the base pad over the magazine because this actually goes on with the spring already inside of it. So we wanna get it all oriented correctly, base plate's going this way, small part of the spring, where the follower's gonna sit, is like so. So we've got the base plate and the spring prepped. What we're gonna do is we're gonna take the follower and we are gonna drop this in the most scientific way possible, straight down. Straight down into the front of the magazine. Boom. In position, like it should be. Now we take the spring with the proper angle to interface with the follower into the magazine. And this is pretty cool. I think you guys could see what's gonna happen. These little tooths and teeths that we were having to defeat earlier with the tool are going to clip into place in this once we jam it down into the base pad itself. First time I did this, I thought it was the coolest thing ever.
Done. Super foolproof design. The downside is when you want to take this apart for cleaning or working on it or whatever, you are going to need this tool. So keep it handy, put it in your Glock bag or whatever in your little Glock box or something, and have it ready to go to disassemble and you'll want one thumb over the edge to actually disassemble the whole thing and then get the mag apart. Or if you wanna, for whatever reason, go back to your traditional spring traditional base plate. But there you go. That's how you install the Arredondo and the plus two on your Glock 17 magazine. If you have any other questions on this, you can email us [email protected].