What is the deal with slide "lightening" cuts?

[NeedsMoreMillimeters]

How beneficial if all are are slide lightening cuts (if at all) - like in the pictures. A lot of them seem like decoration, but I figured that their must be some benefit. Only things I can think of are (1) reducing overall weight (however slight), (2) reducing muzzle flip due to having less reciprocating mass over than hand.

- Are any of ^these^ true?

- Is a lighter slide easier to cycle and thus more reliable?

- If a slide is too light, could it have difficulty stripping rounds on its way back into battery (too little mass?)?

- Has anyone with these noticed more gunk inside the actions?

- Any other effects I've missed from changing the original designed weights?

Curious if anyone would actually use this on a duty/military gun?

 

[kokapelli]

Seems to me that if you lighten the slide you will need to use a stiffer recoil spring to compensate for the reduced slide inertia. Isn't that what they do on the very light weight Micro pocket pistols?

 

[Walt Sherrill]

Seems to me that if you lighten the slide you will need to use a stiffer recoil spring to compensate for the reduced slide inertia. Isn't that what they do on the very light weight Micro pocket pistols?

That would seem to be a legitimate concern, but it may depend on how MUCH the slide is lightened if there's concern about the lighter slide's effect on function. A lot of the the slides I've seen modified appear to have been modified more for appearance's sake than to change/improve performance.

As I understand it -- I may have it wrong -- when SIG first began developing a semi-auto in .357 SIG, they started with the P228. They found that they needed a much heavier recoil spring (which was then difficult to rack manually) and stronger frame stops. They reinforced the frame and used a heavier slide in the P229.

The Glocks in 9mm, .357, .40 and .45 gap have basically the same frame and recoil spring assemblies, but vary the size/weight of the slide to manage the different velocities. (The fact that 9mm conversion barrels are available for the .40 and .357 versions of those Glocks guns -- and work well despite the fact that they all use the same recoil spring assembly -- suggests that velocity may not be too critical in that caliber range.)

 

[ilbob]

kind of like the so called blood grooves in knives. as much about marketing as anything else.

 

[MachIVshooter]

It started with race guns, and has a legitimate purpose there, getting the pistols to shoot cream puff loads and barely move. For the most part, though, it is strictly aesthetic & trendy these days.

 

[Tirod]

As for dust dirt and debris, the Beretta's in service don't have a major issue with it - the slide is cut open from the front sight back to the chamber hood. It leaves most of the barrel exposed at top.

Ironic since we transitioned to a long arm with enclosed bolt and ejection cover to reduce getting dirt in it, but moved to an open barrel handgun exposing a large opening. Maybe the dirt and dust issue has additional factors like excessive lube that also impact on making it a gritty mess.

As for cosmetic enhancement, that is exactly the same marketing effort given free floats with picatinny rails, the Hole of the Month, and extreme light weight CNC machining, all of which amounts to a few ounces. The FSB and barrel contour have more impact. Same with 9mm double stacks - the slide cuts do nothing compared to shoving a fully loaded mag into the grip.

We could save more weight moving to poly cased ammo, which the Marines are now looking into, and that is exactly the purpose of the LSAT round the Army is perfecting. But those aren't as exciting to gun buyers as all that CNC visual glitter.

Give it a year and we'll see the stainless slides machined with the same prismatic texture mag wheels get. Rainbow slides will sell well in some circles.

 

[ny32182]

All else equal, guns with lighter slides will usually bounce around less and track straighter, but the differences are going to be pretty minimal, even to the very best shooters. If they are now being marketed to the tactical crowd, I would say it is exactly that; marketing.

 

[tarosean]

Seems to me that if you lighten the slide you will need to use a stiffer recoil spring to compensate for the reduced slide inertia.

Quite the opposite.. you want lighter weight spring to speed up the slide velocity. A faster cycling gun will be flatter to shoot giving you a quicker sight picture between shots.
People that are generally lightening slides are doing so for competition reasons. They want the gun to be as fast and flat as possible.. Competitors will add weight to non reciprocating mass and shave off as much as possible where it reciprocates. Gunk, debris, etc. do not really matter. Thousands of a second do..

Course none of this will matter to Joe blow who just wants something for aesthetics, like the pictured gun.

 

[JeffG]

For the most part, for a carry gun, I like stock parts. On a target or race gun, the world is your playground. At a Glock armorer's school, we were discussing after market up grades to a ridiculous degree,and the master armorer said,(shaking his head) "If you don't like Glocks, buy a different gun."
Maybe some wisdom there, for street guns.

