FJ540 wrote:Pete's huge gripe against dropping a round in the hole and making the extractor ride over the rim was explicitly against doing it in a 1911 with the internal extractor. He claimed it would cause excessive fatigue on the extractor and eventually cause it to crack and fail (of course, he'd seen it a zillion times). When the round is pulled out of the mag, the case head doesn't cause the extractor to move nearly as much, and it does make sense that it would be better (Sam, I know you know this). Springs wear out by being used after all.
If you're referring to 1911fan, he and I never got into that particular discussion, so your assumption that I ever heard this from him is false. If I had, I certainly would have believed it. That being said, there is still the issue that if you're ONLY doing this for the top round of your carry ammo, that means that doing it this way is less than 1% of the spring usage provided you shoot 100 rounds between carrying, and I think that figure should be more like 200 - 400 rounds or practice per reload with carry ammo, so we're talking .25% of the time. I'm having a hard time seeing how that small a percentage of use could cause early spring failure.
What is probably the most likely contributing factor here is a weak mag spring (particularly in a double stack!) or a mag body with a high friction interior phosphate coating. I had nosedives on pretty much ALL my EAA mags until I waxed the snot out of the interior of the mag, got a Wolff +10% mag spring, and then extended the feed ramp downwards by grinding out the lug some more. It's worthy to note that all the new EAA Stocks and Matches have full length feed ramps ground into the lug, so this had to have been a known problem. Also, 40's are pretty snappy, so you need a fairly stiff recoil spring.
