Mags with a Message: Noveske Johnny Mag
This is a rifle that AR aficionados will recognize: it’s a Noveske. John Noveske built a company that builds some of the most out-of-the ordinary “ordinary ARs” that there are.
The Noveske ARs are evolutionary more than revolutionary, but they’re built to a very high quality standard. The company has kept to the standard after the untimely death of John Noveske in an auto accident this past winter. Which brings us to the rifle in the picture — or one part of it, anyway. If you look closely at that rifle, you’ll see a mark on the magazine. Noveske’s trademark.
The Noveske iron cross is emblazoned on this magazine — a MagPul PMAG — for a reason (and the other side has the Noveske “flaming pig” trademark, for that same reason). These limited-edition $40 Noveske magazines, which they modestly call the “Johnny Mag” after their founder, don’t just perfectly accessorize your Noveske AR. You see, they also help to take care of John’s children. Of that $40, all goes into a trust for John’s kids.
Somehow, $40 doesn’t seem all that pricey for an AR mag, now, does it?
John Noveske, 1976-2013. Honor the legacy, support the posterity.
4 thoughts on “Mags with a Message: Noveske Johnny Mag”
Kevin was a former Special Forces weapons man (MOS 18B, before the 18 series, 11B with Skill Qualification Indicator of S). His focus was on weapons: their history, effects and employment. He started WeaponsMan.com in 2011 and operated it until he passed away in 2017. His work is being preserved here at the request of his family.
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see you later gotta go git me one of those mags.
ok, back; how hard is it for magpul to do this? could they do it on a custom basis for a large premium? could the
In injection molding, the tooling is expensive. Hot plastic is injected into a metallic die that is a female mold of the part, with core(s) as necessary. Now, they could design a mold so that there is a sort of “personalization tile” that is removable and interchangeable, and offer this as a service for volume customers.
As an exercise, I ballparked the tooling for a mag using this calculator at over $26,000. The tooling for a 3 x 3 x 0.15″ personalization tile would be at least $16k. (And we haven’t asked a pukka injection-molding toolmaker or engineer if my brainstorm would fly — there might be reasons it wouldn’t. And these are tools for generic (probably styrene, ABS) not the better plastics now in use for applications like mags. So, you can’t make these things economically unless you’re prepared to make a whole s-load of ’em.
One expects that CNC’ing a tool that’s a variation on an extant tool would be less costly. It’s not quite like murders (“after the first, all the rest are free”) but most of the work is in the design (which has to be adapted to the particular plastic compound used) and so if you have a working design it’s probably less costly to duplicate it than it is to make one sfrom scratch.
Disclaimer: not an industrial or production engineer here. Just a curious dabbler who’s bought and read most of the recent undergrad textbooks and is fascinated with repairing and making stuff.