Leaving magazines full...does it hurt them?

B

brandon_h3

Moderator
I have heard a million different opinions on this, but does it hurt a magazine to leave it full? I have heard that using one or 2 less cartridges than the clip can hold significantly reduces the amount of tension on the spring. Any ideas guys?
 
Modern gunsprings have come a long way, in the last 30 years, or so. Yes, it'll wear 'em out. But, It'll take time. Wolff Gunsprings manufactures magsprings for most comman pistols, and they're affordable enough to change, every couple of years.
Rotate the stock. Four magizines will be perfect. Keep one loaded in the pistol, and one loaded as a spare, and rotate to the other two, in, every coupla' weeks.

Pat
 
You'll hear a few different pieces of advice here. Some say that the strain of leaving them fully loaded damages springs. Some say that periodically unloading them damages springs more than just leaving them loaded. Many will say the safest thing is to download them by a few rounds and leave them loaded. That sounds like the best bet to me, but I am not willing to sacrafice my capacity. I rotate my mags. The absolutest best thing to do IMHO, is to get a spare set of springs to keep on hand, especially for your valuable high-caps.
 
Top them off!

Change the springs every year or two if it will make you feel better - they're cheap enough. There is no reason not to have a full mag ready to go!
 
Rotate the magazines and the ammo!

I have heard of fully loaded 1911 magazines put up right after WWII, and when they were discovered many years later, they worked perfectly.

However, I like to test my guns and ammo and magazines to make sure everything works. I fire all of the ammo in all of the loaded carry magazines at least once every two months. Then I replace the magazines with different, clean magazines and new carry ammo. This way, I rotate through all the Wilson magazines, and I know that the magazines and ammo will perform without fail.

Magazine springs are inexpensive and easy to replace.

-Mk.IV
 
-1911 magazines from WW2 that were discovered loaded for over 50 years have been fired reliably, so obvioulsy being loaded over 50 years did not seem to matter.

- Springs are easy and cheap to replace, no big deal.

- What really fatigues springs is dynamic wear, (meaning loading and unloading in this case). Leaving a magazine loaded would possibly take more than the rest of your life to really damage the spring significantly.
 
Every Semi-Auto I purchase

I have AT LEAST 6 Mags for each semi-auto. I carry 3 normally and thus rotate the mags each month. I purchase new springs every 2 years and reinstall, but save the old ones for back-ups.
 
I think some people would rotate their magazines every ten minutes if other people wouldn't look at them funny.

My wife is an engineer. She and her engineering friends tell me that there is no such thing as resting a modern, well-made spring. What wears them out is compressing and decompressing (loading and unloading). However, spring steel CAN take a set if overcompressed or overextended. That's why it might be a good idea to download by one, particularly for long storage.

This might not be true of older magazine springs (those not produced by modern metallurgical standards) or poorly made magazine springs. But if your gun is a new one made by a reputable company, load the mag and "fahgetaboudit". If you're the worrying type, well then buy a quality replacement spring, load your mag, and then "fahgetaboudit". If it's going to be stored for a long time, download by one and sleep peacefully.

Sure Wolf wants you to believe in spring replacement and magazine rotation. Selling springs is their livelihood. The quicker you wear them out, the more they sell.
 
Excluding the whole issue of "junk", okay?

Consider the life of a valve spring in an automobile engine. Just for drill, figure 2,000 rpm is 1,000 spring-cycles a minute; 60,000 times an hour. And I've got some 270,000 miles on my Toyota. Saying 40mph average, just for the heck of it, that's some 6,500 hours.

Anyhow, is that enough cycles to suit anybody?

Why should decent-quality magazine springs "just lie down" on you?

:), Art
 
Back before I graduated to 44's, 45's and now back to a P32 and P11, I had two original mags for my 25acp Raven which I had kept loaded. Within a few years they were toast - the last round wouldn't come up far enough to feed. I still have the Raven and those mags plus aftermarket ones and thus maybe new springs would bring them up to snuff. But that experience leads me to rotate my P32 mags every couple days and to peviously keep only half the capacity in the 45 (P90) or recently to rotate its magazines every week.
 
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