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Steel Cased Ammo

5K views 33 replies 21 participants last post by  lysander 
#1 ·
#3 ·
Hornady (and now Federal?) now have steel cased ammo available, but with proper bullets. I've not seen it, because I don't shop for it, nor do I know how much less it sells for.

I had nothing but malfunctions with Tula steel-cased .223 ammo, and that included two Mini-14's. Failures to extract in every .223 rifle I owned, during testing.
 
#34 ·
Hornady (and now Federal?) now have steel cased ammo available, but with proper bullets. I've not seen it, because I don't shop for it, nor do I know how much less it sells for.

I had nothing but malfunctions with Tula steel-cased .223 ammo, and that included two Mini-14's. Failures to extract in every .223 rifle I owned, during testing.
Tula is the problem, not necessarily the steel cases....
 
#5 ·
I'm with Tommo on this. I've shot thousands of russkie surplus thru a S&W AR and AK 74 without a problem. The surplus stuff is so dirty that it will foul up the AR after 180 or so rounds but that's a cleaning issue that doesn't happen with the AK.

I don't worry about a soft iron case wearing a chamber. Try to scratch a file with a common nail.

The test video was firing thousands of rounds without cleaning. Who does that?
 
#9 · (Edited)
I use 60-90 rounds of steel-cased ammunition to function test newly built AR-15s. I've found numerous bad extractor springs doing this as the steel cases are more difficult to extract. Surprisingly I've found the D shaped thingamajig does nothing to assist extraction: the spring is the main factor ensuring reliable extraction. With the great number of vendors selling extractor springs I think there are too many that do not meet the compression and rebound specifications set by the military. Almost every spring I've replaced compressed too easily compared to the USGI springs I have. In case you're wondering, bad springs were found in almost all manufactuterers even if stated "mil-spec". As an aside: I have also found those few rifles that would not extract steel cased ammo irregardless of what I checked or replaced. As noted in the Luckygunner article, these rifles under close examinations were found to have rough chambers. Again, they ran the spectrum from inexpensive vendors to the well known high-end manufacturer. It seems the Friday-Monday curse affects the gun making industry as well as any other.
I have had people ask me why I do the extractor/spring test using steel cased ammo. It's because a weak extractor spring will start giving the shooter problems normally after a couple of thousands of rounds. It is a reliability test I do to give the owner peace of mind.
As for using steel-cased ammo regularly; nope, I don't do it. The bi-metal bullets wear out the barrel's much quicker that copper jacketed. Now I haven't tried Hornady's steel-cased, copper jacketed match ammo long-term but I wouldn't be as worried about barrel wear as much as compared to Russian ammo.
 
#10 ·
I use the small black o rings that go around the extractor spring. Bought them at a gun show. They probably have the same thing at the hardware store.

The bi-metallic bullet is still softer than the chrome lining in my AR and AK. The Poles original design standard for overhaul was 20k rounds in their ak74 Tantal. They found that the rifles were going to 30k. Of course this includes automatic fire where heat and erosion are probably more damaging than bullet material.
 
#16 ·
Pros:
- lighter*
- cheaper*
- not as 'shiny'

Cons:
- harder on extractors
- less corrosion resistant

There is a Army report done back in the sixties on the possible switch to steel cased ammo for the M16 and M60/M14, unfortunately, it's still listed as confidential....
________________________
* both individually and strategically.
 
#17 ·
There was much steel case development done at Frankford Arsenal in Philadelphia. They were THE ammunition R&D spot for the military till they closed. I have a few experimental steel-cased 6mm SAW rounds made at Frankford Arsenal.
 
#22 ·
As noted above - steel cased ammo has actually been around for a loooong time. Much of the angst about it can be classified as "old wives tales" and one must note some context so as to understand what is really involved. First - reputable ammo makers such as Hornady have made steel cased ammo. In fact they produced a non-reloadable line of MATCH GRADE steel cased ammo for competition shooters. Next - the mild steel used in cases is waaaaaaaay softer than barrel steel. Thus the claim that it ruins barrels and extractors is a tad overblown - unless your gun happens to have really cheap parts. Next - most of the steel cased ammo originates from Russia and the former Soviet countries. The reason for this is quite simple. Russia has never been a major producer of lead or copper - but - they are a major producer of steel. Thus is was cheaper and easier to make steel cased-steel core ammunition for their military which is what they've done for decades. Since the early 1990's and the importation ban on steel core handgun ammo which impacted the 7.62x39mm round as it was used in short AK's which were classified as SBR's or handguns - they have since switched to producing lead core bullets with the traditional steel cases for the US market so as to circumvent the importation ban. Last - since we are primarily talking about military ammo which is used in military weapons which are intentionally designed with "loose chambers" so as to facilitate function and extraction (at the cost of lower accuracy) - this ammo sometimes has extraction issues when used in US commercial-made rifles which have tighter tolerances. Moral of the story - steel cased ammo is perfectly safe to use but as noted it comes with some limitations due to the dynamics of steel expansion and the guns it might be used it and how they are made. USA2
 
#20 ·
[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBAh_8usXBI[/ame]

And I'm out. I believe everything I see and hear on the youtubeses
 
#24 · (Edited)
But, oddly enough, their big guns, naval and coastal artillery still used brass cases, even the 38 cm guns... (At the time our Navy used brass as well for the 5"/38 and 8"/55 guns. The modern 5"/54 use either brass or steel.)

I found the Army's test report on steel cases for use in the M16A1, they were tested from Oct 1969 to Feb 1970 at Ft Benning in temperature between 9 to 86 degrees F. There were actually more ammunition related failures in the control ammunition (brass cases) that the steel, two for brass and one for steel out of over 22,000 rounds of each type shot. The steel cases had more split necks (47 vs none), but these did not affect weapon operation.

The only weakness noted was the steel was more prone to corrosion. However, they noted that further tests in tropical and arctic environments was needed.

So, for temperate climates, steel should be fine. Of course the real question is - "Who made the ammunition?"
 
#27 ·
There is a Military Arms Channel video on steel-cased ammo. The conclusion was that steel cases didn't obdurate as well as brass, so fouling occurred in the chamber, leading to less-tapered 5.56 cases sticking in the chamber. This makes it a cleaning issue, with no damage to the rifle.
 
#29 ·
When I first bought my M14s (Nov 94) I bought several thousand rounds of copper washed steel cased 7.62 with the gun. I never had an issue with that ammo other than it wasn't very accurate, and it is dirty. I have not had any malfunctions with it or other problems. I still have around 500 rounds left in an ammo can and it still looks good. I also used to buy the wolf 45 acp steel cased ammo when it was cheap. I shot a lot of that through my home built essex 1911 without any problems. It cycled good, was accurate, but was dirty. I think I have 200 rounds of it in the ammo locker. I dont buy steel case ammo now because I got back into reloading.
 
#31 ·
I bought a few boxes of Russian steel case ammo in 5.56 to test it in my AR15s.
It wasn't very accurate and dirty. Out of three ARs two functioned perfect but one just would function. Either jamming or failure to feed. It would run perfectly with PMC or US brass ammo.
I was third party to a M14 that splintered the stock shooting steel case Russian ammo.
Sold a replacement stock as the third party but really didn't get the full details.
I got a great deal some time back on a case of Russian steel case 308 ammo. I will never shoot it in any of my rifles but my semi auto 1919A4 runs it ok. It's pretty hard t to blow up that monster.
 
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