GSG 110rd Magazine - Leaving it loaded?

ottawastartup

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Just got my hands on a GSG 110rd magazine for my 10/22 and I'm loving every second of it. 500rds so far and not a single failure.

The manual explicitly says not to leave it loaded because it might weaken the spring. This caught me by surprise. Is there something special about the internals of these magazines? I thought the consensus was that leaving magazines loaded was fine...

Would appreciate any insight you all might have!
 
I've had 2 for over a year. Within a day or so of getting back from the range, I fill them back up (usually while watching TV), so they're ready to go for the next trip... Or zombies, whichever comes first...

Usually they sit loaded for weeks, if not months at a time. I rotate through what I take to the range, so the 10/22 and the GSG mags can sit for quite a while between trips. I am less than worried about it. It's the amount of times you compress and release a spring that causes metal fatigue, not the amount of time you leave it under compression.
 
assuming i wasn't lied to, springs wear out from being compressed and uncompressed, not from being in either state for an extend period of time.
 
Ive heard all the different stories about leaving them full or empty for long periods, and I still prefer to leave them empty if its any more than a couple weeks in storage.
 
assuming i wasn't lied to, springs wear out from being compressed and uncompressed, not from being in either state for an extend period of time.

You weren't lied to. This is the truth.

Think of it like a steel wire, that wire can remain under pressure or in natural uncompressed state until it fails from other means (rust, weathering, etc) but if you bend that wire back and forth repeatedly it will break at the point of repeated bend.

As for the GSG 110 I'm unsure if there may be another mechanism that can't take prolonged stress on the inside, but I would hesitate to think it's the spring.
 
You weren't lied to. This is the truth.

Think of it like a steel wire, that wire can remain under pressure or in natural uncompressed state until it fails from other means (rust, weathering, etc) but if you bend that wire back and forth repeatedly it will break at the point of repeated bend.

As for the GSG 110 I'm unsure if there may be another mechanism that can't take prolonged stress on the inside, but I would hesitate to think it's the spring.


I have heard the opposite...from many sources. In a properly designed magazine, you should wear out parts of on your firearm before the spring. What wears out the spring is frequent compression (loading) and decompression (unloading), not long term compression. Fill the mag a few short of capacity, this way max tension is relieved, and you should be good for years!

https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/does-static-tension-wear-out-a-spring.661309/

There are a few things to consider:

The phenomenon known as creep, as mentioned above, only affects materials at or above ~0.4x their melting point, in absolute temperature (kelvin). This is unlikely to be an issue in regular service unless your springs are made of something absurd like lead, which actually creeps are room temperature. (I am assuming the temperature increases as a result of firing the weapon are small)

Stress-strain cycles, on the other hand, play a major role in spring wear. Ferrous material like iron and most steels exhibit an infinite lifetime under a particular amount of stress amplitude - not the absolute stress, which is generally far less - (the so-called "fatigue limit"). Less ductile materials like aluminum and titanium have a finite cycle life regardless of the stress amplitude; however, parts designed with these materials generally have lifetimes in the millions of cycles and fail by different modes long before the lifetime is reached.

So obviously, the life of the spring depends on proper design and materials choice. The spring steel that your gun would most likely use is a moderately-high carbon steel, with potentially nickel, silicon and manganese alloying agents in small quantities. Properly designed, it would last far longer than the other components of the gun that are regularly undergoing thermal stress, diffusion, and much larger fatigue cycles.

It's safe to say that storing your mag in a properly designed gun, will not wear out the spring prematurely. However, removing 1 or 2 rounds would increase the odds that you are maintaining the spring stress below the critical fatigue limit.

As a footnote, springs in regular circumstances follow Hooke's Law, which states that F=-kx (k being a materials, or "spring" constant and x being displacement). Thus, spring force is linear to displacement.
 
This is a classic I don't see any problem having them loaded but only load mine before shooting a day or two before.. whatever you feel comfortable with
 
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