Last night, after a very heavy workday, I inadvertently left my LGV with a little-used Maccari FAC mainspring cocked for around 20 hours. Yikes!I found the gun cocked, and quickly fired a pellet to relieve the stress. Then I took a few shots through the chrono: the previously ~19J spring barely pushed the pellets out at 15J, with a velocity drop of around 80 fps. Clearly, the spring is a goner. Hunting, I've sometimes had my springers cocked up to four hours straight, with no apparent ill effects. I've tested this for up to an hour, and measured a slight drop of around 10 fps, with lesser quality guns than the LGV + Maccari. Gaylord stated in his R1 book that a springer left cocked for a month still has over 90 % of its velocity left. My accidental result is quite different.Maccari springs are very long-lived / quite low-stressed. Even with this advantage, 20 hours did the spring in. I guess it's in the realm of possibilities the spring will recouperate some, but I'm not hopeful. It's a bummer, since I was about to chrono recent mods (time for another thread) with the same mainsprings I've used all the way. With the shipping, customs and fees, I'm looking at around 60 USD to get a new Maccari spring, plus around a month of wait time. Add to this the fact that I've spent 500 pellets to get the spring truly broken in, and you maybe can see why I don't really look at (quality) mainsprings as simple consumables.
I can't believe it PETEY has posted!!!!!