I finally got finished my research and video evaluating Glock’s maritime spring cups. Among my research for this, I interviewed three different people at Glock, the top aftermarket producer of maritime spring cups, and a well-known, highly regarded gunsmith who modifies standard spring cups for use in his competition Glock triggers.
I cover the most common reasons that shooters install maritime spring cups, and just for fun, I even tested two different rounds on Sim-Test when shot from one to seven feet underwater. I was pretty surprised by the results.
Agree 100%. I live in western Washington, which is famous for getting several months of rain every year. I’m not going to fight off sharks with my Glock, but it could fill up with rain during a long day in the field.
I realize that I was not very clear here, and I think I’m going to do a follow-up video in part to clarify this point. The thing is that there is no evidence of this “envelope” that you’re thinking about, and if there was one, the people I interviewed would know. The standard spring cups seem to give all of the cushion needed for every condition other than repeated firing while fully submerged. Even then, most Glocks will still cycle just fine with standard spring cups.
I used the phrase “hypothetical scenario” in the opening clip for a reason. What I demonstrated has never happened to any Glock in the real world that anyone has heard of that has been attributed to properly maintained standard spring cups. It apparently has happened with other guns, but not with Glocks.
I had to cut some of my video out because YouTube limits me to 15 minute videos for now, but the story about why Glock even decided to produce maritime spring cups got dropped. Basically, and I’m taking a little license here, they seem to have originally been a marketing tactic to win their first really big LEO contract. It worked, and then they realized that they actually had some benefit for underwater use. All of the AWG stuff came later.
So, there wasn’t a compelling reason to even make these based upon the performance of the existing spring cups. Based upon every bit of digging and pushing that I could do, nobody could demonstrate any difference in reliability between the two types of spring cups as long as they were installed correctly.
If you want them or already use them because they give you peace of mind, great. If you don’t use them, in millennia of collective experience of Glock users, there is nothing to suggest you will realistically end up wishing you had them in a moment of crisis.
My personal default is to always follow the numbers, and for me, that means the standard spring cups.
That is the reason Glock still recommends maritime spring cups for such circumstances. However, if your Glock gets wet enough to flood the firing pin channel, you still need to detail strip the slide and dry it out. Even with maritime spring cups, that water will sit in there for days, and yes, it can lead to corrosion over a long period of repeated wettings.
That said, there is every indication that even your well-maintained-but-flooded Glock will be 100% reliable with standard spring cups.
I didn’t because of what I learned from those I spoke to. There are plenty of Glocks that seem to be able to fire just fine with the standard spring cups while fully submerged- there are plenty of YouTube videos showing exactly this. However, there are some perfectly good Glocks that won’t pop a hard NATO primer unless the maritime spring cups are installed.
So, even if my particular Glock could do it, that wouldn’t mean all Glocks could do it. I was more interested in evaluating the maritime spring cups directly, and with about 75 total underwater shots, I didn’t have a single failure of any kind. The slide even locked back with every empty mag.
I would absolutely install maritime spring cups on any Glock that would be worn while diving, whatever your reason for doing so might be.
I’ll also have you know, the opening sequence of the video has me rethinking maritime spring cups in my duty pistols; I believe the scenario you paint lay within the realm of possibility.
I wonder why Glock doesn’t put MSC’s in all their pistols right from the factory…
I wouldn’t sweat it too much. Glocks are frequently subjected to exactly that test with standard cups, and they NEVER fail that particular test. Keep in mind that Gaston designed a gun with trench warfare in rainy Europe in mind.
That scenario was presented by the RFP of the LE department searching for a new pistol. The maritime spring cups seem to have been developed simply to allay any doubts that particular agency might have had in their relatively new pistol.
Glock is unaware of any real world or simulated scenario like that in which one of their pistols failed to fire because it had standard cups.
+1 Quiet Riot - your stuff is some of the smartest, high quality and entertaining stuff I’ve seen; not produced by more significant commericial concerns (VTAC etc). VERY well done.
