storing loaded magazines

Daleo8803

Daleo8803

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Do you keep your mags loaded?

I keep half of mine loaded to max and change them out every 3 months.

Do you think it really hurts then to stay loaded? I have always been told that a spring on "works" when it's moving aka stretching and compressing, not when it's staying still.

Just curious as to what others do.
 
No damage to a spring by keeping it compressed. Just like the springs on a car don't wear out from the weight of a car sitting on it. Its compressing and relaxing a spring that wear it out. Cycling it.

The only danger to keeping mags loaded is that some magazines may develop feed lip issues when kept under constant pressure for long periods of time. The Magpul Pmags with the dust covers solve that problem. You can leave them loaded for as long as you want.

For other mags, as long as they lock in place and feed reliably, you can keep them loaded up.
 
I keep them loaded and only unload them on the firing line. Mag and recoil/RTB springs are wear items that get replaced after ~5k rounds through my gun (2-years for me), or sooner if I start seeing problems arise.
 
I leave mine fully loaded. Most of the wear on springs comes from compression and expansion which puts the spring close or at their elastic limits. Most people will tell you that leaving a loaded mag will not effect the springs but this is not entirely true. If the spring is left fully compressed will wear if it is close to or beyond its designed limit, the spring will however most likely degrade so slowly that it'll never be a functional problem.
 
If it’s a quality magazine it generally won’t hurt it.

I’ve had some crap magazines in the Army for the M9 that have left a bad taste in my mouth about the practice, so I don’t load them all up and leave them, though

I would like to see a long term test, like let’s say you bury a cache, half the mags are loaded and half are not. Assuming nothing was disturbed, would the loaded mags still perform as well as the unloaded mags? I have some doubts
 
Unloaded magazines, unless being stored away and not intended to be used for a long time, are somewhat a waste of space in my opinion. Consider the guy in Texas who stopped the church shooter. Had to take the time to load up a magazine before he went to the fight.

I generally have about 10 AR mags, loaded at all times...either keeps them ready for use or just saves time when I get to the range. Same goes for pistols. I always load them up ahead of time for my next range trip. From everything I have read about this topic the wear on a magazine and a spring comes from repeated loading and unloading.
 
I don't make a practice of either really. I'll load up a couple rifle mags if there are none, I won't unload them if they come back from the range with rounds in them.

There's some pistol mags stay loaded a long time too, but I am more likely to unload them as I may decide to dry fire practice involving mag changes.

Sent from my SM-G360V using Tapatalk
 
jimmyjames8 said:
Springs can take a set. Its materials engineering and physics.
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Steel does not creep, it bends when it's subjected to stress in excess of its elastic limit. What I think I know about the engineering and physics of steel tells me duration of the compression cycle is not a factor. If your spring is deformed by loading the mag, it happens as you're inserting the last couple of rounds, not during the months of storage afterward. If you know of a demonstration to the contrary link it up, I'm interested in reading or watching and learning.
 
Three things wear springs:

- Cycling them.
- Over stressing them beyond their design limits.
- Crappy manufacturing.

Cycling: If the magazine and spring are designed properly, then you only have to worry about the number of cycles. And you should go many years, even decades, before spring tension becomes a problem. If you're really worried about this, then pick a number of years that works for you and replace your heavily used magazine springs. Like on every even 10 years.

Over stressing: This is caused by over compression, generally a design problem, because if the magazine and spring are designed properly you CAN'T over compress the spring because the other components in the magazine physically limit full travel. If you change out components (like the magazine follower) in order to fit an extra round or two, now you're over stressing the spring by compressing it more than it was designed to compress for that magazine. Don't do this...and if you have, either find a spring designed for your new magazine configuration, replace the spring more often as signs of failure pop up, or restore your magazine to it's original configuration.

Crappy manufacturing: Nothing to do for this except buy quality springs and be done with it.


So, feel free to load your magazines to maximum design capacity and store them. I do this, and only unload the magazine periodically as I see fit in order to inspect for signs of corrosion or dirt.
 
