recoil springs for 1911's

S

skeet

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Good morning all. New person here for this form. I have a question about the recoil spring on the Springfield V10 pistol. What poundage did it come with? I can shoot factory or GI ammo but not my handloads. My load is 4.5 gr. of bulleyseye with a 230 gr. fmj bullet. What spring do you guys think I should get so I can shoot my reloads in this pistol.
I also have a Springfield model 1911-A1 that will digest anything I give it to eat. I do not know what poundage on the springs are in eather gun.
Thanks for looking
 
The same ammo, whether factory or handloads, may perform very differently in different pistols. That said, your 4.5/B'eye/230 FMJ load doesn't sound excessive, so the need for a heavier spring probably doesn't exist. If you are experiencing failures to feed/eject, a lighter/weaker spring might help matters, but I'd wait until the piece is well and truly broken in, before altering anything on it.

The loads on Alliant's website that combine 230 grain projectiles and Bull'seye list max charges of 5.0 and 5.7 grains. Unless your handload represents a "sweet spot" in terms of accuracy, you might try increasing your powder charge by 0.1 grain increments until function becomes reliable.
 
standard recoil springs are generally 16 pounds, many folks upgrade to 18 pounds for better cycling. if you use light loads the 16 should be fine.
 
g.willikers said:
Why guess, just get a multi pack of springs:
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Better yet, why guess? Get access to a chronometer and compare your handloads to some generic factory 230-grain loads, such as Winchester USA or Federal American Eagle.
 
I like using the heaviest spring as long as ejection is reliable. It applies to all guns, not just 1911. The recoil is felt better and least peening on the gun. It is just my rule of thumb.

-TL
 
tangolima said:
I like using the heaviest spring as long as ejection is reliable. It applies to all guns, not just 1911. The recoil is felt better and least peening on the gun. It is just my rule of thumb.
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The usual rule of thumb for 1911s (at least) is to use the lightest spring that reliably returns the slide to battery. For a full-size 1911 using standard, 230-grain ammunition, that's generally a 14-pound spring (possibly 12-pound).
 
Aguila Blanca said:
The usual rule of thumb for 1911s (at least) is to use the lightest spring that reliably returns the slide to battery. For a full-size 1911 using standard, 230-grain ammunition, that's generally a 14-pound spring (possibly 12-pound).
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I know. But it just works out better for me to go the other way round. The idea is the slide will stop by the spring alone, never have to hit on the frame metal-to-metal.

-TL
 
The usual rule of thumb for 1911s (at least) is to use the lightest spring that reliably returns the slide to battery.
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My rule of thumb, and the way I was taught by a High Master Conventional Pistol shooter that was a Camp Perry Champion a few years ago is to use the heaviest recoil spring that still allows the pistol to reliably function in both feed and extract.

To the OP, you will get every answer imaginable when it comes to M1911 recoil springs. Default advice is to use exactly what the manufacturer suggests.
 
tangolima said:
I know. But it just works out better for me to go the other way round. The idea is the slide will stop by the spring alone, never have to hit on the frame metal-to-metal.
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But the pistol is designed to let the slide hit the frame (or, more accurately, hit the spring guide flange, which in turn is resting against the frame). The slide hitting the frame won't hurt the gun -- 1911Tuner has proven that by firing some of his pistols with NO recoil spring. And I seriously doubt that your heavier recoil spring actually stops the slide short of contact with the frame anyway. I don't know if I'm even capable of calculating what strength a spring would have to be to accomplish that ut, suffice it to say, it would be WAY more than 20 pounds.

Gong the other way, think about what stops the slide when it returns to battery. On the way forward, it picks up the barrel and the whole mass of the slide and barrel is being slammed forward by a combination of bounce and recoil spring pressure. What stops it? It stops when the two little feet on the underlug of the barrel slam into that .200" slide stop pin. The harder you hit that, the sooner something's going to break. The owner of the M1911.org forum knew a guy who insisted on using an extra-heavy recoil spring ... right up until the entire underlug ripped off from the bottom of his expensive, custom barrel.

Lastly, 1911Tuner has mentioned innumerable times that Browning's patent for the M1911 does not call that round spring in the front of the pistol a "recoil" spring. It's an "action" spring, and its purpose is to close the action, NOT to resist recoil. The original design for the M1911 called for a "recoil" spring that was about 14 pounds. Then it got bumped to 16 pounds, and today we find any number of people who really should know better advising to use 18, 18.5, and even 20-pound recoil springs.

To each his own. People who think they're smarter and know more about the M1911 design than John Browning are on their own.
 
Using the factory springs may not apply with an unconventional load, like the milder one the OP is using.
Deviations from the norm do quite often require experimentation.
As inexpensive and informative as chronographs are these day, getting one is, indeed, a very good suggestion.
 
What spring do you guys think I should get so I can shoot my reloads in this pistol
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It doesn't seem that your issue is gun related seeing as you write that it works
ok with factory loads but not with your reloads.
Changing spring weights to compensate for inadequate reloaded ammo doesn't
make sense you have a compact short barreled pistol which is likely to have heavier than ordnance standard recoil springs to compensate for the loss of slide
mass.My suggestion would be that you don't modify your pistol and rather determine why your reloads don't work on it and fix that.
 
Aguila Blanca said:
And I seriously doubt that your heavier recoil spring actually stops the slide short of contact with the frame anyway. I don't know if I'm even capable of calculating what strength a spring would have to be to accomplish that ut, suffice it to say, it would be WAY more than 20 pounds.
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Why then too heavy a spring may cause failure to eject? The spring is not the source of energy to cycle the pistol, the gun powder is. The spring is just an storage device. Too weak it can't store all the energy before the slide travel runs out. The excess energy goes the frame and the shooter's hand, and hence a snappy recoil. Too strong it takes up all the energy before the slide travels far enough to complete ejection.

I like stronger springs because I like as less energy ending up in my hand as possible. The recoil is more like a buffered shove than a sudden kick.

It doesn't matter even Mr. Browning is here today give out his final says on everything gun related. There isn't final says. We like what we like. Forum is just for discussions, instead of expert advices.

-TL
 
We like what we like.
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Absolutely.
Sometimes even our own concepts whether they are sound or not.The physics of recoil have been understood for a long time and John Browning used the
knowledge to design highly successful firearms.As an analogy one doesn't need to understand discrete channel systems to enjoy good stereo music.
 
The V10 has a ported barrel? 5" ported barrel?
If the porting is resisting recoil, then it's also resisting unlocking, so you'll probably need a slightly lighter spring than would be appropriate for the same load in an unported gun.
I'm definitely in the "lightest that works" camp, but the V10 is not a standard pistol, so it may take some experimenting.
Getting a spring pack and testing different ratings is a good idea.
16# is standard, or, today thought to be standard (the original military specs from 1911 are closer to 14#, based on wire diameter and number of coils), and you'll almost certainly be going in the direction of lighter, if the gun doesn't run reliably with a 16.
 
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