Leaving magazines loaded, weaken spring tension???

I don't know about other models but have a Glock 21 13 round magazine that I left loaded for 3 years. Thats right, 3 years. I didn't intentionally do it, because I use several other magazines that I regularly use at the range. Well I wondered this myself "concerning the topic" and shot off all the rounds in the 3 year loaded magazine. They shot flawlessly.

Whatever they did in glock magazine springs they did it right.
 
Wow, I am suprised to see this thread come back up. Have you tried that magazine again, or did you only use the three-year-old loads? In other words, have you used it since and found it problem free?
 
Just to put things into perspective:
Tomorrow I'll drive 500 km to my family. For the engine that'll mean 5 hrs at 2000 rpm. Each valve spring will be compressed every second revolution, or 5 x 60 x 2000 / 2 = 300,000 times. Roughly a thousand times per mile. So far the valve springs in my car have been compressed and released about a hundred million times.

Changing valve springs is not on the inspection list. They'll be good for another one or two hundred million compressions.

And people are worrying about magazine springs that will be a compressed and released a few hundred or thousand times at most... :confused:
 
If you read the FAQ on the Wolff (Gunspring) site, you get a slightly different story. As the cited article suggests, when you push springs too far, problems can occur. But the Beretta rep quoted didn't address some of the increasingly common events in magazine usage.

This is from the WOLFF FAQ section: http://www.gunsprings.com/faq#Faq5

Magazine design and capacity also affect the longevity of the spring. In many older pistol designs, maximum capacity was not the always the goal such as with the 7 round 1911 Colt magazines will last for years fully loaded. There was room for more spring material in these guns which reduces overall stress and increases the usable life of the spring.

More recently higher capacity magazine have become popular. These are designed to hold more rounds with less spring material often in the same space. This puts more stress on the spring and will cause it to fatigue at a faster rate. Unloading these magazines a round or two will help the life of the spring. Rotating fully loaded magazines will also help the problem somewhat but it is not always practical.​

I'm a big CZ fan. I've had a bunch of them. Witnesses, too. And other clones. Back during the mag ban period all you could get were the 10-round mags (unless you were lucky and stumbled on some pre-bans.) The 10-round mags seem to run forever, but the 15 (and now, 16, and 17) round mags seem to do less well. Why? Well, for one thing, the 10 and 15 (and 16) round mags use the same springs... Could it be that the higher capacity mags are pushing springs past their limit?

Rotating mags doesn't save springs -- it just spreads the wear out over more mags over a longer period. Why not just use a couple, and replace the springs more regularly? (Seems like a trade off, actually.)

Until I hear from somebody with good metallurgy credentials, who works with springs, I'll pay more attention to folks at Wolff on this topic than anyone else.
 
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Leaving them loaded won't wear them out. I shot a bunch of AR mags (pretty cheap ones too) which had been left fully loaded for about 6 years, fired fine.
 
Twenty years....no problem

In the military, I personally used mags that had been loaded more than twenty years with zero problems.
 
This always worried me a bit while using my 226 loaded for home defense for long periods of time, so I started using a .38 revolver for that purpose.
 
Kreyzhorse said:
Can we put a sticky on this with the title "Leaving Mags Loaded Does Not Effect Spring Tension."
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It's not that simple. It depends on the mag and the mag design. For standard capacity mags it probably won't ever be an issue, but for many high-cap mags it CAN (not WILL) be a potential problem. Check out Wolff Springs (www.gunsprings.com) FAQ area and see what they say.

This has been discussed many times over the years here on TFL -- with input from people who work with metal applications (like Metallurgists), and a couple of engineers and technicians in the aerospace industry.

The experts say that spring life CAN be shortened when a spring is compressed (or stretched) to (or beyond) it's design limits. Many mags, when fully loaded are NOT pushed to that limit -- but others might be. Down loading a round or two for long-term storage is recommended by Wolff Springs, but they say just keep carry mags fully loaded, and check them from time to time at the range.

Just working a spring won't damage it much, even with high round counts, like seen with auto valve springs (which may cycle millions of times over the car engine's lifetime) -- unless they pushed too far when compressed (or in other applications, when stretched).

