Compressed magazines???????How long?

J

jimsbowies

New member
My custom 45acp gets "fed" with several different types of magazines....Shooting Stars, McCormicks and Wilsons...all work just fine...thank you very much....don't want to start a thread on that topic again.

The question is: I carry the firearm either in the car, on my person or into the house...it's never too far away:D

And, I shoot regularly...at least monthly and then usually pop off 500 rounds or so.....

I have eight of these "high-end" magazines.....how long can I keep those bad boys "stuffed"...loaded without fear of some damage to the tensile strength of the springs?
:confused:
 
Forever.

Springs wear out from doing work (cycling). If you compress the spring and leave it compressed (NOT overcompress; that will quickly ruin it) it will retain it's "springiness" for years and years, given that it is a quality spring with proper heat treat.

Think of it this way, how quickly do the leaf springs wear out on a car that is left sitting in a garage as opposed to a car that gets driven every day?
 
Loaded Magazine life

Ayoob and Hackathorn recommend keeping mags loaded for a couple of months at a time to reduce spring fatigue. I have kept several magazines loaded for years and have not encountered a problem. The previous post makes sense to me(action =wear).
 
Most magazines are ruined the first time you compress them. They just aren't made for that.



:D


(Hey, I'm just responding to the thread title!)
 
Brian right.

Proper spring for the application will last for generations in the designed compressed state.

Sam
 
Thanks guys

That's kinda what I'd been told for decades....just wanted to know if there was a new "philosophy" out there that I was unaware of....

So, the old axiom of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" applies here??
 
A few years ago Gun Digest carried a story about a guy who brought a loaded magazine home from World War II. He finally had a friend fire it in the early '90s. The rounds all fed and fired perfectly.
 
If it was compressed between ....say a piece of steel and steam roller..I would say it would be over 1 ft long when it was done...probably around 5" wide......OH< OH> sorry...I misunderstood the question...:D
Compressing springs wont hurt them at all...just like stated above.
Shoot well
 
The only exception is some of the new after market kits that increase the mag capacity by one round. They use a different follower that goes down closer to the bottom, also different springs. The springs use less coils (to save space) and supposedly better spring steel (?) I converted six mags with these and noticed the springs would weaken sufficiently that the slide was not locking back after last round in a few days left loaded. Stll fed all rounds, just didn't lock back.

Also read true story of and 84 year old Peral Harbor veteran who took his service .45 down from the closet shelf and killed an intruder breaking into his bedroom. Story goes that mag was left loaded for about 40 years....... gun apparrently cycled OK.
 
Rocklobster: that's a good one. BTW: it takes about 45 minutes to change the hammer spring in a HI-Power, so I guess that means we have a perpetual motion machine!
 
There's a common belief that, if you keep a magazine loaded to capacity too long, the spring will be sprung. I have heard and read enough accounts by people I believe to be credible to now think that this is an old shooter's tale.

An acquaintence tells me that he was once "required" to go out with his S3 NCO and blow through all the obsolete ammo loaded into mags in the armory. (Man, I NEVER got tough duty like that!) This included BARS and M3 "grease guns" and M1 carbines and JMB alone knows what else. No mag failures, and this stuff had been loaded up for decades.

There was a company selling a super-dooper high cap mag for AR15s back pre-ban--the mag body was in two pieces, sort of, and if you loaded it with 30 rounds and then extended the lower half the spring would allegedly be uncompressed enough that you could bury it in the backyard for decades, dig it up when TSHTF, shove it back closed, and it would be fine.
Or, stuff more rounds in and use it as a 45 rounder.
I dunno, maybe back in Ye Olde Days maybe someone used lousy steel for mag springs. If you're taking your gun out and exercising it every month or so you're good.
 
I ain't seed all the armories in all the world in all the years there have been armories, but none of the one's I've seed ever had any mags loaded layin' around. :eek:

Thet wuz kinda frowned on in my time in the Big Green Machine.
 
I ain't seed all the armories in all the world in all the years there have been armories, but none of the one's I've seed ever had any mags loaded layin' around.
Click to expand...
Shoulda said "arms room."
Thet wuz kinda frowned on in my time in the Big Green Machine.
Click to expand...
Which "BGM" were you in? We had loaded magazines in the arms room during at least one of my tours at 2ID.
Also, the person who told me this story was entitled to tack "COL, USMC (RET)" behind his name--I have no idea what policies and procedures are or were for Uncle Sams Misguided Children.:p
 
Well, you SAID armories, but I 'heard' arms room, so we were on the same channel. I dunno what them Jarheads do, I wuz in the Army. mid 70s. We didn't have ammo in the arms room.

That was stateside in 'peacetime', so it may well be that others had loaded mags in their arms rooms.
 
Only the shadow knows. That's why you should have a truckload of mags. I had several Colt mags that I kept loaded for over 5 years and they worked just fine.

In my travels (walking the earf in a tactical manner to seek gunfu knowledge) I have seen that 7 rounders have fewer failures than 8s. MasterChingChingKaPow, Wise Man in Tejas and the Elf Armourer of Nebraska all concur.

I recommend Metalform or Les Baer, IMHO.
 
Some time back, here or on some other forum, this topic was addressed by an engineer who designed springs for a living. His response, in techie jargon, was essentially what Brian said. A new spring will loosen up a little with initial use, but after that the only thing that will fatigue it is the action of expansion and compression.
 
My nightstand gun is loaded 100% of the time. The magazine get rotated out every other month, but is used almost every week when I go shooting. I've kept this routine for awhile and my mags are still in really good shape.
 
I have various WW II souvenirs of my father's. He's always kept the magazines loaded. I know some of that stuff hasn't seen the light of day since the late 1940s. I took stuff apart, last summer, for the first thorough cleaning in decades.

Well, when ya got "stuff", ya gotta check it out, right?

Everything worked. Luger, P-38, Lilliput, Mauser, Walther, 1912 vintage 1911...Everything.

In other words, if it ain't some junky magazine, it'll last longer'n you will.

Art
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top