Actually, maybe Im not doing as bad on Glock mags as I thought….
18 thoughts on “”
Nope, where you’re really hurting is ammo. Far too many of those appear to be empty.
Preparedness my ass.
Q for cmdr 0
Do you rotate what mags you keep loaded to avoid wearing out the spring?
Now all you need is an automatic electrically-powered magloader with the deluxe “pro” mag carrousel 😉
lol…At this point, might I suggest something with a belt feed or perhaps a larger 100 round drum?
At that point I think you need a class III M16 with a couple of Beta-C mags or perhaps something more robust. Vickers or M1919 perhaps? Bren Maybe. Those have 100 round drum magazines available. Though, they are a might bit expensive at $250 each. Still, nice robust milled steel vs pressed steel or aluminium.
Re: Q for cmdr 0
I can’t speak for CDR0, but that’s kind of a silly idea. It’s not the tension on the springs that causes them to wear, it’s the action of compressing and decompressing.
Re: Q for cmdr 0
Correct.
Re: Q for cmdr 0
Silly idea to you, perhaps, but to me, with a limited background familiarity with firearms, it was a legitimate question.
I keep my magazines loaded but I recently saw something online that suggested a magazine’s spring was rendered useless because it was kept loaded in storage. Not wanting to take that at face value, I figured I ask someone whose opinion and knowledge of firearms I respect.
Re: Q for cmdr 0
Thanks to you both for the info. I will probably designate a few magazines for practice as you mentioned in the previous post.
Re: Q for cmdr 0
I figured I ask someone whose opinion and knowledge of firearms I respect.
And you came here??
Sorry, couldnt resist.
Everything Ive read says that the compress/decompress cycle is what wears a spring out. Might make some sense if you think about it from a work hardening perspective. Dunno. Metallurgy isnt my forte. However, some gunwriters have talked about shooting loaded mags they found from WW2 or VietNam days and have said that they worked fine after being left loaded for decades.
However, the whole ‘rotate your mags’ thing has achieved old-wives-tale status and if youre rotaiting them, say, every six months, you couldnt have enough compress/decompress cycles in a lifetime to wear them out, I think.
Rotating ammo, however, might not be a bad idea.
We haven’t been keeping them all loaded. The Cmdr and I disagree on doctrine at the moment. :p I’m in favor of pre-loading, and he isn’t.
However, since you mention, we did just implement a new Ammo Plan: 1,000 rounds a month into inventory. .22 when we don’t have spare cash, .45 and .223 when we do, and everything in between. Then we’ll reload for practice purposes.
Re: Q for cmdr 0
That wasn’t intended as a crack on you. If you took it as such, I apologize. The idea of compression causing wear is silly. You’re not silly for asking about it, as we all probably heard the same myth in our early shooting days and had to find out otherwise.
I’ve just been running into that wive’s tale for the gods know how many years, and it grates after a while.
Again, no dig was intended.
Bravo.
Just remember, for preparedness purposes, an empty magazine is a paperweight, and who really needs a paperweight when The Apocalypse is at hand? [;-)}>
Some mags are kept loaded…but not that many. I’ve 3×30,3×17 loaded mags with me during most of the day when I have my backpack with me. Theres 6×30 AR mags in my tactical vest ready to go and a couple 40-rd AK mags left loaded.
Re: Q for cmdr 0
No offense taken. I didn’t think you meant it personally.
Re: Q for cmdr 0
FWIW, my experiences bear out what the gun writers are saying. I trash springs in my competition magazines, going through a new set every year. But the ones I use for largely defensive purposes that rarely get shot I’ve never worn out a spring in. I have scads of extra springs floating around, figure if they ever wear out, I’ll replace them, but I have yet to have that issue.
First sign of a dying spring is always the slide not locking back, that isn’t actually catastrophic or anything.
If anecdotal evidence is of any value, I have just this year returned several long term storage magazines to service. After 14 years a S&W 15 rounder (that’s “standard” not “high” capacity), a couple of stainless AMT .45 mags, a 20rd Colt AR mag, and a 20rd Springfield M-14 mag.
All were functioning perfectly when put into storage, and after 14 years of sitting in storage they all function perfectly now. The 14 year old ammo worked with no problems either by the way.
This leads me to agree that leaving them sit loaded is of no harm. Of course that is in metal magazines. Plastic can and will deform when it is under stress over long periods of time, so older style Glock magazines may not take to it very well. The newer ones are apparently all plastic encased steel, so they should be fine.
remember you can still find calicos without to much trouble.
It’s all about creep.
Well, ,the best article I have seen explain (from American Handgunner)it in material science terms lays it all out like this:
To put this one to rest, you have to understand creep. Creep is the slow flow of a non-ferric metal like copper, brass and lead under force. At temperatures outside of a furnace, steel doesn’t have any appreciable creep. Under most conditions, steel flexes and then returns to its original shape. When pushed past its elastic limit, steel will bend and not return to its original shape. All designers of well-made magazines make sure the spring never approaches the elastic limit when the magazine is fully loaded. Honest. This means the spring will not weaken when the magazine is fully loaded — not even over an extended time. Like 50 years.
Creep becomes a bigger issue for steel if it is at an elevated temperature (my Mechanical Engineering Handbook starts listing creep rates for steel at 800 F). So if you are storing your loaded magazines in the oven, you might have a problem. Polymers on the other hand have huge creep problems, so if anyone is building magazines with plastic springs (I haven’t seen one, I’m just sayin’) I would avoid them like the plague.
