The Importance of Magazine Rotation

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  • Bohemian

    Member
    Nov 7, 2009
    60
    Magazine rotation? Yes, like any mechanical device, a magazine is prone to wear. Particularly, if loaded consistently, the springs can soften and eventually lead to a failure to feed. In turn, it’s important to give the magazines a rest and call a fresh one into action. Firearms instructor and member of Colt Combat Unit Ken Hackathorn goes over a simple magazine rotation system...
    https://gundigest.com/gun-videos/gundigest-tv/video-importance-of-magazine-rotation

    Do Loaded Magazines Wear Out Magazine Springs?
    https://www.luckygunner.com/lounge/magazine-springs-and-ammo-cycling/

    Two key Terms to understand with respect to magazine or other springs...

    1. Spring fatigue
    Spring fatigue occurs when a spring has been repeatedly compressed and returned to rest. Basically, fatigue is the eventual loss in some spring stiffness and force or metal fatique failure (breakage) because of repeated use.

    2. Spring creep
    Spring creep describes a spring’s permanent loss of stiffness from substained compression over a period of time.

    E.G.: Take two brand new magazine springs for any semiauto; measure them, photograph them, put one in a magazine, fully load the magazine, put it in a drawer for a month...
    Unload that mag, pull out the spring and measure and photograph it against the unused spring...
    There will be a visible difference between the two...
    Too much of a difference to ignore...
    You can add a 3rd test by using a 3rd new mag spring and load, fire, repeat several hundred rounds and disasemble and measure & photograph the 3 springs...
    The fully loaded, but unused magazine spring will be the shortest of the 3 by far...
    Does not seem to matter whose magazine springs they are, the result is the same, long gun, shot gun, handgun.

    To paraphrase Forest Gump... Magazines are like a box of Chocolates, you never know what you're going to get or how long they will last even from the same manufacturer.

    Some folks will go their whole lives without a semiauto fail to feed which may or may not be due to magazine spring weakness. I'm not one of those people. No matter how fast you can recover from a fail to feed, that may be time you do not have to spare.

    For home defense & hunting I prefer revolvers to eliminate the possibility of a magazine spring failure and or a fail to feed a problem unique to semiautomatic firearms.
    With respect to hunting it's for bear defense mostly or when I don't have a chance to use a rifle. Like fishing in Alaska.

    For EDC CCW I'm a semi auto guy, and rotate my magazines daily.
     
    Spring fatigue? My stepson has a 1911 that was made in 1938. It was given to him by his grandfather a few years ago before his death. He got it issued to him in the Korean war. The magazines had never been unloaded since 1951. We took it to the range and the firearm fired and cycle flawlessly with ammo head stamp from 1943.. sorry, I just don't buy into that whole line of spring fatigue. I've never seen it happen although it might personally I'm not too concerned with it
     

    joppaj

    Sheepdog
    Staff member
    Moderator
    Apr 11, 2008
    46,451
    MD
    :popcorn: I always enjoy these threads....

    I don't discount the fact that there is SOME compression from loaded mags. My old mags are easier to load than brand new ones. I do question whether the compression is of any amount that matters. My own experience with GLOCK mags has been that in 21 years I've never had a FTF due to a mag spring.
     

    axshon

    Ultimate Member
    May 23, 2010
    1,938
    Howard County
    Physics is physics and I get that metal does indeed fatigue. However, after spending time in the real world with real magazines (among other mechanical gadgets) and seeing how things actually work, I'm not worried about it. One mag may be different from the next and one may wear out while another doesn't. Different batches of metal, hell, maybe different humidity that day at the plant. I dunno. I have original mags that are over 25 years old and have never failed. I have brand new mags that have failed to feed.

    At the end of the day, I'll run what I brung and practice mag failure/failure to feed/failure to fire drills/failure to eject. It will be a really bad day when I actually need it and it fails but I'm not entirely sure that's a preventable thing. Mechanical devices fail. It happens. In the word of E. Shell: Pass me another mag and keep shooting.
     

    Trepang

    Ultimate Member
    Dec 10, 2015
    3,310
    Southern Illinois
    FWIW, I PCS'ed (Military Transfer) and left a Beretta 92 at my Dad's house. It sat with two magazines fully loaded for almost 9 years. When I finally picked it back up, it functioned flawlessly and now 20+ years later those magazines still work just fine with the original springs.
     

    Docster

    Ultimate Member
    Jul 19, 2010
    9,768
    Magazine rotation/spring compression has been discussed in the past. This is not a new issue.
     

    JohnnyE

    Ultimate Member
    MDS Supporter
    Jan 18, 2013
    9,461
    MoCo
    The issue upon which the OP opines has a correct answer: properly engineered and manufactured magazine springs will not fail when stored fully loaded even for an indefinite period of time.

    The difficult question to answer is: was any particular spring properly engineered and manufactured?

    In my statistically insignificant experience I kept (and continue to keep) over 20 OEM Glocks magazines and 16 OEM Ruger LCP magazines (that are made for Ruger by Mecgar) continuously loaded for over 15 years. Once a month I shoot all mags empty, then clean and promptly reload them in preparation for the next range session. Each mag gets cycled about 12 times per year, and the total time time per year that any of them are not fully loaded is measured in hours. In every case, each and every magazine spring has functioned properly. The same goes for all my AR-15 PMAGS and Colt 20 round mags, but I don't shoot them empty as often.

