VIDEO HERE (8:03 minutes)
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This is one of those things where everybody has a different opinion and all of them are probably right.
Some say to rotate them out every 6 months, some say to not bother. Some say to fill them all the way up, others (myself included) say to short stack them.
I don't rotate my magazines out on a set basis. I've got some that have been left loaded for years and fed fine when I did get around to shooting the ammo in them.
I've got a magazine for my Ruger Mk II 22LR that has been horribly abused according to some folks. It's the magazine that came with the gun when I bought it new as a birthday present to myself when I turned 25 years old. I'm 63 now.
I've left that fucker fully loaded for months on end, I've left it loaded with just a few rounds in it, I've left it unloaded. I've never pulled the follower and spring to clean or lube it, matter of fact I'm not even sure if I can.
I've used that same magazine to shoot hundreds of rounds in a single day and I've gone months without shooting the gun at all.
I have no idea whatsoever how many rounds I've put through that magazine and gun. I do know for a few years that during the winter months when it was too snowy to go to the mountains and too dry to prospect in the hills, I was buying and shooting a brick a week, 90% of it through that handgun.
I've never had a failure to feed with that magazine. Not once.
I did break down a couple months ago and bought a new magazine. I fired a box of rounds through it to make sure it fed okay, then I tossed it in my safe where it'll probably stay for the rest of my life.
I bought 6 new 10/22 mags so I could shoot some steel matches. Absolute bitches. Hard as all get out to load and none reliably feed. Like you, tho, my old tired and true mag from eons ago, runs like a champ. Go figger.
ReplyDeleteI bought ProMag brand 25 rd mags for my 10-22 from Gunmag Warehouse and all of them were junk and I sent them back for a refund. Now I only buy Ruger brand and haven't had any failures. I have over 300 mags of varying calibers and have kept all of them loaded all of the time for years with no problems. Never knew that though about the P-Mag clips. Glad I didn't throw em out.
DeleteKeep my carry pistol mags and some AR mags loaded all the time with no problems. Pistol mags are loaded one round short and 30 round AR's are loaded with 25. If I think something is about to happen or SHTF I'll top off everything.
ReplyDeleteSame here but don't top off. Load more if that day comes.
DeleteSame reason you don't fk w a sleeping dog.
ch
Mtnman, like you my pistol mags are loaded one round short. My AR mags are loaded with 28 rounds. I've never had any issues with keeping mags loaded and stored. I recently cycled through a couple of AR mags that had been loaded and stored 3 years ago and had no issues.
DeleteI take mine apart about ever six months and clean them good. Lots of humidity here so to me it's a good idea. I never found rust but that's the whole idea eh?
ReplyDeleteWhat wirecutter said. Most problems I've seen are dirty mags or the feed lips that have expanded. I've left them loaded for a long time without problem.
ReplyDeleteSeems to be the number of compression/decompression cycles that wears them out. Which reminds me - prob ought to buy a few springs for some older mags I have just to be sure they'll work. While they're still available.
Also would depend on spring material. Some good spring steels can be compressed for years with no issues and some tend to defirm when compressed and loose the ability to expand to original shape quickly.
DeleteIf you buy a cheap mag with a cheap spring it wont do as well as a good spring.
Exile1981
Exile has given the answer for why this age old subject continues; because there is no definitive answer.
DeleteThere is not a deginitive answer because of the inconsistency of construction and quality of materials from one mag to the next.
Therefore, the best possible answer is to inventory replacement parts. Of course, having complete spare* mags in multiples is a given.
*No mag is a spare, all mags are required.
Mk II, probably the best of the series. I have a 22/45 Mk III, most accurate, reliable, pistol I've ever had(I'm a horse trader so I've had a few). Only failures I've ever had with a Ruger Standard, Mk series was ammo related. Tree Mike
ReplyDeleteI bought a bunch of used sig mags about 2 years ago (?) anyway, they seem to feed okay but felt a bit weak. bought new springs from WOLF gunsprings. a couple of 10 packs later and they running fine. put each mag thru 3 fire and loads and then stacked in storage
ReplyDeletelike about about 2 rounds short. old army thing, they taught us to down load our mags by 10 % for proper use or function. anyway, never had a problem with mags when I did that.
replaced the tube springs on my old 870 last year, and that gun is older than dirt too.
changing the springs out is not hard, and with sporty times a coming up. I rather be ready
for it.
I sorta have an experiment going on this topic. In the late 80s maybe very early 90s I bought two 50ct boxes new surplus G3 mags(HK man.). I loaded them all to capacity of 20 rds and stored them in ammo cans. Did absolutely nothing with them for 20+ years except check for rust once in a blue moon. Then some years back I decided to grab a mag every time I went to the range with one of my 91s just to cycle in some new mags and I can honestly I’ve had no issues with either a magazine or the ammo that was in it and we’re talking over 30 years of storage. I’m going with it’s not an issue with good stuff.
ReplyDeleteKlaus
As a former small arms instructor I recommended mags be unloaded and checked every 6 months at most. Metal mags with 5.56 will start to split the lips apart with the spring pressure over time and you will have rounds popping out as a result and hard extractions. I would take the BDF to the range every 6 months so and there was ALWAYS misfeed probs because they never unloaded the mags but left them loaded for a looong time. A chat with the CO fixed the problem. So I do agree with the vid that 6 months inspection is a good preventative tool. Cheers
ReplyDeleteFurther to my last. The vid discusses polymer, metal and metal lined. The CF rifle C7 iriginal came with plastic mags and we had no end of problems because they were used so often so the CF went to strictly metal 30 round mags
ReplyDeletethe ruger mk 2's are bullet proof. i have owned 2 for 30 yrs and they always shoot flawlessly
ReplyDeleteI've had that handgun longer than any other one in my collection. It's more accurate than I am, that's for sure.
