Cajun's writings imply that recoil springs play the greater role in reducing slide velocity. Others(forgot whom)have demonstrated that hammer spring weight contributes more.
Cajun's writings imply that recoil springs play the greater role in reducing slide velocity. Others(forgot whom)have demonstrated that hammer spring weight contributes more.
Now that is interesting and it is what I had assumed was happening as well in DA/SA pistols. I've also seen it suggested that the recoil spring is the last piece of the puzzle after all other springs/etc. have been chosen. So likely the hammer spring is also working but still needs some fine tuning of the recoil spring.Originally Posted by willie
The other problem is that the hammer spring has to be strong enough to set off the primer and can't be reduced past a certain point without risking light strikes. That said, most factory pistols are going to have way more margin for lowering the recoil spring poundage rather than the hammer spring.
The BHP has an extremely heavy hammer spring and a somewhat lighter slide. I think that the heavy spring is needed to control slide velocity. I had Cajun perform their full treatment on a CZ P-01. They installed a very light hammer spring and a longer firing pin. The result was a light da and sa trigger pull. I gave the pistol to a nephew on his 21st birthday. It will very likely remain in his sock drawer. If I had ordered this for myself, I would have specified not changing the OEM firing pin and hammer spring. I would have selected their lighter trigger return spring.
Until recent years, with a 1911 or BHP or CZ, I could operate the slide and load a round by using the fingers and thumb of one hand. Unloading box cars of 100 lb sacks during my youth gave me this strength(and arthritis).
IMO, this does not apply to 10mm. It has been my experience that no amount of heavy recoil spring(s) keeps my 10mm cases in low earth orbit, regardless of make/model.
Box Car Willie, the recoil spring on my BHP is one of the heaviest of any of my handguns...however, mine is a 40S&W. No way one-handed operation is possible!
Last edited by sparkyv; 05-19-2024 at 09:03 AM.
I never handled a BHP 40.
I owned a couple Glock 10mm pistols and decided the caliber is too hot for the platform. Of course, Glock didn't consult me, and I'm not qualified to debate the question. I did conclude that a heavier slide would reduce its velocity, and I saw no way for Glock to increase dwell time and thus keep barrel and slide together for a longer time. I'm a hobbyist with zero engineering background. By declaring ignorance I'm less likely to be told I'm ignorant. Probably I've blown up more guns than anybody here.
Thank you.
I'll take this under advisement and look into that thread (and what your findings were) as one possible avenue of attack.
One thing is for certain. 10mm Glock pistols are tremendously undersprung when it comes to using full power 10mm ammunition in them.
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''Politics is for the present, but an equation is for eternity.'' ―Albert Einstein
Full disclosure per the Pistol-Forum CoC: I am the author of Quantitative Ammunition Selection.
I'd say it's more like your loads were too hot for the platform. The caliber itself is really nothing more than a set of SAAMI specs which are dimensional and pressure based. As long as your under/within those specs you can get anywhere from nuclear hot to bunny fart soft. I'd say chances are they designed it around off the shelf watered down factory ammo rather than loads that are at the max pressures allowed by SAAMI.
I'd say it's very likely the slide could use a great deal more mass but had they done this then it would likely be prone to all sorts of problems with 99% of what is fired through them by most people. People chasing max load performance are a rarity, IMO. I'd suggest looking at a VP40 slide to see just how beefy they went with that one, makes a hilarious comparison to how light/thin the Glock .40 slides were up until Gen 5 when they beefed it up where it needed to be.
Modern metallurgy gives handgun manufacturers an extra margin of safety. Old age has made my memory fuzzy, and I'm too lazy to look up 10mm Auto ballistics. Instead of using "too hot" when discussing the 10mm, I'll say that the round's producing a certain velocity level for its projectiles causes the slide to travel backwards very rapidly--hence the violent ejection. In my case I was firing l.e. ammo. My 10mm pistols would operate reliably with 40S&W ammo as long as this shorter round was fed through the magazine. It headspaced on the extractor. I did reload the 40 for these pistols because I had so much free brass that I never picked it up.
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