Does the cutting of a spring make it softer or harder?

[Apolan]

Mux you are correct. Cutting the spring shorter increases the overall springrate, making it stiffer. The load on the whole spring is the same as for every coil of that spring. So the more coils you have spring will be softer (given that the thicknes is the same), because each coil will compress a certoin amount. If you cut say half of them away, the ramining half will compress just the same as it had before, but now having less coils you have lost half of the "compress distance". therfore it is twice as stiff.