There is a pistol concept floating around some circles (primarily among members of Primary & Secondary) that has been lovingly dubbed the Roland Special. Basically, the Roland Special is a highly modified Glock 19 that mimics race gun performance in a size that is still manageable for duty or even concealed carry use.

The man that came up with the concept was a US Army Special Ops vet with 26 years of service as well as a verified founding member of the Asymmetric Warfare Group. While his real identity has surfaced recently, and some have linked him to Delta as well, I am not going to out him and it would be appreciated to not do so in the comments.

The Raven Freya was chosen by Roland as a result of the large chute at the rear of the mag well while maintaining a reasonably low profile. I know other magwells were experimented with, but ultimately the Freya won out. From my shopping around I found that the Freya seems to have the largest chute out of the low profile Glock magwells currently on the market.

But why a magwell on a gun that may be carried?  When reloading a Glock there are times when you rush the insertion and catch the rimmed portion of the case on the lip at the rear of the gun making that reload slower than it should be. This little hangup can cost you tenths of a second or foul that reload entirely.

You can see the offending lip inside the magwell here.

This is the issue when reloading I am speaking of. The dummy rounds are the fancy Glock branded ones, $20 for 50 dummies and a case isn’t too bad of a deal IMHO. I keep several in my range bag for failure drills as well.

The magwell itself is machined from solid aluminum and has a type III hardcoat anodizing applied. The design has been floating around for a while as the Sentinel Concepts magwell and has been well proven.

In the package you get some basic instructions, two Allen wrenches, the magwell, a grip plug, and the two required screws with thread locker applied.

Installing the magwell on the pistol is a straight forward and easy process. Start with an unloaded gun (make sure to remove all ammo from the work area and check the chamber). Raven Concealment offers versions of the magwell to fit most models of Glocks, they do not offer other makes or models currently.

Slide the plug into the butt of the gun until it bottoms out, then secure it in place with the entirely threaded set screw. Only tighten it until the screw is flush with the back of the grip or just below the surface.

Installing the rest of the magwell is just as easy. Notice the slight lip at the top of the bottom portion, this will hook onto the grip of the gun and you will swing the magwell to mate up with the plug using the front portion as a pivot point.

Once the magwell is in place it is merely a matter of securing it to the plug. There is a socket cap style screw that is left over, this is the only one with a “head” on it. Just tighten that up and instalation is done.

The magwell doesn’t add too much length to the pistol and it is still sort of concealable with it installed. An added side benift of the magwell is it provides a bit of a shelf that allows people with meaty hands to get better purchase on the gun.

The biggest benefit is the removal of that offending lip that will foul a smooth reload. While the magwell isn’t going to make you faster, it will allow you to reload a bit faster than previously and still get the gun back in action.

Here you can see exactly how little is added in terms of length. If you wanted to run a mag extension Raven has a list of those that will fit, sadly TTI is not on that list but there are several others that are.

Getting out on the range to put the Freya through its paces, I set a 12″ plate up at 10 yards and broke out the shot timer. I want to say that I am NOT a competition shooter and have only been working on reloads recently, there is a ton of room for me to improve. Normally if I am pushing myself I can complete a slide lock reload in about 1.8 seconds from shot to shot with SEVERAL hangups, but if I slow it down a bit I am more consistent at about 1.9 to 2 seconds with a rare hangup now and again.

Once I installed the Freya my times changed for the better. I was able to push the reload speeds for consistent 1.8 second slide lock reloads and even had a few dip into 1.7 second range. I had almost no issues getting the mag into the gun as long as I didn’t screw up how I gripped the mag.

The Raven Concealment Freya magwell is competitively priced with an MSRP of $94.99 and is available for the compact line of Glocks like the 19 and 23 in either Gen 3 or Gen 4 as well as the full-size frames like the 17, 22, 34, or 35 in Gen 3 or 4.

If you want to know more about the Raven Concealment Freya you can visit their website or several online retailers that have the part in stock.