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Walt- I agree that over compressing springs ruins them. My position has not changed - Properly manufactured and designed high carbon steel springs should not "get weak" unless they are stressed beyond their elastic limit, are rusted, or are over heated. My contention is that cycling work hardens springs, causing them to break, not get weaker. Some gun designs obviously over stress springs.
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I'll ask again:
why would the maker of a compact or sub-compact 1911 recommend replacing recoil springs in the compact models far more frequently than they recommend for their full-size guns? If, as you claim, springs are springs, aren't we required to assume -- based on your analysis -- that gun makers, like Bill Wilson, aren't using "properly manufactured and designed high carbon steel springs" in their smaller guns, even though they continue to use high-quality materials in their full-size guns. Wonder why they'd use inferior materials in one type of gun and not another? Another participant here said it was cycling that killed springs. If so, why does 2000 rounds almost kill a sub-compact 1911 spring, but not the recoil spring in a 1911 Government model? They are arguably the same materials and the same number of rounds fired...
Perhaps the answer is simpler than we think. I wonder if the springs in some sub-compact guns (and in hi-cap and compact mags) -- and maybe in other gun designs as well -- are being routinely pushed to and past their elastic limits out of necessity. Perhaps modern-day metallurgy hasn't advanced at the same pace as gun design -- and spring makers can't build long-lived springs that will fit in the space available in some gun designs and still get the job done.
I wonder, too, if coil springs in hand guns are stressed differently than the leaf springs in knives?
With coil springs, the load/stress/wear is clearly distributed over a lot of different bends or coils in the spring. It would be difficult to get enough pressure on any one point to make it break there, as the work load is really widely distributed, by by the nature of the spring! Then, too, nearly all of these coil springs must both bend AND twist during their work cycle, which may not be the case with leaf knife springs. Perhaps the load/stress is more focused in a leaf spring used in a knife, making a single-point break more likely?
I wonder if pushing some types of coil springs to or beyond their elastic limit leads to many, almost invisible micro-fractures in the steel, thereby reducing the strength and functional diameter of the steel coils? If so, the spring would become effectively smaller, would look the same, but wouldn't be able to perform the same amount of work. If that happened, a spring getting "softer" might really be the result of many (thousands?) small breaks -- a theory consistent with your experience with spring steel. Proving that to be the case would be difficult without destructive examination by people with the right equipment and analytical skills.
It may be, too, as suggested above, that leaf springs, by their nature (how they are used), focuses their work effort more narrowly than do coil springs, so that they'd break more readily at a critical point, rather than "soften" (i.e., break more broadly).
Some folks here keep citing their own long-lived springs as examples of all springs. I would remind them that while springs may be springs, not all springs do the same kind of work or handle the same kind of loads. And, more importantly, not all springs are PUSHED to their limits.
Where's
BernieB (whose analysis was cited in an earlier post) when we need him?