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Posted: 8/22/2004 8:58:37 PM EDT
| Is it a good idea to store loaded magazines? Does this set the spring in the mags? How long should the magazines stay loaded to avoid damage? |
| I too keep a USGI loaded next to my carbine. It is not the compression that causes springs to wear out but the compression cycles. Meaning, if you keep a mag loaded, you're fine, but if you load it and unload it every day for ten years it will die...basically thats it. |
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My LCE has 3 mag pouches. That's 9 mags filled with 30 rounds each plus 1 mag each in the canteen pouches (behind the canteens). Plus 1 loaded mag in each AR. 370 rds. ready to go and 8,230rds. plus 111 empty mags stored nearby. I'm ALMOST prepared to be a minute man.  I do a round / mag rotation once per year - or whenever I'm too lazy to load mags when I go shooting. |
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American Handgunner did a big article on this a few months ago. The upshot is that storing a mag loaded does absolutely no harm to the springs. I swapped my elderly mother a chief's .38 for dad's old .45 last year, 'cause she can't comfortably manipulate a slide anymore. We figured out that the mag had been loaded since at least 1979. Functioned flawlessly. |
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I have 20 USGI thirty rounders that have been fully loaded since Valentines Day (Feb. 14th) of this year. That's six months. I'll be heading out to the range in a couple of hours. I don't expect any problems. I'll give a full report later on today. My mags are a mix of Sanchez, Cooper, Parsons, La Belles and Adventurelines. None of these mags have ever given me any problems, but this is the longest stretch between loading and firing since I bought my first AR. HS1 |
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Load them up, and set them back.... All of my mags for my ARs` and my Kimbers are LOADED, and they stay that way, until I shoot and empty them, then I get to load them again..... Got to love it......  Leaving a mag loaded willl not hurt the springs, if that was the case, then springs that set on shelfs for years un-used would go bad, just by setting there, with no load/compression on them at all. As with anything else in this world, USE makes them wear out, repeated use, many times over, and over and over and over and over.....well you get the idea...... |
HEY, you never know....Just wait till you wake up one morning to have ZOMBIE chowing down on your throat, its` teeth riping open your jugular, Ya, then you will wish you would have paid attention in the GD area........ 
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I remember a similar question a while ago, one respondant posted that at his army base they stored loaded magazines for years with no ill effects. So I started loading mine up and stopped worrying about it. I keep 2 loaded USGI mags in the safe. My Sig 229 sits on the nightstand with 10 rounds in the mag plus 1 in the spout. If it is the compression/decompression of springs that eventually kills them, then mine will last longer than I will- I don't go shooting often enough. madkiwi |
No one expects Stupid as it is, I left the theatre after seeing the movie that shall not be named, fighting the urge to buy more mags. |
Really? Doesn't seem like it to me. In both cases the spring will be compressed as far as it is designed to be. the spring in the 30rd just happens to be a little longer, wider, and probably heavier gauge metal. I've also heard that overloading the spring will damage it, so if you manage to load 31 into your 30 then leave it, the spring will gradually lose compression. |
Did your Valentine piss you off??? |
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