I definitely keep my AR mags loaded with down 2. I have personally blown out the bottom of a hexmag loaded to capacity trying to get it to lock in with the bolt closed. That was enough to convince me (even if it was a defect mag), havent had the issue since. Pistol mags I keep 2-3 loaded at all times for my carry/HD guns
 
I keep an 30rnd AR mag loaded.
And, my carry Grock mags.

If they don't get carried, they don't get loaded. Additionally, my competition guns only get loaded at the range, and are unloaded prior to leaving.

So: Holstered guns are loaded (and backup carry mags). Unholstered guns are not loaded for any reason accept at range.
 
Catfish said:
Steel does not creep, it bends when it's subjected to stress in excess of its elastic limit. What I think I know about the engineering and physics of steel tells me duration of the compression cycle is not a factor. If your spring is deformed by loading the mag, it happens as you're inserting the last couple of rounds, not during the months of storage afterward. If you know of a demonstration to the contrary link it up, I'm interested in reading or watching and learning.
Click to expand...

I need to do what I keep thinking about doing but then not doing it. Keep a 30RND PMAG loaded for say a year and then unload it and measure the spring and then rip open a minty fresh PMAG from it's package and do the same measurement. Might not make a bit of functional difference but I'd bet a beer that the measurements wont be the same.
 
jimmyjames8 said:
I need to do what I keep thinking about doing but then not doing it. Keep a 30RND PMAG loaded for say a year and then unload it and measure the spring and then rip open a minty fresh PMAG from it's package and do the same measurement. Might not make a bit of functional difference but I'd bet a beer that the measurements wont be the same.
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I agree with this.

My Glock factory G19 mags seem to become substantially compressed/twisted when loaded for periods of time versus my G19 PMags for equal periods. And I doubt a brand new mag loaded once and unloaded would have the same amount of distortion a mag loaded for 30+ days would have
 
jimmyjames8 said:
I need to do what I keep thinking about doing but then not doing it. Keep a 30RND PMAG loaded for say a year and then unload it and measure the spring and then rip open a minty fresh PMAG from it's package and do the same measurement. Might not make a bit of functional difference but I'd bet a beer that the measurements wont be the same.
Click to expand...

Four mags, measure spring length in each at day 1 and day 365:

one as control, never loaded.
one loaded and unloaded once, on day one.
one unloaded for 365 days then loaded and unloaded on the last day
one loaded on day 1 and unloaded on day 365.

Not going to bet - lets look at the results first.

ETA: use more mags if you want to see how downloading affects results.
 
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Got a WWII Luger a couple years ago, taken from the body of a German soldier by my wife’s uncle. He brought it home loaded and it sat in a drawer until he died at which point it found it’s way to me. Functioned just fine after say 70 years.
 
JimB said:
Got a WWII Luger a couple years ago, taken from the body of a German soldier by my wife’s uncle. He brought it home loaded and it sat in a drawer until he died at which point it found it’s way to me. Functioned just fine after say 70 years.
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wow... so when you got it, the ammo in the luger was what the dead German had loaded in it?
 
DLam said:
wow... so when you got it, the ammo in the luger was what the dead German had loaded in it?
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Yes, it was actually 9mm ammo from an Italian submachine gun, the name of which I’ve forgotten.
 
jimmyjames8 said:
I need to do what I keep thinking about doing but then not doing it. Keep a 30RND PMAG loaded for say a year and then unload it and measure the spring and then rip open a minty fresh PMAG from it's package and do the same measurement. Might not make a bit of functional difference but I'd bet a beer that the measurements wont be the same.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't expect them to be the same. I would, however, expect them to be within the design tolerance specification for the spring in question.

That's what specs are for...if the spec wasn't good enough, it wouldn't be the spec.
 
TFI.

The only knock I hear about the very-old-mags-still-loaded-and-working example is that quality may have been higher back then or springs over-engineered (built like tank!), etc. vs. cost saving/cutting manufacturing methods (cheaper and/or lighter materials not holding up long term) today.
 
Yes.

Daleo8803 said:
Do you keep your mags loaded?

I keep half of mine loaded to max and change them out every 3 months.

Do you think it really hurts then to stay loaded? I have always been told that a spring on "works" when it's moving aka stretching and compressing, not when it's staying still.

Just curious as to what others do.
Click to expand...
 
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