Bergeron
Member
As I haven't been shooting my 1911 since early September, I've been doing some thinking about the practice of dropping the slide under full spring pressure and an empty magazine/no magazine. I've read in manuals and heard in the internet that such a practice is not only sloppy gunhandling, but can damage the firing mechanism of the pistol, and that 1911s with trigger jobs are especially succeptible to damage.
Seeing how my baby has a really nice trigger, I'm not gonna tempt screwing that up by acting like an idiot with one of my pistols, but I was hoping that I could encourage a techinical discussion of the physics involved.
Let's start by assuming that we are using a .45 1911 with a trigger job that has a ~17lb. recoil spring and that we are using Chip McCormick 10 round magazines.
(Note: I am interpreting a "17lb recoil spring" as a spring that requires 17lbs of force to be completetly compressed)
By earlier statements of manuals and the internet, we know that we are NOT hurting the trigger job by firing the pistol with ammunition in the magazine.
The final velocity of the slide will be dependant on the weight of the recoil spring, the length of the slide stroke (BTW, does anyone know that number?), and the force required to strip the round out of the magazine. I will assume that the energy required to move the barrel back into battery and lock the pistol is negligible, or at the very least, it will not change whether or not we have an empty chamber, and can be discounted.
Okay, so the most force required to strip the round will be when it is loaded to maximum capacity, the least force will be the last round. Again, we will assume that stripping the last round absorbs enough spring energy to not damage the trigger job.
This is where we are going to have a little fun. I don't have anyway to measure how much force that is, though I imagine that I could measure it with a trigger pull device. How much force does THR think it would take to strip the 1st round and then the 10th?
Now that we have the spring weight, slide stroke length, and force required to strip the round, we can calculate final slide velocity and compare it to the slide velocity when we drop the slide on an empty chamber.
What I am getting around to, is, does the board think that the final slide velocity of a ~17lb recoil spring 1911 stripping a round will be compared to say, a ~11lb sprung bullseye wadcutter gun dropped on an empty mag?
I've read about folks with 20-26 lb sprung 10mm and .45 Super pistols, and I personally doubt that those guns have slide velocities when fired with loaded magazines that are less than, say, a 14lb USPSA Limted pistol dropped on an empty magazine. BUT, I do know that the slide velocity IS less when the gun has to strip a loaded round. If anyone can come up with the numbers I would need, we can run through some calculations. I am more than willing to accept the viewpoints contrary to my own.
If anyone is very curious, and has a high-speed camera, we could do some really cool experiments and help to settle the argument.
What does everyone else think?
I'm still not gonna drop MY slide on an empty chamber.
Seeing how my baby has a really nice trigger, I'm not gonna tempt screwing that up by acting like an idiot with one of my pistols, but I was hoping that I could encourage a techinical discussion of the physics involved.
Let's start by assuming that we are using a .45 1911 with a trigger job that has a ~17lb. recoil spring and that we are using Chip McCormick 10 round magazines.
(Note: I am interpreting a "17lb recoil spring" as a spring that requires 17lbs of force to be completetly compressed)
By earlier statements of manuals and the internet, we know that we are NOT hurting the trigger job by firing the pistol with ammunition in the magazine.
The final velocity of the slide will be dependant on the weight of the recoil spring, the length of the slide stroke (BTW, does anyone know that number?), and the force required to strip the round out of the magazine. I will assume that the energy required to move the barrel back into battery and lock the pistol is negligible, or at the very least, it will not change whether or not we have an empty chamber, and can be discounted.
Okay, so the most force required to strip the round will be when it is loaded to maximum capacity, the least force will be the last round. Again, we will assume that stripping the last round absorbs enough spring energy to not damage the trigger job.
This is where we are going to have a little fun. I don't have anyway to measure how much force that is, though I imagine that I could measure it with a trigger pull device. How much force does THR think it would take to strip the 1st round and then the 10th?
Now that we have the spring weight, slide stroke length, and force required to strip the round, we can calculate final slide velocity and compare it to the slide velocity when we drop the slide on an empty chamber.
What I am getting around to, is, does the board think that the final slide velocity of a ~17lb recoil spring 1911 stripping a round will be compared to say, a ~11lb sprung bullseye wadcutter gun dropped on an empty mag?
I've read about folks with 20-26 lb sprung 10mm and .45 Super pistols, and I personally doubt that those guns have slide velocities when fired with loaded magazines that are less than, say, a 14lb USPSA Limted pistol dropped on an empty magazine. BUT, I do know that the slide velocity IS less when the gun has to strip a loaded round. If anyone can come up with the numbers I would need, we can run through some calculations. I am more than willing to accept the viewpoints contrary to my own.
If anyone is very curious, and has a high-speed camera, we could do some really cool experiments and help to settle the argument.
What does everyone else think?
I'm still not gonna drop MY slide on an empty chamber.