The New Automag Part 1

Hi Eric,

Hope you are doing well.

I have found that the hammer springs are the main initial resistance  when manually charging the pistol with the hammer down. This is when the recoil springs only have the preload pressure and the bolt has to move roughly .100 rearward before the tension on the rotation spring increases as the bolt is cammed by the helix rotation in the bolt slot against the bolt rotation pin. I find the pistol is hard to manually charge from the onset due to the hammer springs and then resistance increases as the rotation spring is compressed the 21.5 degrees and the compression resistance of the recoil springs builds as the cocking piece is pulled rearward to the cessation of travel. The bolt rotation spring is only compressed 21.5 degrees on top of a slight preload when charging and is not difficult to move that distance when holding a rotation spring out of the pistol with your fingers ( I may have unusually strong fingers though). I know cocking the hammer before charging negates the resistance of the inner and outer hammer springs but feel it should be easy to manually charge  with the hammer down. No matter what you do you cannot get rid of the recoil springs and that is where quite a bit of the resistance to manually charging the pistol arises.

I have been working on a design similar to the Para Ordnance  LDA. Even though the Auto Mag is a single action pistol a similar design can be utilized. I am sure you know but for those who don't the bolt traveling rearward cocks the pistol and the hammer springs remain tensioned and captured and that energy is only released when the trigger is pulled. Only problem is there is not much room in the frame to make the necessary mods to accommodate this system. I do not want to see any change to the looks of the pistol. That is any more than has already been done with the upper.

I have removed the rotation spring from a bolt and measured the difference ( about 6 lb increase) with hammer down and hammer cocked it is still difficult for some to manually retract the bolt with the hammer down even though the bolt is not using a rotation spring and does not cam over into battery. Generally we find that it takes roughly 28 lbs of pull force to manually charge the Auto Mag with the hammer down. Quite a bit to pull with your thumb and forefinger.

If you have any suggestions I am all ears.

Kind regards

Tim