 

[Sarge7402]

Back in the 30's Some German shooters lightened the slides on their Walther PP's in .22 Caliber. I'm guessing to make it more reliable when using target (read standard velocity) ammo. Mine was and that portion of the slide finally failed a couple of years ago. Had it silver soldered back in and today with American Standard Vel ammo shoots like a house afire

 

[98Redline]

tarosean has it exactly correct.
On raceguns they want the lighter slide to cycle faster. It is not about creampuff loads as IPSC open class PF is still a fairly stout load. Guys running open class guns are looking to shave a couple of milliseconds off of the cycle time of the gun where they can. Having the slide back in battery that much sooner means they are acquiring their sight picture that much sooner and get the next shot off sooner.

For guns not competing in open class competition, this includes limited classes, range toys, and CCW, they are aesthetic only.

 

[Walt Sherrill]

Quite the opposite.. you want lighter weight spring to speed up the slide velocity. A faster cycling gun will be flatter to shoot giving you a quicker sight picture between shots.

if your goal is to increase cycling speed and makiing the gun run flat, your response above makes sense. (As I mentioned, some guys also leave the slide unchanged, but go to lighter springs and buffers to get some of the same effect.)

But, It seems as though MOST of the folks on these "general" types of forums who are talking about doing the modifications/cuts to improve the appearance of their weapons, not to make them perform better.

If the goal is primarily to improve a gun's looks, and the shooter is still shooting the same loads and still running the same recoil spring/recoil spring assembly as before (as seemed implicit in kokapelli's comments), the increased slide velocity from a lightened slide might eventually lead to some unexpected wear or damage. If so, a heavier recoil spring/assembly might be in order.

(As noted earlier, I think that was why SIG went to a heavier slide and more robust frame components with the P229 vs. P228 when building a gun to handle the hotter .357 SIG round. They found that a heavier recoil spring alone wasn't practical and the increased slide velocity from that hotter round wrought havoc with the frame. With lighter loads, as in your example, that would not be a concern.)

 

[ATLDave]

As others have noted, a lighter slide can make the sights bounce around less/flip less when the slide hits home at the rear of its travel. That's the functional point. It can make the gun slightly more finicky with regard to a wide range of ammunition power and/or introduce areas of possible metal failure/cracking. So it makes sense in a carefully calibrated race gun that is only going to eat a narrow range of ammo... it doesn't make a great deal of sense with a duty-type gun that needs to be omnivorous and where the user expects the slide to last essentially forever.

 

[ny32182]

There is plenty of slide lightening going on in Limited, although with major loads there, you really might crack a slide, and I have friends that have done exactly that.

I wouldn't say the effects are strictly limited to high end competition guns however.

Compare two stock guns that are very similar in overall dimensions and weight, the M&P 5" and the CZ P09. I shot the former in IDPA and Production for several years. I also acquired a P09 sometime later, and put a steel guide rod and 13lb recoil spring in it just for kicks; same setup that is in my M&P. I can take my Production load, and shoot the two guns back to back... same ammo, same spring rate, same shooter, same day, etc etc. The P09, with the lighter slide-in-frame design, just has observably less up and down type motion at both ends of the slide travel, and it is probably cycling a hair quicker too. Now is that enough to show an objectively measurable performance difference in terms of being able to shoot targets faster and better with the P09, or that the slide weight is solely responsible for the difference in feel? (even in a competitive setting with measurements in the hundreths of a second)? I can't make a definitive statement that it is; I can just say that I subjectively prefer the cyclic feel of the lighter slide gun.

That said I would also never really consider modifying a carry gun to lighten the slide, because I don't think any potential benefits would be worth the cost of doing so.

 

[Jack B.]

Engineers get lots of money and have the best facilities to develop guns for us. Someone working on his own , with maybe a dubious background is going to give us something better? Forget it.

 

[MachIVshooter]

Engineers get lots of money and have the best facilities to develop guns for us. Someone working on his own , with maybe a dubious background is going to give us something better? Forget it.

Wrong way of looking at it.

The MEs doing the design work for gun manufacturers have a set of parameters, a couple of the big ones being production cost/price point and marketability. If the lightened or otherwise contoured slides cost more to produce and/or limit market appeal, then it won't be done, or will be done on upscale/custom models only (i.e. Tanfoglio Witness Gold Custom Extreme). Same applies to any other product. Doesn't mean the aftermarket bits and custom work don't improve the product, just that most people aren't willing to pay more for it.

