strength to chamber statistics

[Flopsweat]

What were actually asking for here is a spring rate. Years ago I worked for a company tasked with measuring a spring rate and the device was very complicated and completely custom fabricated for just that spring.
Im not an engineer so I cant truly explain why, but its an incredibly complicated thing to measure.... the strength required to compress a spring a given distance changes as the compression distance increases until full compression. Add to that a pistol slide compresses more than one spring to fully cycle the slide. I suppose a gun company could advertise the end value but this is irrelevant to the design which is driven by the designs form factor which varies gun to gun anyways.

The force needed for a single weight spring ramps up pretty linearly as the spring is compressed. Like you said, some use multiple springs or have to compress a hammer spring too. My BHP has progressive spring so it'll be different yet with how the load is felt.

Generally springs are rated by how many pounds to compress a percentage of it's free length. Could be 17lb (like a glock 17 spring i believe) to compress 1 inch or could be 17lbs at 80% compression.

This is what I'm proposing measuring. Total weight to reach slide lock. It's a starting point. If you want to get something like this done you have to break it into manageable chunks. Total weight data is a good start. You can invite test subjects to try each model. Devise a method for baselining grip and pull strength of the test subjects. Create a questionnaire asking on a scale of 1 - 5 how hard was it to grip, to lock, to unlock, how much did the stippling hurt your hand, etc. You could really have fun with this.

 

[Deerhurst]

You can pretty much get the spring poundage. As long as you know the spring weight you can calc force required to compress it a certain known distance.

And that's just the spring. What about friction, the action it's self? Lotta things to consider. What your data will say is a 22lr beretta bobcat will be easier to pull the slide back than a glock 19 which we all know is false. I can hardly pull the slide on my mom's little 32 auto tomcat but have no issues with pretty much anything larger with bigger spring weights.