How long can magazine be loaded

Magazines that have been loaded for decades have then discharged without a hitch. The problem lies in unpredictable factors. Different manufacturers use different materials and processes to make springs. The loaded magazine could be exposed to contaminates, moisture, corrosion, or bad ammunition. Stress-strain cycles play a major role in spring wear , however, parts designed with ferrous metals like most steels generally have lifetimes in the millions of cycles and fail by different modes long before the lifetime is reached.

So obviously, the life of the spring depends on proper design and the choice of materials. The spring steel gun magazines typically use is a moderately-high carbon steel with alloying agents in small quantities.

Properly designed, a magazine spring would last far longer than the other components of the gun that are regularly undergoing thermal stress, diffusion, and much larger fatigue cycles. This is no reason to be stingy at the range.

A high-quality magazine should function perfectly through tens of thousands of cycles. No evidence exists to support this suggestion. Take your strategic magazine to the range for a change, and put a different pre-loaded magazine in its place.

How often this should be done depends on who you ask. Are you running the risk of having a dud magazine if you store it too long? All good questions, so can you store magazines that are loaded? Yes you can store loaded magazines. Over time the spring loses its ability to store the energy needed to push rounds up into the chamber.

But, this is a long term problem. This article will cover everything you need to know about storing loaded magazines to keep yourself safe and keep your family protected. The reason a shooter may want to store loaded magazines rather than load them manually is that they are needing to reload in a hurry.

Filling an empty magazine is not hard, per se, but it is time-consuming. For example, imagine if there is a home intruder. You have 9 rounds in the magazine, one in the chamber. This is, in theory, enough bullets to stop whoever has broken into your home. But what if there is more than one person? What if you miss? In a panic, emptying a clip into your attack seems like the logical choice.

But there is no guarantee you hit your target, or if you do hit them stop them. Having a gun with no rounds is pretty useless. You can also think of the convenience factor. If you are heading down to the gun range, you might be paying a hefty sum for the privilege of being down there. You will normally pay by the hour, so every minute counts. It will very quickly eat into your time. So, bringing loaded magazines can be a time and money saver.

Not every range will allow you to bring in multiple loaded magazines, for safety reasons. Magazine springs always wear out. Even if you only use them and reload them each time, rather than storing them fully loaded, they will begin to lose their spring. So just to be safe, the best practice is to rotate the magazines periodically. A gunsmith at Beretta who claimed not to be speaking on behalf of the company told us he rotates his personal carry magazines every two weeks.

The customer service rep we spoke to from Sig said that once every six months would be sufficient. Polymer followers in particular seem to be a common failure point for magazines.

Adding some complexity to this debate is whether loading the mags to their full capacity will make any difference in how quickly the springs wear out.

Again, there is not a clear consensus in the industry. However, Wolff Gunsprings , a company well known for manufacturing a wide variety of springs for the firearms industry has a slightly different take. These are designed to hold more rounds with less spring material often in the same space.