DeleteUntil the pages stick together.
ReplyDeleteCIII
Back in the 50's I read a gun mag article that said that a historian in France had found a trenches from the 1918's that contained several 1911 magazines that were fully loaded. Just for kicks he ran a few through his late model 1911. They had laid out in the weather for 40 plus years and they all never missed a beat, ammo and springs. Can't beat that!!
ReplyDeleteIf you are going to load mags 100%, insert them with an open bolt, or slide to the rear
ReplyDeleteIt's not good for a spring to be either fully compressed or let fully free.
ReplyDeleteBut as Exile 1981 wrote, the spring steel is the most important thing.
I have a 1988 PT92 INOX that has had the factory mags loaded to capacity since 1988. They get cleared once every year or two and loaded with fresh ammo. I have 10 Mecgar magazines I used at the range and I have about 60k rounds through the gun. It has less than 500 rounds on it since the last re-spring and locking block change. I have never had a misfeed with the factory magazines and very few with the Mecgar mags. It is my nightstand gun.
ReplyDeleteI have had MIL Spec AR mags that I have run the same way. As long as they are not being unloaded and loaded they retain their shelf life. I keep 2 magazines loaded for the VZ-58 and the other 8 empty. I have 400 rounds on stripper clips and the VZ is easily loaded by stripper clips. The VZ has had 4 magazines fired through it and then was cleaned and is on a hanger in the closet.
The ability of spring steel to retain its torsional strength under prolonged loads (coil spring wire is loaded in torsion) is dependent upon both steel chemistry and processing after wire forming. Spring engineers refer to the loss of torsional strength under continuous load as 'sag' or 'set'.
ReplyDeleteCoil spring steel performance longevity is severely limited by phosphorous and sulphur in the steel. These elements promote grain boundary glide which is one of the primary mechanisms of coil spring 'set' under load. Basic ironmaking and steelmaking techniques (which reduce phosphorous and sulphur contents to inconsequential levels) were not well coordinated before WW II which is why so many gun springs manufactured before WW II have taken a set and no longer perform adequately.
Silicon additions to coil spring steel allow spring manufacturers to take advantage of the Bauschinger effect after winding by prestressing springs. This effect is complex, but competent spring manufacturers take advantage of it to produce springs with excellent long term retention of spring properties under load. The misfortune of the spring industry is that there are many spring manufacturers who do not understand the Bauschinger effect sufficiently to take advantage of it. This is true of both domestic and foreign manufacturers.
So the performance of magazine springs after long term compression is very much a function of initial spring manufacture, which can range from very good to very bad.
What 10X25mm said. I was going to comment something similar, especially the part about and before/after WWII. He nailed it. I would only add that tempering controls have improved by orders of magnitude since WWII which only adds to spring longevity.
DeleteNemo
I hear it comes down to quality of the mags and the metallurgy and people can leave Pmags, and other decent quality mags loaded for years. I loaded mine on my kit years ago and haven't really touched them since. I do keep new-in-bag magazines in my kit too as an insurance policy. Maybe I'll pull the ole 308 out for deer season and see how they work.
ReplyDelete- Arc
The US army tested this in the past and determined that repeated compression and expansion of the mag spring is what wears it out. Loading a mag to capacity and leaving it does not fatigue the spring to failure.
ReplyDeletewildbill
I got a Ruger MK1 many years back. Started having mag issues. Three of five having feed problems. Checked several gun shows and came up empty. It and a few others got stolen. Mags weren't taken. Got a MK2 a couple years ago. Decided to see if those MK1 mags would work. All performed perfectly.
ReplyDeleteKen, empty your mag, then use something like a butter knife to depress the follower. At the very bottom on the side is a larger spot where you can pull the retainer pin out to disassemble the mag.
Any mechanical engineer or metallurgist will tell you that cycles of compression and decompression is what wears a spring out. Load them and leave them loaded.
ReplyDeleteI read someplace that recently someone was fixing up an old house in Germany and found a Schmeiser machine gun in the wall with several fully loaded magazines that had been there since WWII they all worked after 70+ years
ReplyDeleteRebuilt a bunch of old GI mags for my M1A back in the Clinton Gun Ban panic. New springs and followers from Brownell's. Tested all for reliability then. Periodically practiced with 'em and reloaded 'em ... except one that slid into the dark recesses of the ammo closet. Found it in Oct. '20. That was 26 years and it worked fine when I used it.
ReplyDeleteSome years back the IDF reportedly went and dug up a bunch of prepositioned spicy time supplies, including preloaded mags for galials, uzi's and stens, and did a torture test to see if the ammo was still good and the mags functioned. They had no problems with what in some cases were 50 year old supplies that did not/would not also happen with fresh ammo and mags.
ReplyDeleteI have GI Issue M-16 aluminum mags tthat been loaded for 5-10 years (yes i do not shoot enough). Loaded with 30 rounds. I have other mags fora 7.62X51 that have been loaded about the same length of time. I have never has a problem with any of them
ReplyDelete