Posted by on 1/19/2022 to
There is a perception that if you keep your magazine at maximum capacity the spring will wear out, leading to misloading due to the spring losing its strength. Because of this many people will keep only one cartridge in their magazines when they are not in use, some keep none at all. Can you keep your magazines fully loaded all the time, and expect to get a good life expectancy from them?
There are a lot of suggestions regarding this, though many of the suggestions contradict one another. Some say you should rotate your magazine, keeping some full and others empty, then alternate them every so often, usually between a few weeks to twice a year. Another thing you might hear is that you should never fill the magazine to the maximum, leaving at least one or two cartridges out of the magazine. Others will say that it’s the loading and unloading that causes the wear and that keeping them full all the time is best.
So back to the question. What causes a magazine’s spring to wear out? Constant tension (a full magazine over time) or overuse? Well, both, kind of. The causes of these issues are called creep and fatigue, and when one weakens the spring it causes the other to be able to progress that much easier. Creep refers to constant tension and can be made worse by high heat, which hopefully your magazine does not have to deal with. Fatigue is when the metal has been stressed over and over again. Think about how you might break apart or rip metal with your hands or a non-cutting tool. The metal must first be weak enough that you can move it, then you pull back and forth on it until it becomes weak enough that it will separate. Doing this weakens the bonds at the microscopic level until you have reduced the electrostatic forces enough that they separate. You are breaking the metal with fatigue. Creep on the other hand causes the spring under tension to weaken over time, without any use. This would lend credibility to the practice of leaving a couple of cartridges out of the magazine. However, if the spring is not stressed past the yield point, which is the point where metal elasticity is affected, it should take a very long time, like many years, to have any real impact.
Considering all of this, it seems all of the reasonable suggestions out there may have some merit. That said, if you have a good quality spring it may not matter. The fact that there is some confusion may be a sign that most magazines are of a good enough quality. Between fatigue and creep, it is fatigue that will wear out your magazine quickest, and this is something that you really can’t do anything about. Simply using your magazine in the way it was intended can cause fatigue. Though loading and unloading will weaken the spring over time, it should take a long time. The better the quality, the longer the spring should last, and that’s probably not a rare thing. There are reports out there of magazines being used regularly for many decades.