Slide weight, stroke, barrel length and recoil system length, oh my&#3

[kneelingatlas]

When commenting on a thread comparing a 9mm 1911 to a CZ, I became interested in comparing different attributes of the two platforms (namely slide weight, stroke, barrel length and recoil system length) and how they effect performance.

I have some qualitative ideas, but before I spend a lot of time gathering data, I figured I would ask if anyone already has any of this info.

For the purposes of comparison I think it's most useful to refer to everything by it's native barrel length, for example a GI 1911 slide is a 5" slide even though the slide measures longer than 5".

Most builds I've seen with slides shorter/longer than 5" seem to still utilize a 5" recoil system so it would seem, at least for the 19/2011 platform, a 5" recoil system seems like the sweet spot.

[Dan Sierpina]

The standard length recoil system being adapted to longer barreled guns has nothing to do with a "sweet spot" but simply a way to use readily available recoil springs. Selection of weights are wider for the 5" guns.

Shorter, you need Commander length springs, which have a broad selection of weights also.