BCRider
Member
Folks with a history of metal working will take note that different guns will sound differently when the slide is dropped with an empty chamber.
My 1911's make a disturbingly "glass like" single hit sound such as you get when hitting two hammer heads together. My other semis tend to have a lot of other things going on which creates more of a train of smaller and softer sounds resulting in a more cushioned slide travel. If you listen to the differences closely it becomes pretty obvious.
As for things that can break? How many of you have ever tried to clear a metal file by hitting it against the bench only to have it make a ringing snap and see a piece of it fly away? Yet files are finely tuned for the job that they are made for.
There's very little in a good handgun which is there for no reason. And the rest that is still there is designed to work with ammo being present in the cycle of operation. We remove that when we drop a slide on an empty chamber. Yes, the slide does still move fast. But there's a big difference between a sudden impact and even the softening that occurs from stripping and chambering a fresh round.
The shock absorbers on your car, truck or motorcycle move fast as well so they can deal with the next bump. Fast enough that you can simply remove them? Try it and you'll suddenly realize that even a little bit of shock damping or motion damping that happens fast as a wheel bump or as fast as a closing slide is still very noticeable.
Those of us with S&W revolvers see another example of this. It's well known that if we flick the cylinder closed smartly instead of closing it by hand that the inevitable result will be a bent crane and ejector tube and rod. Yet the guns are resisting FAR greater loads when being fired. The difference? The metal parts and design is made to resist the recoil loads in one direction. They are not designed for or intended to resist loads from the other directions. Yet no one says that those guns are poorly designed.
My 1911's make a disturbingly "glass like" single hit sound such as you get when hitting two hammer heads together. My other semis tend to have a lot of other things going on which creates more of a train of smaller and softer sounds resulting in a more cushioned slide travel. If you listen to the differences closely it becomes pretty obvious.
As for things that can break? How many of you have ever tried to clear a metal file by hitting it against the bench only to have it make a ringing snap and see a piece of it fly away? Yet files are finely tuned for the job that they are made for.
There's very little in a good handgun which is there for no reason. And the rest that is still there is designed to work with ammo being present in the cycle of operation. We remove that when we drop a slide on an empty chamber. Yes, the slide does still move fast. But there's a big difference between a sudden impact and even the softening that occurs from stripping and chambering a fresh round.
The shock absorbers on your car, truck or motorcycle move fast as well so they can deal with the next bump. Fast enough that you can simply remove them? Try it and you'll suddenly realize that even a little bit of shock damping or motion damping that happens fast as a wheel bump or as fast as a closing slide is still very noticeable.
Those of us with S&W revolvers see another example of this. It's well known that if we flick the cylinder closed smartly instead of closing it by hand that the inevitable result will be a bent crane and ejector tube and rod. Yet the guns are resisting FAR greater loads when being fired. The difference? The metal parts and design is made to resist the recoil loads in one direction. They are not designed for or intended to resist loads from the other directions. Yet no one says that those guns are poorly designed.