Cycles

A club member came over yesterday.  His Colt clone was broken.  It's a Cimarron PP410, a very nice revolver.  He bought it last year, before Louisiana State in April.  I recall helping him shortly after the pistol came in, replacing the stock main spring with a Wolff reduced power mainspring. (Brownell's 969-322-850WB).  Wolff makes very nice springs; they are a staple of gunsmiths everywhere, both amateur and professional.

A quick diagnosis, the hammer was flopping around, and I suspected that the main spring had turned loose.  We removed the grip frame, and sure enough, there's your problem right there.

I keep a couple of those springs handy, but we removed the bottom grip frame and gave the inards a good cleaning before we installed the new spring and re-assembled the gun.

Springs fail through cycles of use.  With just a little detective work, we decided that this particular spring had somewhere north of 9,000 cycles before it failed.  That is NOT the springs fault.  Cowboy shooters put a lot of stress on their guns, simply through the nature of the game.  We snatch on them pretty hard, and sometimes springs turn loose. 

Before we decry the flat mainspring in the Colt reproductions, we have to understand the nature of the game.  The Ruger New Vaquero is a very robust handgun, and a favorite in the Cowboy games, but I've seen them break, too.  We put a lot of stress on our guns, even if we are firing very light squib loads.  In the past several months I've replaced a fair number of springs in both Colt repros and Rugers.  It's part of the game.