Lighter recoil spring in a pistol

[farook]

Does having a lighter recoil spring in a pistol help in recoil and accuracy. In a out of the factory ashani pistol the spring is as tight as it could be making loading the chamber a challenge. On modifications gun smiths change this to a relatively lighter one. Could members contribute to this topic please....

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[timmy]

There are several issues here:

The guy gets a bit tongue-twisted as he talks, but you will note, as you listen to his explanation, that using a lighter spring in the Glock will make the pistol recoil harder and quicker. He tells you that the reason he's changing the spring is because the lighter spring will make the action cycle more quickly, which, in the shooting game he wants to use this gun for, gives him an advantage in being able to shoot more rapidly.

He also tells you that, if he wanted a softer recoil, he would use a stiffer than normal spring in this pistol.

Note that your question concerns the Ashani. The big difference here is that the Glock uses a locked breech, specifically a short recoil system. The breech remains locked until the bullet leaves the barrel.

The Ashani is a blowback design. It is not locked, and the cartridge case begins to move back out of the chamber with the slide as soon as the gun fires. The only things that keep the chamber sealed is part of the cartridge case remaining in the chamber long enough to seal the gasses inside until the bullet leaves the chamber are the mass of the slide -- its inertia -- and the tension of the recoil spring.

The spring in a blowback action has to be stiff, making the action more difficult to cycle by hand, because beside the inertia of the slide, the spring tension is the only thing keeping the breech sealed before the bullet leaves the barrel. All those hot gasses at 10s of thousands of pounds of pressure per square inch depend on the mass of the slide and the tension of that spring to keep them where they belong, or else they will end up in your face.

A lighter load in pistols like the Glock and in blowback pistols like the Ashani can use a lighter recoil spring, and may even require it.

The spring tension is more important in a blowback action, like the Ashani, for the reasons I've stated above. This is a reason why pistols tend to be a little more finicky about ammunition: the recoil spring in the Ashani must help keep the breech sealed when a powerful load is fired, yet must allow a weaker load to still operate the action reliably. The range between the lightest load and the heaviest load is only so much for the blowback action. A short recoil action is a bit more forgiving. A revolver has the widest range, between the load having enough power to push the bullet out the barrel and having so much power it blows up the gun.

With a soft spring, the slide is more violently thrown back, and in pistols, a large part of the felt recoil is actually the slide hitting the stop at the rear-most part of its travel. A blowback action will have more felt recoil than a locked breech system, all things considered.

Did you check Wolff Gun Springs for recoil springs?

There are no listings for IOF, but to highlight what I have said, I checked over the listings for the 1903 an 1908 Colt Pocket Pistol, on which the Ashani is said to be based:

http://www.gunsprings.com/Semi-Auto%20P ... mID1/dID71

You will note only one spring is listed -- this is because of the limitations a blowback design has with regard to varying the tension of the recoil spring.

[mundaire]

The Wolff spring is a drop in fit for the Ashani, been told this by an owner who has swapped his stock spring for one of theirs.

Sent from my ST27i using Tapatalk

[farook]

Thanks for the insight Timmy, must admit I had to read that a couple of times to undertand the concept and btw found this video....

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Now that we have come up with another interesting topic Blow Back Vs Lock Breach, would you agree that blow backs are more accurate as the barrel does not tilt to lock. Speaking of tilt I have seen a few videos of a Beretta Px4 have a rotating barrel as against a conventional browning design.

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Regarding the Wolf Spring, out of the factory the Ashani is a sealed pocket pistol. If we make any attempts to open it the one year warranty is void.

[mundaire]

By sealed you mean the loctite those IOF monkeys apply to the barrel brushing? Well, warranty is in name only, besides how will you field strip it for cleaning/ servicing unless you remove the super glue from the barrel bushing?

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[farook]

True Abhijeet, we need to clean it regularly particularly if we carry the weapon with us all day. But after watching the way he is struggling with it I just don't feel like melting the glue. Besides I have heard rumors of barrel bush and spring falling off if we dismantle the gun. I believe that's the reason why they permanently glued it

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[technical]

@ everyone.
@timmy mentioned that someone said a lighter spring means faster rate of fire.
but the recoil action of the spring(only) is a half part of a simple harmonic motion.
the time for the half part is (pi)((m/k)^0.5). where k is the stiffness constant of the spring . from this relation we can see that a heavier spring will gine a faster rate of fire and a lighter spring should give a slower rate of fire.
???
anything wrong with my reasoning (i have had enough of these spring equations in 12th std)

regards,
technical

[farook]

@ everyone.
@timmy mentioned that someone said a lighter spring means faster rate of fire.
but the recoil action of the spring(only) is a half part of a simple harmonic motion.
the time for the half part is (pi)((m/k)^0.5). where k is the stiffness constant of the spring . from this relation we can see that a heavier spring will gine a faster rate of fire and a lighter spring should give a slower rate of fire.
???
anything wrong with my reasoning (i have had enough of these spring equations in 12th std)

regards,
technical

Please continue your studies till you get a Masters Degree in Metals and Materials Engineering from Colorado School of Mines. Timmys son could help you on this

[timmy]

btw found this video....

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Now that we have come up with another interesting topic Blow Back Vs Lock Breach, would you agree that blow backs are more accurate as the barrel does not tilt to lock.

Many folks intuitively feel that the Browning tipping barrel system of unlocking the breech is less accurate. This statement is a bad one, because we as gun folks often think that accuracy and precision are the same things, but they are not.

