Recoil reducing springs.
- Thread starter utvols
- Start date
No, the recoil will not be affected at all by replacing the springs.
One of Newton's laws (maybe the first) says for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Your hand must ultimately equal the force of the bullet leaving the barrel, etc. minus what is spent getting the pistol moving backwards. No way to change that. What would lessen recoil on your hand is to have a heavier pistol which requires more energy to start it moving rearward.
Now. What stronger springs do is decelerate the slide and prevent it slaming in the slide stop. This is a good thing for the longevity of your firearm. The spring absorbs the recoil by gradually increasing the resistance before the slide hits. Of course as the the spring is loaded it is pushing backwards on the pistol by an equal amount but the slide isn't hitting all at once and making a sudden stop. To understand this it might help to envision the pistol without a recoil spring. Boy would that slide ever slam the frame.
It's sort of like sitting down on a cushion on the couch. It's doesn't make you weigh less but it makes it bump less. (not really a great anology) but i hope you get the idea.
Pigpen
One of Newton's laws (maybe the first) says for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Your hand must ultimately equal the force of the bullet leaving the barrel, etc. minus what is spent getting the pistol moving backwards. No way to change that. What would lessen recoil on your hand is to have a heavier pistol which requires more energy to start it moving rearward.
Now. What stronger springs do is decelerate the slide and prevent it slaming in the slide stop. This is a good thing for the longevity of your firearm. The spring absorbs the recoil by gradually increasing the resistance before the slide hits. Of course as the the spring is loaded it is pushing backwards on the pistol by an equal amount but the slide isn't hitting all at once and making a sudden stop. To understand this it might help to envision the pistol without a recoil spring. Boy would that slide ever slam the frame.
It's sort of like sitting down on a cushion on the couch. It's doesn't make you weigh less but it makes it bump less. (not really a great anology) but i hope you get the idea.
Pigpen
Pigpen - Here's a thought on this. If you could bear with me while I journey into the land of the hypothetical *grin*. The "equal and opposite" is happening on the slide, then after the slide reacts, through friction, on the frame. Only after that does the reaction move to your hand. If a gun could be made that had a frictionless slide and that slide could travel as far as needed to spend that reaction force, then I don't think your hand would feel any recoil at all. Ok, now that I'm done with hypothetical nonexistant guns lets move on to a more practical world. IF the way your hand feels recoil is by the slide acting on the frame then anything that absorbs the force of the slide prior to it's interaction with the frame (when it slams to the rear) should reduce the amount of recoil felt by the shooter. Right? So it would seem to me that a higher tension spring would make the slide spend more of its force to compress it, which would in turn cause the slide to slam into the frame with less force, which would then in turn cause the force of the recoil to be lessened. I don't know that a few ounds of difference in the spring tension is enough to actually do anything or if this is just a mind exercise that doesn't have much practical use, but it is my thoughts on the subject.