Again, since it's been scientifically proven you shouldn't have any problem at all posting a link to the study
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Magazine springs
- Thread starter BMS
- Start date
Again, since it's been scientifically proven you shouldn't have any problem at all posting a link to the study
Different ballpark.
Load the car to it's max GVWR and leave it parked for one
year, and tell me how the springs do.
Walt Sherrill
Member
gonerydin said:What good is an empty magazine? JS
Good to have if your fully loaded mag (kept that way for years) ever goes bad on you?
Just having a few spare magazine springs might be a good idea, if you feel you must keep mags fully loaded. That's relatively inexpensive.
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When my Gen 2 Glock 23 was retired w/me in ‘97 I left the gun & mags loaded in the safe, untouched, for about five years. I took the everything to the range to practice for an upcoming LEOSA certification and everything worked fine. I’ve had my LCP for several years, leave the mags loaded and have never had a problem w/them either.
Walt Sherrill
Member
Old Cop said:
Did you have a department armorer who periodically inspected your weapons and replaced things? Most police departments do. And I'm not sure they'd always tell the officers if anything was changed. (Because they knew that most officers weren't "gun people" and weren't all that interested.)
Dpris, an LEO (also, I think, retired) in response #20 had a slightly different experience than you. He had one failure -- but it's not clear that it was a spring-related failure. (It was a "feed" issue, however.)
His department's armorer changed out springs when he felt they were getting too weak or too compressed. And I'm not sure that every officer who had a spring change knew about it; I suspect many didn't care. You probably did.
As I've said throughout this process, not all magazines and magazines springs work the same way, and not all mag springs will fail. Ditto recoil springs. But some will, and some of those that fail won't fail from cycling alone.
About cycling: when you bend a piece of wood (or a piece of spring steel) almost to it's breaking point -- i.e., almost to its "yield point" -- and then release it, releasing it doesn't cause additional damage. Releasing the tension prevents damage.
But bending that wood or piece of spring steel to the point of almost breaking is when the damage can occur. Wood, springs (and almost all other physical materials, even rubber or glass) behave in the same way. But these different materials have different yield points and different ways of behaving when they pass that point.
Bend a spring to it's elastic limit, and tiny micro-fractures in the metal's structure occurs; easing up on the spring stops the damage that deep compression causes. Pushing down can damage a spring, but letting it relax will reduce the likelihood of damage.
Cycling isn't what wears out a coil spring -- deep compression does it. With a leaf spring it's extreme bending that causes the wear.But bending that wood or piece of spring steel to the point of almost breaking is when the damage can occur. Wood, springs (and almost all other physical materials, even rubber or glass) behave in the same way. But these different materials have different yield points and different ways of behaving when they pass that point.
Bend a spring to it's elastic limit, and tiny micro-fractures in the metal's structure occurs; easing up on the spring stops the damage that deep compression causes. Pushing down can damage a spring, but letting it relax will reduce the likelihood of damage.
Pushing a spring to a point that doesn't approach the spring's yield point won't hurt a thing, and springs that aren't "over-compressed" will likely outlast the gun. Some spring designs just don't push their springs that far -- but others do.
When a spring reaches it's yield point and you leave it at that point, more and more of the metal will slowly give up the ghost, and the process of "softening" will take place. And it will eventually accelerate. Most magazines quit working after a point, and they are replaced or the springs are replaced. (They generally fail to function before it can be used enough to make the spring break.)
That you've been able to keep mags fully loaded for years is great. But not all magazines are Glock magazines. S&W may have long-wearing ones, too.
For a number of years I was a big CZ enthusiast. Still am, but I like a lot of other guns, too. When I first started using CZs, 10 round mags had just become the standard, due to the Clinton mag ban, but a few guns still came with pre-ban 15-rounders.
The 10-round mags used the same springs as the 15 rounders, and later, after the ban was over, the same spring were used in the 16-round mags. The biggest change was in follower designs, which allowed the springs to compress a bit farther than with the 15 round mags. (The 10-rounders had cuts in the mag body and indentations that kept follower from dropping down far enough to hold 15 rounds.)
Do you think the spring life of 10-round mags was the same as a 15 or 16 round mag? For a given number of rounds fired, the springs in a 10 rounder will cycle a lot more frequently than the spring in a 15 or 16 rounder when firing the same number of rounds. But, for some reason, the 10 round mag springs seemed to last forever, while some of the 15 and 16 round mags would sometimes weaken and not function as reliably. That was MY experience with CZ mags, and it was an experience shared by others. It wasn't a big problem, and it didn't happen a lot, but it happened.
Why was that? The 15-16 round mags were cycled far less often for a given number of round fired than the 10-round magazines. But their springs were compressed much more deeply...
Do you think the spring life of 10-round mags was the same as a 15 or 16 round mag? For a given number of rounds fired, the springs in a 10 rounder will cycle a lot more frequently than the spring in a 15 or 16 rounder when firing the same number of rounds. But, for some reason, the 10 round mag springs seemed to last forever, while some of the 15 and 16 round mags would sometimes weaken and not function as reliably. That was MY experience with CZ mags, and it was an experience shared by others. It wasn't a big problem, and it didn't happen a lot, but it happened.
Why was that? The 15-16 round mags were cycled far less often for a given number of round fired than the 10-round magazines. But their springs were compressed much more deeply...
I've said it before and I'll say it again: cycling alone isn't the sole cause of spring wear.
Given your experience, I wouldn't hesitate to continue doing what you've done with your Glock. But if you switch to something with a much greater capacity, that still fits in the grip, or you decide to use a subcompact gun with a much smaller slide, you might have to replace some springs more often than in the past.
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