I'm curious about my new gun and how the whole practice of selecting the springs works for fine tuning. My goal is to work the DA effort down a bit for that first shot in IPSC and just for general feel when shooting.
Now I may be wrong here but this is how my thought process is working. Please bear with me as I'm totally new to firearms but have done a lot of mechanical work over my life so I THINK I'm pretty decent at analyzing systems as long as I know I've taken all the factors into account. I'm just not sure that I've identified all the factors in this case.
I'll make this a list so it's easy for you folks that know this stuff to confirm or correct me.
Sorry if I've packed a lot into this but I'm like a kid with a new toy and want it to work as best as I can. Also being new to semi automatic pistols I'm trying to learn how they operate all at the same time.
I had the pleasure of shooting a Shadow that had been fine tuned and while my new Shadow is still a pleasure I'm really looking forward to doing a similar tuning job on my own gun. Especially in the case of the DA issue and the fact that I've had three stovepipes in my first 300 rounds through the gun the other day. I know that some of this is also related to just getting some rounds through the beast to help it break in but I'm guessing that I'll want to be doing the spring job sooner or later.
Now I may be wrong here but this is how my thought process is working. Please bear with me as I'm totally new to firearms but have done a lot of mechanical work over my life so I THINK I'm pretty decent at analyzing systems as long as I know I've taken all the factors into account. I'm just not sure that I've identified all the factors in this case.
I'll make this a list so it's easy for you folks that know this stuff to confirm or correct me.
- During a cycle the slide pushes back against both the recoil spring directly AND the mainspring via the hammer to recock the hammer. So it is actually compressing both springs at the same time. Is that right?
- Now the goal of the main/hammer spring is to store enough energy to ensure a consistent firing of the primer. However we want to keep the mainspring as light as possible to reduce the DA efforts for that first shot, right?
- So if this is all correct so far then the procedure for lightening the DA pull is to reduce the mainspring rate until you start getting the odd FTF and then go back to the last consistent firing spring or possibly shim the lower pressure spring to add in a little preload until it fires consistently?
- With the hammer working nicely now attention can be focused on the recoil spring. Again correct me please if I'm not analyzing this correctly. The recoil action needs to do three things. It needs to cycle back far enough to recock the hammer. It also needs to cycle far enough back to ensure a clean ejection. And finally it needs to be strong enough to force the slide forward while stripping the next round from the magazine and up into the breech. If the spring is too hard it may not cycle back far enough to ensure the ejection. But if it is too soft it'll hit too hard at the end of the rearward travel. And if really soft it may not cleanly strip the next round out of the breech with enough force to ensure it positively loads the round. And I'm going to assume here that it is better to slightly bounce off the rear travel limit than to not cycle the full distance? But you don't want it to slam the travel limit or it'll kick the gun around too much. So I would want to work with the hardest spring first (presumably stock factory?) and work down until I do not get any stove pipes but I feel the least kicking?
Sorry if I've packed a lot into this but I'm like a kid with a new toy and want it to work as best as I can. Also being new to semi automatic pistols I'm trying to learn how they operate all at the same time.
I had the pleasure of shooting a Shadow that had been fine tuned and while my new Shadow is still a pleasure I'm really looking forward to doing a similar tuning job on my own gun. Especially in the case of the DA issue and the fact that I've had three stovepipes in my first 300 rounds through the gun the other day. I know that some of this is also related to just getting some rounds through the beast to help it break in but I'm guessing that I'll want to be doing the spring job sooner or later.
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