Steel cased ammo
And shooting it in the AR. A bit back, a buddy of mine who’d never owned an AR decided to get one. He told me he was going to get some steel cased ammo but he read on the internet that he shouldn’t use it. I asked him why the internet said that and he said that it supposedly would wear out your barrel. I did the math for him and told him it was cheaper to shoot steel ammo and replace a barrel after 10,000 rounds than to be an ammo snob. YMMV.
May 28th, 2010 at 9:15 am
It is much cheaper to shoot stolen ammo unless you factor in your cell-mate, Rollo the Rapist.
May 28th, 2010 at 9:30 am
Heh.
The steel cased stuff is definitely uncomfortable to shoot in the Glock, but I’ve never tried it in something shoulder fired. Interesting.
May 28th, 2010 at 9:48 am
Stop telling the folks who don’t reload to use steel cases…you’re killing my supply of free once-fired brass!
May 28th, 2010 at 10:03 am
Barrel life isn;t my issue with steel cases in an AR.
Stoner, being a westerner, assumed there would always be plentiful cheap brass. So, on his AR, he put a tiny little extractor.
Mikey Kalashnikov, on the other hand was Russian (little known fact, Normie). He knew brass was not as abundant as steel, therefore on the AK he put a big-arsed extractor hook.
Steel cases will eat the standard AR extractor for lunch. Now, new extractors are fairly cheap (if in stock) and easy to replace. So, your argument about cost/hassle still holds.
I run brass through my ARs, but steel through my 5.56 XCR, as Alex Robinson was forward thinking enough to put a large, meaty extractor on his rifle.
May 28th, 2010 at 10:38 am
I’d always heard it was the laquer coating on the steel cases that were the problem. After a few rounds, the chamber gets warm enough to melt the laquer. Then, it refreezes, gumming up your upper and possibly causing you to rip the head off a case.
May 28th, 2010 at 10:53 am
Joe is right. It’s the extractor wear that is the issue. Steel cased ammo is not much cheaper than brass.
Not all steel cased ammo uses lacquer. Wolf doesn’t use it anymore.
If you don’t care about the reliability of your AR then by all means use steel cased ammo.
May 28th, 2010 at 10:55 am
It’s the carbon blow-by, not the lacquer.
Box-o-Truth
May 28th, 2010 at 11:27 am
I shoot a lot of steel in my ARs (Glocks, too) – other than being low-power and dirty, it works fine – in fact, it’s a great test – if your AR won’t work with Wolf, then it has a problem and needs looking at.
As far as wearing out the extractor, how many rounds will it take? I’ve put 4-500 rounds of steel (plus about the same in brass-case) thru two of my ARs, and I don’t see any wear other than the smoothing of the phosphate coating. If I replace the extractor every 2000 rounds, then my cost per round goes up by $0.0085 per round(for a good one) – and Wolf is costing about $.25 a pop these days, while cheap brass-case is maybe $.35 each. Seems cheaper to replace an extractor once in a while..:-)
Guy, I think you’re right – it isn’t the coating on the steel, it’s the carbon/dirt that is getting blown into the chamber. If you shoot steel, you NEED to clean the chamber once in a while. The bit about the melting of the lacquer is one of those internet legends that just won’t die..
May 28th, 2010 at 11:52 am
Brass also contracts and springs back slightly after it expands, Steel largely does not. It takes more pressure to make Steel conform to the chamber, and that (as several commentators have already noted) causes gas to leak into the chamber. This causes the lacquer to melt and stick. The polymer coating is much better, but it still has the negative properties of steel cases.
The US gov’t tried for years to build the 6mm SAW cartridge with steel cases, and they had numerous failures due to the steel cases. They wanted to use steel primarily because it’s lighter in weight than brass. The grades of steel used to make cases are also rather brittle, and tend to crack which causes rapid case head separations.
Chamber tolerances in the west are also much tighter than they were in the Soviet Union, and thusly, the cases tend to stick more in an AK with an American built barrel than they do in an AK with a surplus barrel, even if both barrels are hard chromed.
May 28th, 2010 at 11:52 am
To echo what has been said above, I’ve notice more carbon buildup in the chamber shooting steel cased ammo. Obvious when you think about it too. Even soft steel just won’t expand to the extent brass will. The results is a less effective gas seal by the cartridge and more carbon buildup in the chamber.
I’ve never experienced it but I imagine if you shot enough steel case ammo and then switched to brass into what would effectively be a tighter chamber, you might end up with a stuck casing, case head torn off, or some other nasty effect,
May 28th, 2010 at 12:04 pm
Heh, I should have made the link more obvious.
Educational Zone #18 – Shooting Wolf steel-cased Ammo in an AR15
May 28th, 2010 at 1:08 pm
its amusing that people who “put 4 or 500 rds” though an AR think thats a lot of rounds. Smells like range commando to me.
May 28th, 2010 at 3:28 pm
Darwin is dead on target in reply 12. As are all the others here commenting on the extractor issues. I’ve consistently seen Bushmaster/DPMS grade ARs with extractor failure right around 1,000 rounds. Some made it to 1,200. I’m not saying the small sampling I’ve seen vs the mass of production is a gospel indicator- just my experience.
It’s still cheaper to shoot steel and swap extractors, but if you use your AR in a home defense role, keep failure points in mind.
May 28th, 2010 at 4:37 pm
As I said in my OP, from a cost perspective steel vs extractor is a big win for steel.
The 1,000 round figure is about right in my experience, but this is not a gradual wearing of the extractor hook. It’s a one shot it’s there, one shot it’s not type failure.
I run steel in some ARs, but the one I will be counting on when at the worst moment gets very little if any steel unless I’m planning on replacing the extractor anyway (which is one of the AR’s weak spots).
May 28th, 2010 at 6:27 pm
I would rather have gonnorhea than an AR, anything. So it is not a problem for me. My steel cased ammo works fine in everything I use it in, which are all Russian.
May 29th, 2010 at 12:51 am
Darwin, your reading comprehension skills are a little light – and I notice you didn’t even bother to answer the question I asked, though some others did. I’d appreciate it if you would take a little care before you start calling people names.
joemerchant, I am curious – I put 10s of thousands of rounds thru various M16s back when I worked for uncle, and I never once saw an extractor failure (though I did see a few that were worn out) – if the mode of failure isn’t wear, than what is it? Is it fatigue failure or something else? Why does steel-case make it fail vs. brass? I can see steel, being harder, causing accelerated wear, but I don’t see the difference for other failure modes. Is it maybe because extraction forces are higher with steel-case?
And I wouldn’t advocate using steel-case for anything important – the excessive fouling alone should disqualify it for anything but non-critical use. Also, I understand (tho I’ve never seen it in my limited testing) that running brass-case after shooting a bunch of steel can result in FTEs – makes sense to me, as aeronathan described it.
Maybe after I’ve run more steel thru my guns I’ll understand it better – I didn’t even try the stuff until late 2008..:-)
June 1st, 2010 at 8:40 pm
I’ve shot about 2500 rounds of Wolf through mine and it has only shot 3 rounds of brass (as an experiment for a friend. He was having trouble). Carbon is the issue and for the reasons given. Steel doesn’t expand like brass sealing the chamber.
Last 100 rounds I bought, I paid $4.50 for a box of 20 from Aim Surplus. I’ve been enjoying mine.