A staff member here, also an engineer, and familiar with both handguns and air guns (many of which use springs), has done tests using recoil springs and has test results that confirm these assertions. Here's a link to his tests -- springs weakened even though they weren't worked (i.e., cycled) -- just kept compressed: https://thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=557865&highlight=magazine+springs Read through this link -- it's well worth the time required.
 
Walt can't seem to leave this alone.
As a rule, leaving magazines loaded does not hurt them at all.
If it does, there is a design flaw somewhere. Springs should not be stressed to their design limit.
 
Ok here ya go with the WWI magazine story....shortened considerably....I was given a 1911 that was loaded and not been out of the holster ( embossed on the face MG Company 131st infantry) I think that was the regiment number as I stupidly gave the holster to a friend. The holster, pistol (made in 1913) belt and mag carrier were included. The pistol took a week to get out of the holster and was pitted badly on the exterior. I removed the loaded magazine as well as the two in the pouch...this was about 1995. I fired the three magazines in the pitted 1911 some 70+ years after being loaded. The pistol was blasted and given a parkerized finish I later traded everything except one lanyard loop mag. I still shoot that mag in my 90% 1911 made in 1917 and the mag functions properly.
 
Leaving Mags Loaded Does Not Effect Spring Tension.
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It definitely affects spring tension. At least it has in every magazine I've tested.

THAT SAID, so far I haven't tested one that the spring tension was weakened enough to affect function.

I recently took a mag from my first test (it ran for 4 years and the mag was fully loaded for that entire period) to the range and it worked fine and locked back the slide on empty. But the measurements clearly showed that the spring was shorter and weaker at the end of the test than it had been at the start.

I've been running another test for about 3 years and the intermediate results show that the springs in all mags left loaded have both shortened and weakened but since the results so far seem to be pretty similar to the first test, I suspect that the shortening/weakening won't be enough to affect function.

The second test is being run on several mags to compare the effects of their being left fully loaded, partially loaded, and left empty but cycled. So far, being left fully loaded has resulted in the most weakening and the most shortening.

Here's another test that compares leaving mags loaded vs. using them at the range. The tester doesn't measure the spring strength but compares them only by how much their length has changed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVC-83QW5L4

Here's another example of comparison between mag springs between mags left loaded vs. unloaded. Again, only spring length is compared. This particular tester did note that function was affected.

https://youtu.be/vsiv_5YZTYI
 
Bill DeShivs said:
Walt can't seem to leave this alone.
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You have the same sort of problem, Bill, except you never offer any evidence to back up your claims or assertions. Except to tell us you make springs for knives and have owned a lot of guns. (That's called "arguing from authority" and it's considered bad form in this sort of discussion.)

If you'd read what I wrote you'd see that I basically said that most mags springs will likely never be an issue if left loaded. But I made a point of NOT making a broad generalization that applied to all mag (or recoil) springs -- as I know there are exceptions.

Bill DeShivs said:
"As a rule, leaving magazines loaded does not hurt them at all. If it does, there is a design flaw somewhere. Springs should not be stressed to their design limit."
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If all gun designers wanted the mag or recoil springs in their guns to last forever, and if spring longevity was a universal design goal, you'd be right. But that obviously isn't the case. Sometimes the designers have to use less metal in a smaller space to make a gun do what it's intended to do. And in those cases, springs become a renewable resource. By design. (That was the case with the Rohrbaugh R9, probably the smallest 9mm semi-auto in production at the time, with a recoil spring that had a recommended service life of 250 rounds.) I think Remington bought out Rohrbaugh -- so we'll probably see that design again.

You read JohnKSa's test results some time ago, and at the time you seemed to suggest that the springs in question must have been poor quality. I think JohnKSa addressed that point pretty directly at the time.

Others here should read that link if they haven't already done so.
 
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I am in the camp that it certainly could, especially for double stack magazines.

For myself I will make sure that any magazines I use for SD purposes will have the magazine springs changed at least every five years. That will cost me a few bucks a year which I consider cheap insurance.

People often complain that HK pistols are large for their capacity compared to the competition. HK's reason is they do it to make the magazines more reliable and durable and they design and sell a lot of pistols for military contracts. Even so I read where an engineer from HK still recommends changing magazine springs every five years for magazines kept loaded to capacity all the time.
 
Sigarms- what if you replace your good springs with bad ones?
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Much much more likely that I would be replacing somewhat worn ones with perfectly fine new ones. I also test any magazines at range after I replace spring and periodically.
 
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