 

[Jack B.]

Wrong way of looking at it.

The MEs doing the design work for gun manufacturers have a set of parameters, a couple of the big ones being production cost/price point and marketability. If the lightened or otherwise contoured slides cost more to produce and/or limit market appeal, then it won't be done, or will be done on upscale/custom models only (i.e. Tanfoglio Witness Gold Custom Extreme). Same applies to any other product. Doesn't mean the aftermarket bits and custom work don't improve the product, just that most people aren't willing to pay more for it.

Nice race gun.

 

[springer99]

The primary benefits of lightening cuts in the slide are

1 - They do lighten your pocketbook while benefiting the economy as a whole.
2 - They do provide great spaces for collecting all that holster/pocket fuzz.
3 - They just look so........ well "tacticool"

 

[MachIVshooter]

Nice race gun.

That's a stock photo, not mine

 

[Jack B.]

That's a stock photo, not mine

Do you have a race gun. I know a gunsmith that wants to build one for me but I don't have that kind of $$$$

 

[98Redline]

Jack B. Building raceguns is not something that any gunsmith can take on successfully. You can get lots of aesthetic bells and whistles put on or machined into the gun, but making it look good and more importantly making it run right is something not everyone can do. The really good smiths are often specialized on one particular type of gun (1911, Glock, Witness, etc....), they can do others but do the lion's share of work on one specific configuration. Find those guys if you want a gun done right, put your money down and settle in for the long wait. Great smiths always have a long waiting list.

 

[ATLDave]

Engineers get lots of money and have the best facilities to develop guns for us. Someone working on his own , with maybe a dubious background is going to give us something better? Forget it.

This is like saying that someone adding a supercharger to a car that will be used for drag racing is stupid because the engineers at Ford or Chevy would have put a supercharger in to begin with if it was a good idea.

Engineers of mass-marketed products, such as service-type pistols, are expected to build products that will work across a wide range of circumstances for a wide variety of people and purposes. They must optimize across many possible needs. A specific user, however, may not need a particular item to perform across those wide ranges - they may just want it to do one or two things as well as those things can be done.

Slide lightening cuts might make a gun less tolerant of different powered ammo. So if you put that on a mass marketed gun, you'll just generate complaints about reliability... "oh, I bought X brand of ammo and it wouldn't work but that ammo works in my Glock, so this new pistol is poorly engineered."

That's not really relevant to a competitive shooter who has never even put factory ammo in their gun and is loading within a PF window of, say, 170-180, and is perfectly willing to experiment with different spring weights and powders to find a load that is reliable and feels the way the competitor wants. Much as the drag racer is not concerned about the fact that the supercharger on his drag race car is loud or increases fuel consumption or is pointless for grocery shopping.

 

[CapnMac]

The type of action matters, too.
In pure blowback actions, the only thing perventing premature opening are the slide/bolt mass and spring rate. You can compensate for decreased reciprocating mass can be made up in spring rate, but only so much (see the comment above about racking limits).

Now, flapper or roller-locked actions, you can futz about with slide weight (within reason) all you want.

 

[Jack B.]

This is like saying that someone adding a supercharger to a car that will be used for drag racing is stupid because the engineers at Ford or Chevy would have put a supercharger in to begin with if it was a good idea.

Engineers of mass-marketed products, such as service-type pistols, are expected to build products that will work across a wide range of circumstances for a wide variety of people and purposes. They must optimize across many possible needs. A specific user, however, may not need a particular item to perform across those wide ranges - they may just want it to do one or two things as well as those things can be done.

Slide lightening cuts might make a gun less tolerant of different powered ammo. So if you put that on a mass marketed gun, you'll just generate complaints about reliability... "oh, I bought X brand of ammo and it wouldn't work but that ammo works in my Glock, so this new pistol is poorly engineered."

That's not really relevant to a competitive shooter who has never even put factory ammo in their gun and is loading within a PF window of, say, 170-180, and is perfectly willing to experiment with different spring weights and powders to find a load that is reliable and feels the way the competitor wants. Much as the drag racer is not concerned about the fact that the supercharger on his drag race car is loud or increases fuel consumption or is pointless for grocery shopping.

Drag race cars blowup a lot

 

[ATLDave]

Drag race cars blowup a lot

Yes. Often things designed to wring the last possible bit of performance available have shorter lifespans or have some durability issues.

If you want a car to dive 250,000 miles, you should not buy a Formula One racer. If you want to win a Formula One race, don't bring an Honda Accord. Neither car is "stupid."