With nothing better to do, I decided to strip and clean up a new Ruger Mark IV magazine. When taking it apart, the spring and its metal extension went "sproing" and I heard it hit something metallic. Since this corner of my shop is fairly cluttered, my wife and I started pulling stuff out and looking in all the obvious and not so obvious places. No dice. Among the items stored in that corner is my 30" drop tube with a small aluminum funnel on top. The tube is 3/8" brass tubing. When we were shoving the drop tube back in its corner, I happened to look at the bottom of the tube, and there was the spring sticking out. The spring is about a 5" length of coil just under the inside diameter of the tube. Somehow it hit the funnel just right and fell all the way through the tube. It could easily have gotten stuck in the tube and never found until trying to drop powder.
I couldn't make this happen again if I tried 100 times.
Paul
