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I keep my 8-round Mossberg tube loaded. The gun's no use without ammo in it.

glock27 wrote:... Would you keep it fully loaded?

That's how I do it.

I wouldn't worry about it. I have a 1300 Defender in the closet with 6 3" 00 buckshot in the tube. Been that way for 7 or so years (whenever I adopted it and brought it home). It has never failed to chamber a round.

I've had my Mossberg 500 for over 10 years. It's always loaded unless im cleaning it, no problems with the spring.

Just make sure to change out your shells every once in a while. If left too long, the shell will deform. May or may not cause issues chambering at that point.

FWIW, I keep defensive shotgun mag tubes downloaded by 1 round. Not necessarily to take pressure off the spring, but to have to ability, if need, to quickly load something from the side saddle of a different "recipe".

jason812 wrote:I wouldn't worry about it. I have a 1300 Defender in the closet with 6 3" 00 buckshot in the tube. Been that way for 7 or so years (whenever I adopted it and brought it home). It has never failed to chamber a round.

My defender stays loaded and has for years. My old beater Hi-Standard Flite King with 20" bbl stays in my truck loaded all the time as well. A SG mag spring is always compressed whether fully loaded or not. I have 90 year old shotguns that have seen plenty of use and both still have good mag springs. One of them was on my grandfather's farm and I know he kept it loaded all the time. I wouldn't worry about it at all.

Have kept my 50YO 870 loaded for over 5 years and when I got it out it functioned like new. Been about that long since I've had it out since. might give it a go again.

Keep this in mind, I will not go into the engineering and physics involved... but when designers are looking at what springs to use, their diameters, lengths, weights, thickness of the wire and so on, they take all of these factors into consideration.

Every single spring, regardless of type, have a defined range where they can operate within spec. Go too far "out" of that range, and the spring will elongate or stretch. Go too far "in" of that range, and the spring will compress. So, anything outside of that "in between" range is called the "elastic limit" or how far the spring can move before it changes its shape, one way or the other.

So, you take a magazine spring in a pistol magazine, and you fully load the magazine... that spring was designed to work to that level of compression. It was planned, engineered, selected, and tested to handle that exact job... sitting in a box magazine and pushing up, even if fully loaded.

The spring in the tube of a shotgun is the exact same way. It was designed to sit in that tube and be fully compressed by the rounds in the tube and to not exceed its elastic limit in doing so.

What will happen is that the the spring has a finite life... it can only compress and decompress so many times before it fails. It can also only rub in the inside of that tube a finite number of times as well. Load it, leave it. Cycles are what wear out springs, not sitting.

In an 870, you have the plastic follower and then the end plastic piece. Those two parts will run into each other when loaded as a protection against over compression. Same reason why most AR, AK, and pistol followers will have stops extending from the bottom to prevent a magazine being overloaded and taking the spring past its elastic limit.

You have nothing to worry about.

AJSully421 wrote:Keep this in mind, I will not go into the engineering and physics involved... but when designers are looking at what springs to use, their diameters, lengths, weights, thickness of the wire and so on, they take all of these factors into consideration.

Every single spring, regardless of type, have a defined range where they can operate within spec. Go too far "out" of that range, and the spring will elongate or stretch. Go too far "in" of that range, and the spring will compress. So, anything outside of that "in between" range is called the "elastic limit" or how far the spring can move before it changes its shape, one way or the other.

So, you take a magazine spring in a pistol magazine, and you fully load the magazine... that spring was designed to work to that level of compression. It was planned, engineered, selected, and tested to handle that exact job... sitting in a box magazine and pushing up, even if fully loaded.

The spring in the tube of a shotgun is the exact same way. It was designed to sit in that tube and be fully compressed by the rounds in the tube and to not exceed its elastic limit in doing so.

What will happen is that the the spring has a finite life... it can only compress and decompress so many times before it fails. It can also only rub in the inside of that tube a finite number of times as well. Load it, leave it. Cycles are what wear out springs, not sitting.

In an 870, you have the plastic follower and then the end plastic piece. Those two parts will run into each other when loaded as a protection against over compression. Same reason why most AR, AK, and pistol followers will have stops extending from the bottom to prevent a magazine being overloaded and taking the spring past its elastic limit.

You have nothing to worry about.

Thanks for the explanation, it helps me understand, what I have always been told.