45_auto said:
If the only purpose of the recoil spring is to close the slide, why wouldn't you just run the same spring for all cartridges? Does a more powerful cartridge somehow require more force to close the slide? Do you really believe that a .460 Rowland cartridge (24# recoil spring) requires twice the force of a 9mm (12# recoil spring) to strip from the mag and slide into the chamber?
I don't mean this response to be as argumentative as it might sound, but...
With a moderate-weight recoil spring,
you probably COULD run the same spring with all those different loads. I don't know that the frame would be badly battered, but a medium-strength spring would arguably have enough force to strip the round and close the slide.
A question for you and others involved in this discussion: have YOU (or any of you) personally had a gun damaged by a too-weak recoil spring?
I've asked this question a number of time and have yet to get the answer YES, based on a real-world experience. Frame damage from excess recoil seems to be something that everybody's heard of, but few have actually had happen with THEIR personal weapons. I've seen revolvers that seemed to STRETCH from firing hot loads... and suspect that semi-autos
could suffer similar abuse, but haven't really encountered THAT in a semi-auto, yet.) Photos of frame battering would be of interest -- you mention some of this --
but how do you determine causes? I know that with hammer-fired guns, the mainspring (hammer spring) also plays a role in retarding the slide, so that must have some role in preventing damage to the gun, if there's damage to be prevented... In one of the discussions on this forum, among several seemingly knowledgeable people, including a couple of custom gun makers, they couldn't even agree of what was causing the damage, or how it occurred.
Note: following the comments about pictures of 1911 frame battering, I did a Google Search. I found only a few pictures of damaged guns on the web (using Google images.) A couple of the photos linked back to discussions on this forum in the
SMITHY area. There seemed to be no consensus, and there really wasn't any clear cut evidence as to causes of the damage. Only one of the few photos in the pictures I found was a 1911, and there was mention of slide damage as well as frame damage in some of the discussions showing other guns, and some of it had to do with poor specs in the new guns, misfit parts, etc.
As for Bill Wilson being cited as an authority in this matter: Bill may certainly know something about .45s that most of us don't know. Wilson also sells recoil buffers and his own brand of recoil springs. I've never heard a convincing argument for using a recoil buffer in most guns, especially in .45 1911s. (I've heard an almost convincing argument for it's use in a BHP, and know that a few models of H&K pistols come from the factory with special buffers installed.) I don't run one in my BHP, and I don't own an H&K. I suppose it could all depend on the the design of the gun, etc.,
as all recoil mechanisms aren't created equal.
I'd really like some credible evidence for EITHER SIDE of this argument, as we all seem to be relying on hearsay and "web facts."
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