1911 mag release spring weights?

[45C]

Hello
I’m looking for a spring for a 1911 that’s with less tension.
The spring in my RIA is really stiff making it hard to fully depress the mag release button.
But the spring in my Springfield RO is soft as butter.

Also the RO spring is a bit bigger in diameter.
The RO spring will fit on the RIA mag release but the RIA spring won’t fit on the RO mag release

 

[calmex]

You can shave a bit at a time from your original spring to get the weight you want, but the problem with that is if you shave too much, you can't put it back. So it would be nice to have a spare or two "just in case". There was a brief time (a couple of months) back in San Miguel when I first started accompanying the U.S. Consul on his Colonel Work that I occasionally carried my 1911. I had an original Dan Blocker shoulder holster for it, and always made sure the Colonel knew when I was carrying it. If he didn't think we'd need it, he'd say so right away. If he did, he usually also had his 1911 from the World War (II), so he would carry his as well in his own Galco Miami Classic. For an old guy, he was cool.

Dressed for Colonel Work in the mid-1990's with my 1911 .45 in the Ted Blocker holster. The 1911 in .45 ACP is prohibited for civilian use or ownership in Mexico, and Colonel Maher wanted to move us away from using them. I was not a part of his wheeling-and-dealing with the local Mexican Army General, but suddenly one night he appeared with a S&W Model 6904 for himself and a 3904 for me and told me that those were what we would use from now on. So this .45 I had, became more of a liability. The slide, from my old Manitoba IPSC competition gun with the Bo-Mar sight mounted by Murray Gardner's gunsmith from Gun's 'n Stuff back in the day sits now in the Queretero Custom Shop to be used as a sight-install guide. The frame was later cut for a Clark/Para ramp barrel and with a .38/9 ejector and a new slide it because my .38 Super (and with a second barrel, .380 Super Cal).



Anyway, I bring all this up because I had whittled down my own mag-release spring using a dremel tool until it was "just right". I was showing it off to the Colonel one day out at the range, and he asked me "If you set the gun down with the release button pointed downwards, can it accidently release the magazine on you?" I laughed it off, but it made me a bit paranoid. The Colonel had been on Saipan and Iwo Jima and he had killed a Japanese soldier at close range on Iwo, and he wouldn't have asked me that unless he thought it was important. At home, with the gun unloaded but with a loaded magazine in it, I set it down deliberately a bit heavy on my wooden table covered by a thick Mexican tablecloth. One out of three times, the mag would release.

It took about two months from me to get a few springs sent down from the U.S. because I had to order them through other people and by that time, we were no longer using the 1911's. But by the time it became my .38 Super/.380 Cal it had a heavier spring in the mag release. Anyway, that's my system for checking the mag-release spring weight. If you can set the gun down heavily, can it release the magazine unintentionally? You may or may not care.

 

[45C]

Interesting story, sounds like a real nice adventure.

I have an extended mag release on my Range officer and think it’s possible that it might accidentally release the mag as it’s soft as hot butter. I’m going to test that now.

However, the mag release button on my son’s RIA is very short,so much that I have to turn the gun on angle to reach it.
The shorter mag release coupled with the stiff spring makes it harder to push the release.

When you say shaving it down, do you mean making the spring thinner? Or shorter?

I just tried to accidentally release the mag by laying it on the table, and it didn’t release with either gun

 

[calmex]

When I said shaving it down, I meant shortening it about 1/4 to a 1/3 coil at a time using a cut-off wheel on my dremel. But even that can go too far. I had no real knowledge of where it should be as opposed to what I might want it to be.

Let me explain. If we have 3 fullsize IPSC targets downrange at 10 yards away from us, and like a foot or two apart and the game is to see which one of us can shoot the fastest El Presidente out of 5 tries each (loser buys lunch), we're both going to want the lightest magazine release we can find. That part is a no-brainer.

But if we're actually going to be carrying the guns -- only semi-legally -- onto a possibly dangerous area (or maybe not, because only one person out of many has said we must be "careful" if we go there), how heavy do we want the magazine release to be? Well, we don't want to have to confront a group of well-armed monsters with a one-shot 1911. That's for sure. Speed of the reload? Probably less important than those first 8 or 9 shots.

