Hi All,
The Honker thread has me curious. I was told by someone that I shouldn't throw complete sidelocks into a hyrosonic cleaner as it can mess up the leaf springs.
Has anyone experienced leaf springs breaking or any other issues after using a hydrosonic cleaner?
Having springs made is something I would really like to avoid, on the other hand disassembling and then reassembling locks isn't real high on my list either.
Thanks

I have never had any problems but have only done a few to a dozen guns. I do not use a cleaner that is abrasive at all. As to leaf springs breaking, they work until they fail, which is to say there is no warning and no set number of cycles that they will endure. I use them and not worry about them.

Ultrasonic cleaning. No, I highly doubt a bath in an ultrasonic cleaner could fatigue a spring and break it.

In regards to disassembly before cleaning. I always fully disassemble the locks, action, etc before putting all the bits into the ultrasonic. Everything including the ejector work gets completely torn down. I do this because if there’s any corrosion whatsoever on the parts, the ultrasonic will clean that out and the parts will come out spotted and blotchy at times. You should polish the bits until the blotchiness is gone and it all matches up as polished steel. Lube and then reassemble.

Another note…..not all ultrasonics are equal. There’s things called ultrasonic cleaners and there’s real ultrasonic cleaners. It’s all in the power of the transducers. The cheap ones just don’t cut it in my experience.

I have never heard that ultrasonic cleaning could damage a leaf or coil spring, and I can't imagine any reason that it would.

However, some people utilize a cleaning method called electrolysis to remove rust from gun parts. It works quite well to remove rust, and some guys swear by it. But electrolysis uses a DC electric current which causes the water in the solution to break down into oxygen and hydrogen. Because of this, it can and does impart hydrogen atoms into the molecular lattice of the steel, and causes a condition known as hydrogen embrittlement. This can cause parts like springs to crack under otherwise normal loading.

The greatest factor in eventual failure of leaf (or coil) springs is micro-pitting caused by rust, assuming the springs were made, polished, hardened, and tempered correctly. It really has little to do with how old a spring is or how many times it has been flexed. These tiny pits create stress risers that are points where cracking and fractures are initiated.

And that reminds me... it's time to spray the torsion springs on my overhead garage doors with a rust inhibitor.

My limited experiences with the new ultrasonic cleaner has unveiled no problems at all with leaf springs. Question: how does the ultrasonic cleaner know if the spring is coil or leaf, before it "attacks" it?

I don't throw mine in. I lay them in, gently.

Thanks Gents, small sample size but I will go ahead and try. I seem to have accumulated a large hoard of Pieper/Bayard hammerguns and have found they are mostly interchangeable on the lock parts if same design. After paying to have a spring made, I found it can be cheaper to buy a basket case gun - sort of like cars and motorcycles. Easier to swap out an entire lock than to harvest a spring but they are often filthy.