Importance of Different Pistol Recoil Spring Weights

Hey guys, Myles here, Tactical Hive, and today I'm going to talk about something that you can do to your pistols to shoot better and to help with recoil, and that is playing around with your recoil spring. All striker fired guns, all pistols are going to have a recoil spring that is actually attached. Let me actually open this up, this glock here, so you can see it. It's going to be by a recoil spring on top of that. Okay, and so the recoil spring is something that you can modify on your pistol to improve your shooting, to decrease felt recoil, and to also get your sights back on target much faster. Now here's the thing, before we dive into what it can possibly do for you, how it can help your shooting, this is a Glock 34 and I'm using it for competition. So I fiddle around, I'm one of these, I'm getting into competition, but I'm the type who doesn't really want to fiddle with too much. I want to keep my weapons as much as close to stock as possible, but when you're getting into sport competition, the truth is many people will tell you you're not going to be very competitive unless you start customizing your gun. So the recoil spring is one of those items that is a must. Now before I dive into the topic of this particular video, my stock weapons, like this stock Glock right here, all I have is a match barrel and new sights. Everything else is stock. And I would not be fiddling with the recoil spring or anything else on my carry guns. And I recommend that to you. If you want to change things up, go for it. But whatever I carry, I don't really touch anything. Maybe for the barrel, except for the barrel and the sights, that's it. Because I want it to be reliable, I want it to work every single time. I will let you know from testing and always fiddling around with different parts, modifying things, that things can go wrong. And you will have malfunctions and they're caused by the modifications. So just keep that in mind. I am doing this for a competition pistol. I would not touch any of my everyday carry pistols and start modifying things. But that said, what does the actual recoil spring do? So there's different weights. So I'm not a gunsmith. I'm not an expert in terms of all of the physics and all the mechanics behind the guns. But I do know and I can explain it in layman's terms. So there's different weights for your springs. And that's going to affect how the slide cycles back and forth with your weapon. So here with the Glock 19 here, so the spring is going to provide tension. And you can change the weight from, let's say, 11 pounds up to 18 pounds. So there's different kinds of springs and different weights. And typically with a Glock, for example, Glocks, I believe the, I believe it's 16 pounds. 16 pounds is standard weight for the recoil springs. And what I have right here are a 11 and a 15 pound recoil spring. I actually took out the stock spring. And so what you will notice is that with the 11 pound, with the lighter it is, what's going to happen is there's going to be that the slide is going to cycle back. And because the spring is light, what's going to happen is when it actually goes forward, the slide goes, is sent forward, it's actually going to stay level, more level. If I have a heavy spring, imagine after I break the shot, the slide goes back. Okay. And because it's a heavy spring, there's a chance that as it goes forward, my nose, my muzzle will dip. And so it's going to be harder to get my shots on target. Okay. So there's a fine balance there, here, here though. And this is where you're going to have to experiment. So technically speaking, a very heavy, heavy recoil spring is going to allow or actually push the muzzle down when the slide is sent forward. And that's bad because as I was saying, you're not going to be able to get your target on sites quick because it's going to go up and it's going to go down past your point of aim. And then you're going to have to bring it back up. So it slows you down. But with a heavier recoil spring, it also can technically help you get your target on, get your sights on target faster if you find the right weight for your weapon and for your shooting style. What do I mean by that? If it's really heavy, I already explained, if it's really heavy, it'll go up. The recoil spring, if it's heavy, will push the muzzle down and then you have to go back and find your sights on target. But if you find the right balance here, what might happen is you might have a heavy spring, heavier than let's say 11 pounds, but it's just enough that it gets your sights on target fast and it doesn't dip. Okay, so that's something you'll have to experiment with. A lot of sport shooters will change up their springs and use lighter springs and they will find that weight that allows them to have less felt recoil while getting their sights on target faster, avoiding that dip. So just to demonstrate, here I am shooting, taking a few shots with 11 pound recoil spring using my Glock 34. And you'll see that it does, after the shot breaks, the muzzle moves up, which is normal. And when it dips down, you will see that it actually stays pretty flat. So the muzzle doesn't move down towards the ground and make it hard for me to get my sights on target. Now, in this next segment here, you'll see me shooting my Glock 34 with a 15 pound recoil spring. And you'll notice here, everything's the same in the sense that, okay, the slide moves back, but you'll notice it actually dips a little bit at the very end. So what does that mean in terms of performance for a shooter? That means that I'm going to have to get my sights back on target, because it actually dipped beyond the point of aim that I wanted, and now I have to readjust. So as you can see, using recoil springs, there's a lot of testing involved. What works for my gun and for my style of shooting won't work for you, but there's absolutely a difference. So try it out, test it out, but keep in mind, remember, I would only suggest this for your recreational shooting or sport shooting rigs, definitely not for your carry weapon. Give it a try and let us know how it goes.