Accuracy has to do with aiming the gun at a point and hitting that point. Precision has to do with being able to hit the same place repeatedly with the same point of aim. Based on this, you can see that guns are really judged by their precision -- that's what shooting "groups" is all about. The idea is, when you hold a certain sight picture, the gun will place a bullet on the target at the same place, repeatedly.

Even though the Browning system barrel tips, if it tips exactly the same way every time the gun is fired, the bullet will travel to the same point on the target every time, if all other things are equal. It is like bowling, shooting pool, or playing golf: if you swing the same way, throw the ball the same way, and stroke the cue stick the same way, the ball will travel in a predictable way and you can put it where you want every time. So, the gun must act the same way every time, just like the golfer, bowler, or snooker player.

Of course, nothing in life acts exactly the same way every time. And it is true, the moving parts in a Browning system do introduce some clearances and tolerances into the repeatability of the system.

Unlike what our budding Scientist and chief theorist says in "Locked Breech vs. Blowback: Why Are PPK's So Accurate?"
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a blowback will not "lock up tighter" than a Browning system. There is a theoretical advantage to the blowback system's fixed barrel, but that is not as important as this fellow tries to assert.

Mind you, he is saying that blowbacks are more accurate because a PPK is more accurate than a Kahr. Is an Ashani more accurate than a Kahr? A lot depends on what guns are being used to assert the conclusion that blowback is more accurate. I think it best to just look at the target range -- what do people use? Let him compete with his PPK, if he finds it so accurate! My feeling is that he is comparing apples to oranges and coming up with 2+2=5.

For instance, the way the slide fits to the frame has something to do with accuracy. Remember, in all of these guns, the slide is what is actually being aligned to the target by the sights. If is pistol is something like a Ruger 22, where the sights are on a fixed barrel-reciever assembly, then that is a more accurate way of doing things, theoretically, as well.

In reality, pistol smiths fit the moving parts of Browning system guns quite closely. The way the barrel is held in the bushing at the front of the slide can be very tightly fitted, and even in the collet bushing introduced in the 1911 Series 70, a lot of play is taken out of the action.

The way the chamber is cut, rifling, crown, etc, plays a part. The inherent accuracy of the ammunition also plays a part in such calculations.

Precision machining methods of today have come quite a way from the days when the PPK was developed, as well.

I would say that, yes, a blowback is theoretically more accurate than a short recoil Browning system. But in practice, I wouldn't bother to consider this difference, as there are too many other factors at play.

BTW, also consider: Is a Czech CZ 52 more inherently accurate than a 1911 or other Browning design, because the barrel doesn't tip in its roller-lock action? I should like our Scientist to answer that question, as well!

Speaking of tilt I have seen a few videos of a Beretta Px4 have a rotating barrel as against a conventional browning design.

The Beretta barrel rotates and unlocks from the slide in this version of a short recoil action, rather than unlocking by roller cams like the CZ51, or tilting and unlocking, like the 1911 and other variants of the Browning system. I have not been able to find a really good picture or set of pictures of this action, but the principle is clear enough.

I did see in one place that I read, where the rotation of the bullet was supposed to delay the rotation of the barrel -- the same sort of hokum that was claimed for the 1907 Savage. However, this Beretta (and the previous model) do appear to work as a short recoil system as claimed.

My point would be, regarding the fact that the barrel does not tip, would be that the tipping barrel does not impose an inherent disadvantage to accuracy, as opposed to a straight line recoiling of the barrel. As long as the bullet leaves the barrel when it is at the same point in its travel, it will fly to the same point of impact as all of the other bullets fired. The amazing accuracy of 1911 pistols on ranges and in service for a century affirms that this is true, as opposed to one youtube video of some backwoods bubba with a PPK.

I would finally mention this: It is said (although I cannot testify to this myself, not having fired one) that the Llama 380, which is made as a miniaturized 1911, locking breech and all, has noticeably less felt recoil than 380 ACP blowback semiautomatics. This is the same point that the old gent in the first youtube video made regarding locked breech vs blowback.

[timmy]

One other locking system might be mentioned here, and that is the one used in the Steyr 1912 pistol used by Austria-Hungary in WW1. Briefly, this pistol's barrel has a spiral- shaped lug on the underside that engages a corresponding groove in the frame. The top of the barrel has two latitudinal lugs that engage corresponding slots in the slide.

When the pistol is fired. He barrel and slide move rearward, locked together. As they travel backward, the spiral lug in the frame groove causes the barrel to rotate. After the barrel turns about 60*, the lugs at the top disengage from their slots in the slide.

A projection under the barrel hits a surface in the frame, stopping it, but the slide, now unlocked from the barrel, continues rearward, ejecting the empty and cocking the hammer before returning forward, picking up a new round and clambering in the process. As the slide then pushes the barrel forward, the barrel twists, locking it to the slide again.

These are occasionally found in the USA, but aren't especially popular. The don't have a magazine and are loaded by stripper clips, and they use the 9mm Steyr round, longer, but less powerful than 9x19 and not commonly found here.



Are these found in India?

[farook]

One of the arms oldest dealers in Bangalore, my former neighbor for twenty years, had his armory store next to my shop. He moved out of the place as rentals got too high. I still meet him occasionally to check on his locker. He does get a few oldies like Walter ppks, Berettas and Webley revolvers. Nothing like this.....

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India did get to see some of the best weapons ever produced owing to the British Rule. Most of them Died out as ammo was never available for any of them...