    Similarly, I keep eight or ten AK-47 Izhmash and Circle 10 mags fully stoked, and maybe ten times per year I shoot them empty, clean then reload. That's gone on for the last ten years. All of these mag springs are still going strong.

    On the other hand, I have a couple of 1980's vintage Mitchell Arms Mini-14 magazines that were purchased together. One magazine has maintained full spring pressure and feeds reliably. The other has gone soft and barely lifts the last few rounds up to the feed lips.

    What did I learn? That Mitchell (or their spring vendor) designed a proper spring and in one case manufactured it properly (which is either obvious because it works just fine or they just got lucky), whereas in a second case, assuming the spring vendor was the same as the first, they screwed something up. Maybe it was a change in alloy, or heat treat, or whatever.

    Morale of the story as I see it: determine whether or not each individual mag spring was properly engineered and manufactured by determining whether or not it works. Go on your mission of discovery. Replace and retest the springs that fail the initial test. There is no one-size-fits-all answer.
     

    jrumann59

    DILLIGAF
    MDS Supporter
    Feb 17, 2011
    14,024
    Yes mags made with substandard springs may go soft, but what actually does them the most harm is loading and unloading. The compressing and decompressing of the spring material will eventually fatigue like most metals. All springs are wear items they all should be inspected from time to time.
     

    Pinecone

    Ultimate Member
    MDS Supporter
    Feb 4, 2013
    28,175
    I don't discount the fact that there is SOME compression from loaded mags. My old mags are easier to load than brand new ones. I do question whether the compression is of any amount that matters. My own experience with GLOCK mags has been that in 21 years I've never had a FTF due to a mag spring.

    There is some initial spring compression that does not recover. But that occurs pretty much with the first loading.

    Past that, the number of times you have cycled the spring is the most important in maintaining spring tension.
     

    Pinecone

    Ultimate Member
    MDS Supporter
    Feb 4, 2013
    28,175
    FWIW, I PCS'ed (Military Transfer) and left a Beretta 92 at my Dad's house. It sat with two magazines fully loaded for almost 9 years. When I finally picked it back up, it functioned flawlessly and now 20+ years later those magazines still work just fine with the original springs.

    I have .1911 .45 ACP mags that stayed loaded for more than 20 years, without any issues.
     

    Pinecone

    Ultimate Member
    MDS Supporter
    Feb 4, 2013
    28,175
    The issue upon which the OP opines has a correct answer: properly engineered and manufactured magazine springs will not fail when stored fully loaded even for an indefinite period of time.

    The difficult question to answer is: was any particular spring properly engineered and manufactured?

    In my statistically insignificant experience I kept (and continue to keep) over 20 OEM Glocks magazines and 16 OEM Ruger LCP magazines (that are made for Ruger by Mecgar) continuously loaded for over 15 years. Once a month I shoot all mags empty, then clean and promptly reload them in preparation for the next range session. Each mag gets cycled about 12 times per year, and the total time time per year that any of them are not fully loaded is measured in hours. In every case, each and every magazine spring has functioned properly. The same goes for all my AR-15 PMAGS and Colt 20 round mags, but I don't shoot them empty as often.

    Similarly, I keep eight or ten AK-47 Izhmash and Circle 10 mags fully stoked, and maybe ten times per year I shoot them empty, clean then reload. That's gone on for the last ten years. All of these mag springs are still going strong.

    On the other hand, I have a couple of 1980's vintage Mitchell Arms Mini-14 magazines that were purchased together. One magazine has maintained full spring pressure and feeds reliably. The other has gone soft and barely lifts the last few rounds up to the feed lips.

    What did I learn? That Mitchell (or their spring vendor) designed a proper spring and in one case manufactured it properly (which is either obvious because it works just fine or they just got lucky), whereas in a second case, assuming the spring vendor was the same as the first, they screwed something up. Maybe it was a change in alloy, or heat treat, or whatever.

    Morale of the story as I see it: determine whether or not each individual mag spring was properly engineered and manufactured by determining whether or not it works. Go on your mission of discovery. Replace and retest the springs that fail the initial test. There is no one-size-fits-all answer.

    If the springs are defective, cycling them will not make the last longer.

    It WILL give you a chance to determine their might be an issue.
     

    smokey

    2A TEACHER
    Jan 31, 2008
    31,412
    People are probably more likely to experience mag failures from dirty mags or debris getting into them than springs wearing out. Just number your mags and as you use them track which ones start acting up. Either ditch them or rebuild them. It ain't rocket surgery.

    From time to time, yank your mags apart and clean the crud that accumulates on the inside of the mag bodies and around the outside of the follower. A light coat of corrosion inhibitor on the springs may be a solid idea too.

    Keeping good mags loaded won't wear them to the point of causing a malfunction. Springs don't even wear much while working within their working range. They do wear out when pushed beyond their designed load range, from corrosion, or from a metric f-ton of cycles.
     

    spoon059

    Ultimate Member
    Jun 1, 2018
    5,333
    Me too. That's 2 of us so far who are LE.
    Count me in. I don't rotate mags. In fact, I've got 2 loaded mags in my cruiser door pocket that were loaded years ago and put in the car.

    Sent from my SM-N970U1 using Tapatalk
     

    3paul10

    Ultimate Member
    MDS Supporter
    Mar 6, 2012
    4,879
    Western Maryland
    I've only had spring fatigue once. After I apologized profusely to Outrider, I told him its never happened to me before. I was kinda embarrassed.
     

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