This may be a dumb question but I've been a revolver person till now. Is it necessary to rotate the magazine in your gun, emptying it to remove the tension on the magazine spring or can they be left loaded for long periods of time? It seems these high capacity mags are generating a lot of spring tension and I wondered if the spring would fatigue if left loaded for months at a time.

LJS, it is not a dumb question at all.

And yes, it does seem that spring fatigue can be a problem with magazines. I do rotate magazines for this reason.

It may not be the total solution to spring fatigue, but it cannot hurt. The springs in my S&W Sigma have gotten softer over the years of use, and can cause a stove pipe that would not have occured when the gun was fresh out of the box.

There are more factors than just spring fatigue, as in quality of ammo, cleanliness of slide and magazine, wear and tear, to name a few.

Hope this helps.

I tend to rotate 8 mags,

2 each week of the month.

That is loaded for 1 week unloaded for 3.

Maybe a little OCD,

but it decreases my concerns over spring fatigue.

I bought Wolff springs +15% for all my mags.A cheap life insurance. Get a new spring and compare it to your springs side by side. You will see easily that it worths spending a few bucks.

I do not rotate my mags. To me it seems like it is just making all of the mags "equally weakened". If I have a mag that has a weak spring, I just clean the mag and replace the spring. I rotate, if you will, at that time. It takes months or years, in some cases, to weaken springs if you shoot regularly.

Ed Santos suggests that springs be changed once a year. His habit is to change his mag springs every January 1st. OF course he uses his mags almost everyday of the year. He also never loads them full, keeping one or two short of full. Says it is good for fast reloads.