As I see there are people who knows about springs here, let me ask a something different question.
I am trying to home made magazine springs for my ParaOrdnance P16.(16 rounds Hi-cap mag).
Factory spring has rectangular sections. Bigger rectangular coils at the base, smaller at the top, upper one is coiled on the follower groove.

I made an iron bar,following the spring shape, and I coiled wire on it but the spring back is too strong.It is necessary to bend with pliers to get squared side coils. Very difficult work and the result is not good.

Spare springs made by Wolff has flattened-rounded section (eliptical).
Could it be possible to get them by coiling wire on a round-conical mandrel and flattening in a vise?.

I get cold drawn wire from an spring maker, so material is no problem.

Has someone experience making rectangular or eliptical springs like these? Any trick to made it easy?
Thanks for your help and suggestions.

BA Shooter

MSC (maybe www.mscdirect.com )sells lots of springs, including torsion springs. They also have spools of spring wire, Carbon and S.S., that you can use to make your own springs.
There are some good "how to" sites on making springs but I don't have them saved. Also, you can get tips on this from "Machinist's Bedside Reader" and Brownell's "Gunsmith Kinks" series of books.
"It is not hard when you know how".

I've used the guidelines in this site to make a few springs. I had to read through the whole thing a few times to fully absorb the information, but it's worked well for me. Saved a bunch of money when a small spring on our printer failed. Couldn't buy just the spring, had to buy a $90 assembly to fix a $140 printer. Half hour at the lathe and we were good to go. Pay attention to the safety stuff in the articles. The end of that wire can get away from you.

http://home.earthlink.net/~bazillion/intro.html

Thanks for your answers.
Very insteresting sites.
I will read both carefully. In a first view , I saw a lot of devices and tecnics I do not know.

BA Shooter

I scored on some piano wire today. I went by a hobby/ RC shop to see what they might have. They had a whole selection of everything from "can you still see it" to 1/4". And it was cheap also a 3' section of 1/4" was just over $1. I picked up about 1 of each to play with. He said they use it for airplane landing gear and struts.