Like the chorus has already stated, the enemy is in the fatigue. And if you don’t reach the yield stress during loading (very unlikely), you sure aren’t going to reach it in storage.
Nope, where you’re really hurting is ammo. Far too many of those appear to be empty.
Preparedness my ass.
Q for cmdr 0
Do you rotate what mags you keep loaded to avoid wearing out the spring?
Now all you need is an automatic electrically-powered magloader with the deluxe “pro” mag carrousel 😉
lol…At this point, might I suggest something with a belt feed or perhaps a larger 100 round drum?
At that point I think you need a class III M16 with a couple of Beta-C mags or perhaps something more robust. Vickers or M1919 perhaps? Bren Maybe. Those have 100 round drum magazines available. Though, they are a might bit expensive at $250 each. Still, nice robust milled steel vs pressed steel or aluminium.
Re: Q for cmdr 0
I can’t speak for CDR0, but that’s kind of a silly idea. It’s not the tension on the springs that causes them to wear, it’s the action of compressing and decompressing.
Re: Q for cmdr 0
Correct.
Re: Q for cmdr 0
Silly idea to you, perhaps, but to me, with a limited background familiarity with firearms, it was a legitimate question.
I keep my magazines loaded but I recently saw something online that suggested a magazine’s spring was rendered useless because it was kept loaded in storage. Not wanting to take that at face value, I figured I ask someone whose opinion and knowledge of firearms I respect.
Re: Q for cmdr 0
Thanks to you both for the info. I will probably designate a few magazines for practice as you mentioned in the previous post.
Re: Q for cmdr 0
I figured I ask someone whose opinion and knowledge of firearms I respect.
And you came here??
Sorry, couldnt resist.
Everything Ive read says that the compress/decompress cycle is what wears a spring out. Might make some sense if you think about it from a work hardening perspective. Dunno. Metallurgy isnt my forte. However, some gunwriters have talked about shooting loaded mags they found from WW2 or VietNam days and have said that they worked fine after being left loaded for decades.
However, the whole ‘rotate your mags’ thing has achieved old-wives-tale status and if youre rotaiting them, say, every six months, you couldnt have enough compress/decompress cycles in a lifetime to wear them out, I think.
Rotating ammo, however, might not be a bad idea.
We haven’t been keeping them all loaded. The Cmdr and I disagree on doctrine at the moment. :p I’m in favor of pre-loading, and he isn’t.
However, since you mention, we did just implement a new Ammo Plan: 1,000 rounds a month into inventory. .22 when we don’t have spare cash, .45 and .223 when we do, and everything in between. Then we’ll reload for practice purposes.
Re: Q for cmdr 0
That wasn’t intended as a crack on you. If you took it as such, I apologize. The idea of compression causing wear is silly. You’re not silly for asking about it, as we all probably heard the same myth in our early shooting days and had to find out otherwise.
I’ve just been running into that wive’s tale for the gods know how many years, and it grates after a while.
Again, no dig was intended.
Bravo.
Just remember, for preparedness purposes, an empty magazine is a paperweight, and who really needs a paperweight when The Apocalypse is at hand? [;-)}>
Some mags are kept loaded…but not that many. I’ve 3×30,3×17 loaded mags with me during most of the day when I have my backpack with me. Theres 6×30 AR mags in my tactical vest ready to go and a couple 40-rd AK mags left loaded.
Re: Q for cmdr 0
No offense taken. I didn’t think you meant it personally.
Re: Q for cmdr 0
FWIW, my experiences bear out what the gun writers are saying. I trash springs in my competition magazines, going through a new set every year. But the ones I use for largely defensive purposes that rarely get shot I’ve never worn out a spring in. I have scads of extra springs floating around, figure if they ever wear out, I’ll replace them, but I have yet to have that issue.
First sign of a dying spring is always the slide not locking back, that isn’t actually catastrophic or anything.
If anecdotal evidence is of any value, I have just this year returned several long term storage magazines to service. After 14 years a S&W 15 rounder (that’s “standard” not “high” capacity), a couple of stainless AMT .45 mags, a 20rd Colt AR mag, and a 20rd Springfield M-14 mag.
All were functioning perfectly when put into storage, and after 14 years of sitting in storage they all function perfectly now. The 14 year old ammo worked with no problems either by the way.
This leads me to agree that leaving them sit loaded is of no harm. Of course that is in metal magazines. Plastic can and will deform when it is under stress over long periods of time, so older style Glock magazines may not take to it very well. The newer ones are apparently all plastic encased steel, so they should be fine.
remember you can still find calicos without to much trouble.
It’s all about creep.
Well, ,the best article I have seen explain (from American Handgunner)it in material science terms lays it all out like this:
Creep becomes a bigger issue for steel if it is at an elevated temperature (my Mechanical Engineering Handbook starts listing creep rates for steel at 800 F). So if you are storing your loaded magazines in the oven, you might have a problem. Polymers on the other hand have huge creep problems, so if anyone is building magazines with plastic springs (I haven’t seen one, I’m just sayin’) I would avoid them like the plague.
Like the chorus has already stated, the enemy is in the fatigue. And if you don’t reach the yield stress during loading (very unlikely), you sure aren’t going to reach it in storage.