How do clips work?

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syh

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I've tried looking at the schematics and can't quite figure it out. . . and my google-fu is lacking today. How do clips work? Is there something that advances the round upward after each shot?
 
Clips work by holding cartridges together via the rim, with weak spring tension, so that the rounds can be easily stripped off into a magazine with a thumb pushing downwards.
 
Clips work by holding onto the rims of cartridges. Then you can push them down into a magazine, using your thumb. :p
 
I'm referring to en-bloc clips, not stripper clips.

Regarding the difference between clips and magazine, a magazine has a spring, and a clip doesn't. Most firearms use magazines, the M1 Garand, for example, uses a clip that's then thrown out the top after it's empty.

I should have been more specific. How does a clip work in a Garand, for example?
 
I've tried looking at the schematics and can't quite figure it out. . . and my google-fu is lacking today. How do clips work? Is there something that advances the round upward after each shot?
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As mentioned by othes, clips merely hold the cartridges so they can be introduced rapidly into the magazine.

A typical magazine consists basically of three main parts, the magazine box (which holds everything), the follower (on which the bottom cartridge rests) and the follower spring (which presses upward on the follower, feeding the cartridges into the action._
 
The M1 is a special case. It, along with a few other designs, incorporates the clip into the magazine. You must have the sheet metal clip for your M1 to function properly.
 
Rifles that use en bloc clips, like the M1 Garand and Carcano, all have the functional equivalent of magazine springs and followers in the guns themselves.
 
Nope. I've got my M1 Garand right here and there are no machined lips.

Stop and think. The lips have to release cartridges one at a time. But the entire double feed clip has to be jammed down into the receiver. If there were machined lips, the clip couldn't be inserted.

What happens is the curved part of the clip, which acts to hold the rounds in the clip, also acts as the lips. The clip holds the top cartridge until the bolt pushes it foreward -- which is what milled lips do in other designs,
 
M1 Clips don't "work" they hold the rounds and the weapon does the work.
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Yes, the en-bloc clips DO some work. The answer is so simple you can't see it - The M1 en bloc clips are springs in and of themselves. If you insert three or four rounds, they roll around uselessly. But when you insert eight rounds, you use force to insert the last ones and this force is stored in the walls of the clip, which are strained. The inserted cartridges keep the walls tensioned, and thus the spring "loaded." In a strict application of classical physics, the en-bloc clip is doing work on the cartridges. It is doing so because of stress on the molecules in its internal structure - thus it is working as a spring.

In the strictest sense, the M1 clip is an integral and removable part of the magazine. Most magazines can function without their accessory loading clips (like and SKS or an AR, or a 1911). The M1 is one of the few weapons where the clip is actually PART of the magazine. Especially since the magazine is useless without the clip providing both the feed lips and lateral cartridge tension.

None of this disputes the above comments about clips loading magazines, etc. The bulk of an M1's magazine is fixed inside the rifle. But I point it out to highlight the actual mechanical detail and effort, as well as manufacturing technology, that went into this design. Modern rifle users tend to think of the M1 system as antiquated; it wasn't - it was actually very advanced and ingenious. Box magazines already existed - it wasn't that they didn't think of them. The Garand system was designed so that ONE, high quality, tuned to the gun magazine would be retained within the gun, and cheap and simple tensioned clips inserted into it to provide it's lateral tension and feed lips. Spare ammunition could be carried with much less bulk and weight (an infantryman's nightmare), logistics were simplified, and for a prone infantryman the reloading process was quicker and safer. All in all, it was a heck of an ingenious system.
 
for a prone infantryman the reloading process was quicker and safer. All in all, it was a heck of an ingenious system.
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It was also what modern logisticians call a "high risk design" -- the risk being that the resulting complexity made the rifle difficult to produce. In fact, it was so difficult to produce that only one commercial manufacturer, Winchester, was able to deliver acceptable M1s in WWII.

It's no accident that the "improved M1," the M14, used a sheet metal detatchable magazine.
 
Quite a few people here tripping over each other to be the first to get in a dig on somebody they think doesn't understand the difference between magazines and clips. Even when somebody really asks a question about clips and not magazines, some can't help but give him a ration.
 
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