A game-gun can be built to lighter specifications than a carry gun. Especially a serious carry gun, not just a "because I can" carry gun. In my opinion. I didn't use an extended button on my 1911 and I put a heavier spring in it after it failed the table drop test. But again, it depends on what we're going to do with the gun. Cooper used to talk about the "Service/Target" class of firearms, and suggested you shouldn't make a service/target gun a danger to your life and the lives of your friends who may be counting on you by lightening the springs too much. I think it's a bit of a personal decision as to what one is comfortable with, depending on the use the firearm will likely see. Obviously, if one is really going to go into harms way, one notices immediately that all the dedicated-target guns in one's safe are suddenly crossed off the "what should I take with me" list. And if one is going to make a habit of doing such things, those pieces are often either sold off and replaced or upgraded to more appropriate "service" specs. That was my experience.

 

[45C]

When I said shaving it down, I meant shortening it about 1/4 to a 1/3 coil at a time using a cut-off wheel on my dremel. But even that can go too far. I had no real knowledge of where it should be as opposed to what I might want it to be.

Let me explain. If we have 3 fullsize IPSC targets downrange at 10 yards away from us, and like a foot or two apart and the game is to see which one of us can shoot the fastest El Presidente out of 5 tries each (loser buys lunch), we're both going to want the lightest magazine release we can find. That part is a no-brainer.

But if we're actually going to be carrying the guns -- only semi-legally -- onto a possibly dangerous area (or maybe not, because only one person out of many has said we must be "careful" if we go there), how heavy do we want the magazine release to be? Well, we don't want to have to confront a group of well-armed monsters with a one-shot 1911. That's for sure. Speed of the reload? Probably less important than those first 8 or 9 shots.

A game-gun can be built to lighter specifications than a carry gun. Especially a serious carry gun, not just a "because I can" carry gun. In my opinion. I didn't use an extended button on my 1911 and I put a heavier spring in it after it failed the table drop test. But again, it depends on what we're going to do with the gun. Cooper used to talk about the "Service/Target" class of firearms, and suggested you shouldn't make a service/target gun a danger to your life and the lives of your friends who may be counting on you by lightening the springs too much. I think it's a bit of a personal decision as to what one is comfortable with, depending on the use the firearm will likely see. Obviously, if one is really going to go into harms way, one notices immediately that all the dedicated-target guns in one's safe are suddenly crossed off the "what should I take with me" list. And if one is going to make a habit of doing such things, those pieces are often either sold off and replaced or upgraded to more appropriate "service" specs. That was my experience.

I understand ,I’ll just try and find a place where I can buy a couple of spare springs.
It’s no problem switching them out.
I got a striker fired pistol as well

 

[calmex]

I understand ,I’ll just try and find a place where I can buy a couple of spare springs.
It’s no problem switching them out.
I got a striker fired pistol as well

I had switched our Glock down in Mexico to a G-34 mag release for a while and then the guilt got me and I switched it back because my daughter liked it.

I rarely carried that Glock because it didn't have "second-strike" capability, but my daughter liked it a lot. Mexican Glocks had a devish time with some of the factory ammo from Technos that was available in Mexico at the time. Most of us were reloading the .380 cases as .380 Cal ammo for Glocks that had G-19 slides with G-19 barrels chambered to the .380 case with a 9mm nose lead-in. But often the primers we could get were offshore primers that were quite hard. We got several light strikes using the Technos (Aguila) factory ammo, and with some of the Argentinian primers. There's some 28 Newton (red) and 31 Newton (blue) Glock striker springs made for European Military Ammo that we got ahold of and those resolved that problem. I believe the regular Glock striker spring weight is 24 Newton.

The .380 Cal shoots a 140 grain SWC bullet at 1020 fps out of a 4-inch Glock or Model 3904, but since I could semi-legally carry the 3904 the Glock was just a range gun to me. But if Little M was going to carry it, that's different and I wanted it to work. I found the 31 Newton spring fired all the primers I could find, and only changed my super-duper-range-only Glock trigger back to a factory 5.5 lb. weight. So, go for it girl, I thought.

 

[old303]

I've seen too many IPSC Open competition guns (usually 1911-based) tuned right to the edge of not working at all, nice and fast when they're happy but too often not happy.

A stock 1911 that runs reliably is a wonderful thing!

 

[madcow]

I have found that if the factory magazine catch spring is to heavy, replace it with a reduced power spring.

advantages of this over cutting the spring is that you still have a full lenth spring holding the mag catch, whereas the cut spring may feel lighter, but doesn't hold the magazine in place somtimes due to recoil.

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