In 30 plus years of diving (mostly in saltwater) I have always used gold colored barrel clips that were purchased from the local hardware. I assume they are brass and not bronze. I've never had a spring fail. I did however, have a large brass clip, completely wear out due to abrasion of a catch bag that finally wore completely through the brass clip (it basically started to wear a groove in the clip and then slowly cut completely through the brass). This took a number of years and was on a weight belt that was used for commercial diving.
The good stainless clips are probably better, but I just put a drop of oil on the trigger of a clip every few months if I have not been using it a lot. If you use the clip every weekend and dunlk the gear in freshwater, the brass clips should last a long time.
One of my pet peaves is the use of suicide clips. So many dive shops sell them, so many divers use them and I have personally been involved with one serious accidental clip-off situation. My buddy kept a large brass gate clip on the neck of a 72 steel oxygen bottle that we used for deco and hang from the side of the boat on a 20 ft rope. I bitched about the clip but it was not my gear.
One day, when it was pretty rough I was trying to do my usual solo safety stop on oxygen bottle. I was breathing off the oxygen tank and somehow the damn thing self clipped to one or two of the reg hoses coming off my first stage. I ended up with a steel tank, violently slamming up and down, clipped to the back of my head and bashing me in the head with enough force to make me see stars. It took me a few moments to discern what the problem was and it was quite a mess with me being unable to get away from the hammering oxygen tank unless I took my tank off and my hands were full with a speargun and spear and I had fish clipped off on my waist also. I was REALLY pissed off when I had to come to the surface and started to scream "help".. get this F'n thing off me. I suppose I could have also quickly removed the BC, but with the rough conditions and the tank flying up and down 4 feet with each side to side roll of the boat, it got bad very fast.
I also saw my wife, get a gate clip accidentally clipped around an anchor rope on descent on a night dive (I suppose we could have cut the anchor line
). Once attached there was no way to open the clip up, without removal of her scuba unit underwater. Took us a few minutes to work it out and continue a dive. Something as simple as a gate clip, automatically clipping to something can be a huge problem (even on an open water dive) and it is entirely unnecessary. I get so pissed about it, I almost always say something to other divers when I see the gate clip.
I've personally seen the light (well it was stars anyway) and follow the rule of no metal-to-metal connection, so I can always (unless I loose my knives) cut a jamed or broken clip off my gear and I don't use suicide clips.
