AO failure? Anyone experienced one?

It may seem counter intuitive, but it is generally accepted wisdom that its the number of cycles that affect steel springs, not how they're stored.


Magazine spring madness: 'creep' to your 'elastic limit' to un-earth the urban legend of 'spring-set' | American Handgunner | Find Articles at BNET

At temperatures outside of a furnace, steel doesn't have any appreciable creep. Under most conditions, steel flexes and then returns to its original shape. When pushed past its elastic limit, steel will bend and not return to its original shape. All designers of well-made magazines make sure the spring never approaches the elastic limit when the magazine is fully loaded. Honest. This means the spring will not weaken when the magazine is fully loaded -- not even over an extended time. Like 50 years. American Handgunner recently ran a story about a magazine full of .45 ACP that had been sitting since WWII and it ran just fine on the first try. So there you go.
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The springs are never bent past their elastic limit if they are designed correctly. We do this kind of testing all the time using tissue in biomechanics. The same principle applies to any material where you're testing stress, strain, creep, and elastic limit. Elastic limit is the point right before permanent deformation takes place, which is right before the yield point. The yield point is where the material in question will start snapping. A properly designed torsion bar should have been heat treated to a point where the elastic limit (and thus the yielding point) are well past the point of tension when you or close the knife.

There's also a thing (I forget the scientific term atm) where the molecules actually have to begin moving before stretching takes place. As in you can picture a bunched up rubber band; the rubber band will only begin to stretch after you take away the slack. This is another property to consider.
 
I had a Kershaw Leek, the spring broke.
Rather than go to the trouble of sending it back,
I gave it to someone who did not know any better.
No more AOs for this person.
 
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