Officers Recoil Control System

Spring performance dictates most of what you see and feel when you fire your pistol. Proper spring performance can also enhance the durability of your firearm and its components. Recoil reducing guide rods, heavy guide rods, barrel ports, etc. can help to mask a spring that does not perform properly but cannot correct a bad situation. During testing and research over the past 2 years much of what we have found is condensed into the performance chart below.

On average, available music wire recoil spring lose almost an average of 33% of their free length from new - just compressing it by hand for 30 seconds. A leading supplier of 1911 components recommends that the recoil spring be changed every 300 rounds.

Why this poor performance? We can talk about gun design, available space for the spring and other items but the bottom line is coiling stress. This is stress that is created in the material as the spring is wound. We have seen coiling stress as high as 390,000 psi - far in excess of the tensile strength of the material. This high stress in a spring for any application, will lead to premature failure and even spring breakage.

The ISMI Officers Recoil Control System is designed to address these problems. Through design, materials and post-winding processing, we have arrived at a spring design that greatly reduces coiling stress.

The result: a spring with a significant increase in durability and consistency. How much of an increase? ISMI offers their Officers Recoil Control System with a lifetime warranty on all components - including failure due to wear.

Please note that this system requires minor modification to the slide similar other full length guide rods currently on the market.

The ISMI Officers Recoil Control System includes: full length guide rod and reverse spring plug machined from 4140 modified alloy that is fully heat treated - the spring is an ISMI flat wire spring.