Cleaned my wife's pistol after an outing yesterday. Noticed the recoil spring was not straight. Should I replace it? If so, I see Wolff has several weights of springs available. It would be better for my wife if she could more easily manipulate the slide due to weak and painful hands. If I get a spring that will lessen the force necessary to pull back the slide will it compromise performance in any way or limit the use of certain ammunition?
It never hurts to replace an old spring, the things will weaken, so how new is your spring? I think about 5000 rounds and the spring should be replaced.
As for a bent spring, maybe it will rub internally, but does the pistol cycle? That is the primary issue, if the pistol does not cycle, replace the spring, straight or bent.
As for a weaker spring, I have never deliberately tried a weaker spring, with full power rounds, always going up in weight. Problems I have had with stronger springs is of course, harder to rack, and the occasional failure to feed with a weak round, stovepipe entering chamber, and stove pipe ejecting a round. Weak rounds don't have enough energy to cycle the slide and these are common issue with too strong of springs.
The only experience I have had with weak springs is with old springs in M41 S&W 22lr's. There the round stove piped on ejection, or stayed inside the ejection port. I could imagine a failure to feed if the slide was accelerated too fast, rebounded too fast, and over rode the round in the chamber.
Generally speaking, a weaker spring works fine with reduced loads, but never tried it with full strength loads. I am running a 12 lb mainspring in my Wadcutter Bullseye Pistol 1911's, the standard spring is 16 pounds. But if you try to run full power loads with a weaker mainspring, test it. I think it will slam and bang the pistol, which is not good.
Someone with weak hands really should look for something different than an autopistol. I do not think it good policy to give novices autopistols. Smith and Wesson made a Lady Smith revolver with re designed leverages for women's hands. Revolvers are simple and simple is good.
