The Caldwell AR Mag Charger will change the way you handle ammo and load your AR-15 magazines. From ammo box to full magazine in 10 seconds. No kidding. I have done several projects using the Mag Charger with great results. I have about 20 training mags I like to load the night before a big range trip. No more cut fingers or torn skin.
The stripper clips we know from military M-16 ammo were invented by Paul Mauser in 1889. At that time, it was mankind’s single greatest invention since the Egyptians made beer and the pyramids. The stripper clip made loading an order of magnitude faster, and when you put a bunch of them in a cloth bandoleer, it is like Christmas morning for troops in contact.
Box magazines and stripper clip guides gave stripper clips and bandoleers a new lease on life, and they still fill every ammo supply point in America. Over the years, I shot Lake City brand ammo and I was spoiled by this quick loading combination, but it still cut up my hands to load 10 magazines or more.
In the 21st century, we can load AR magazines even faster thanks to the Caldwell AR Mag Charger, which accepts 50 rounds of .223, 5.56 or .204 loaded ammo. (Why 50 and not 60 to load two 30-round mags? Because ammo comes in 50 round boxes!) Boxed in any size, or even loose, ammo easily goes directly to the Mag Charger’s slightly over-sized feed box.
Three easy steps:
- Dump 50 rounds of ammo
- Insert any size magazine
- Rapidly operate plunger, loading 5 rounds per stroke
Align the bullet tips with the holes in the mag charger and dump a whole box of ammo into the Caldwell AR-15 Mag Charger. The ammo is automatically aligned. Then lock any AR magazine into the Mag Charger and work the plunger in and out, loading five rounds per stroke as the spring loaded ammo carrier automatically advances, aligning the next five rounds until the magazine is fully loaded. The entire process of filling the Mag Charger and loading all 50 rounds takes less than 15 seconds! There is an ammo transfer tray included to invert ammo that is positioned in boxes with the bullet tips oriented down.
With just a little practice, you will be fast as the guy in the video. Until you learn the feel of it, there may be a few operator-caused misfeeds, but they are easily corrected. The construction of the Caldwell AR Mag Charger is a little bulky, but it’s not over-built. Ammo in 50 round reloading boxes drops right in and saves even more time. Childhood experience with the game Connect Four is helpful but not necessary.
Even if you just grab rounds and drop them into the feeding slots, it is still faster than stripper clips or hand loading. You can literally just grab a handfull of bullets, tilt the mag charger on its side, and dump them in bullet first – they will sort themselves out and the thing works perfectly as long as you load in increments of five. If the row is not full, the rounds may fall over and jam.
Read the instructions first, because they have some important tips (or at least watch the video). When the charger is empty, don’t let the loading block shoot out! The only thing I would change is that I would design an attachment to hold the charger tray on to the mag charger with a better system than the stolen hair tie that I am using now.
If you by ammo one 20-round box at a time, you won’t need this product. If you buy .223 in bulk packs and reload using 50-round boxes and you train with a dozen magazines in a range session, you should not load without a Caldwell AR-15 Mag Charger.
