Aluminum and steel cased ammo.

[CharlesInCharge]

Steel is a harder metal so has 3 major negatives.
1. When it expands it can "stick" in the chamber and be harder to extract or cause a really bad jam malfunction. This is made somewhat worse by the polymer lacquer that is used on cases. In a hot chamber it literally melts and forms a bond. I had an AR15 that had a very bad jam from a steel case shell sealed in the chamber.

2. Steel is harder on extractors, so you may have premature extractor breakage. This is not only expensive (thereby negating cost savings) but inconvenient or worse.

3. Not easily reloadable. While you may save a nickel per round on steel, it's a false economy. The brass is valuable to reloaders, even if you don't reload it can be harvested and sold/traded.

I do shoot some steel, mostly in surplus or Russian guns designed for it (loser tolerances and stronger extractors). But I prefer to shoot brass all around.

 

[CharlesInCharge]

First of all extractors/ ejectors are 5.00 dollar parts. Second, the steel used in cases is a very soft steel. Test by Luckygunner show that steel projectiles do cause more wear of approximately 30,000 to 50,000 rounds. That with continuous mag dumps. The cost saving of brass versus steel would allow you buy just not a new barrel but a new gun! It’s about a 200 dollar savings per thousand rounds

$5. If you can find the extractor. Do you keep extra ones with you? Do you want to stop your range day and fix an extractor? How about if you're in a defensive shooting and it breaks prematurely?

Granted, there are financial advantages to cheaper ammo but folks here make compelling arguments against steel cased (dirty, corrosive, less accurate, harder on extractors and barrel throats, etc.).

 

[Pablo]

The lucky gunner test showed significant accuracy decreases around 4-5k rounds with steel ammo. It was compellingly worse than standard FMJ.

Shooting 100 rounds is pretty easy to do. Doing so 50 times is pretty easy over the course of a few years if serious about shooting.

Sure, this was an AR, rifle rounds… maybe it’s different with handgun ammo and whatnot. But I’m not particularly keen on finding out.

Steel projectiles or cases?

Not clear in your post well other than "FMJ" which implies bullets. BUT the subject is cases.

Subject changed a bit I see that.

Want to be clear, my post above is ONLY about steel cases.

 

[Pablo]

Steel is a harder metal so has 3 major negatives.
1. When it expands it can "stick" in the chamber and be harder to extract or cause a really bad jam malfunction. This is made somewhat worse by the polymer lacquer that is used on cases. In a hot chamber it literally melts and forms a bond. I had an AR15 that had a very bad jam from a steel case shell sealed in the chamber.

2. Steel is harder on extractors, so you may have premature extractor breakage. This is not only expensive (thereby negating cost savings) but inconvenient or worse.

3. Not easily reloadable. While you may save a nickel per round on steel, it's a false economy. The brass is valuable to reloaders, even if you don't reload it can be harvested and sold/traded.

I do shoot some steel, mostly in surplus or Russian guns designed for it (loser tolerances and stronger extractors). But I prefer to shoot brass all around.

Actually I agree the lacquer is not a great thing.

I don't think I have shot much steel 5.56 or .223. There is a bit of a problem with many new AR15's over the last few years. Barrel manufacturers of course want max tool life. Which means approaching maximum material condition as tools wear. Tight chamber. So yes, brass only in this case. This also applies to many aftermarket Glock barrels, barely in specification chamber diameters.

That said before this latest round of hype, I have in one session hot fired 7.62x39 through my AK47, 2000 rounds. Yes two cases. All steel. On multiple occasions 500-1000. Barrel REALLY hot. I mean my wood furniture had some char. Not even one stoppage.

 

[Astro14]

The lucky gunner test showed significant accuracy decreases around 4-5k rounds with steel ammo. It was compellingly worse than standard FMJ.

Shooting 100 rounds is pretty easy to do. Doing so 50 times is pretty easy over the course of a few years if serious about shooting.

Sure, this was an AR, rifle rounds… maybe it’s different with handgun ammo and whatnot. But I’m not particularly keen on finding out.

I’ve hit that number on a rifle. No accuracy degradation, but I’ve only used brass case ammo.

 

[Astro14]

The tooling comment is interesting. I’ve got a very tight chamber in one gun. It specs out with a go/no-go, and shoot factory ammo fine, but it doesn’t like the reloads my buddy* did. The rounds fit in his chamber checker, and he resized them, but the gun doesn’t like them. It’s a Daniel Defense. Totally reliable (and a great gun) on factory ammo.


*I’ve mentioned this guy previously. He used to have an ammo manufacturing side gig. Driven out of business by falling prices four years ago. This isn’t an amateur with a bench. His set up is several hundred square feet with several automatic presses.

 

[JHZR2]

Steel projectiles or cases?

Not clear in your post well other than "FMJ" which implies bullets. BUT the subject is cases.

Subject changed a bit I see that.

Want to be clear, my post above is ONLY about steel cases.

My initial comment was that I’ve run steel cased ammo, with a FMJ (non magnetic) bullet. Tulammo sells this in .223/5.56 and .308/7.62. I’ve run both.

I recognize however that much (most?) steel cased ammo also has a magnetic projectile with a bit of copper wash coat on it.

My reference to lucky gunner was in response to the gamer comment - you wont shoot out the barrel unless you’re a gamer. Actually I think it’s very viable to hit 5k rounds, and if you run steel case ammo and inadvertently run magnetic bullets, you may see issues in time. This is even at ranges that cater to the marksmanship crowd over the spray and pray crowd.

I’m only familiar with Blazer aluminum, and afaik, that uses a non-magnetic FMJ bullet. No issues there if aluminum works for the shooter.

But yes, discussion shifted a bit, because I was looking for objective evidence on the effect of using steel. I do have to look specifically for, and pay a premium for the steel cased/Non magnetic ammo vs steel/steel/magnetic ammo.

 

[Pablo]

The tooling comment is interesting. I’ve got a very tight chamber in one gun. It specs out with a go/no-go, and shoot factory ammo fine, but it doesn’t like the reloads my buddy* did. The rounds fit in his chamber checker, and he resized them, but the gun doesn’t like them. It’s a Daniel Defense. Totally reliable (and a great gun) on factory ammo.


*I’ve mentioned this guy previously. He used to have an ammo manufacturing side gig. Driven out of business by falling prices four years ago. This isn’t an amateur with a bench. His set up is several hundred square feet with several automatic presses.

It is real! I have found some chambers UNDER specification. Absolutely NO excuse.

 

[wpod]

The lucky gunner test showed significant accuracy decreases around 4-5k rounds with steel ammo. It was compellingly worse than standard FMJ.

Shooting 100 rounds is pretty easy to do. Doing so 50 times is pretty easy over the course of a few years if serious about shooting.

Sure, this was an AR, rifle rounds… maybe it’s different with handgun ammo and whatnot. But I’m not particularly keen on finding out.

Rifle indeed , I try to avoid shooting rifles . Even with copper/ brass bullets some rifle barrels have fits. Some hard core bench rest shooters tell me 10,000 rounds is an extreme life for their barrels.. Like the 300 Weatherby I had in the 1990s

 

[football]

Steel cased ammo actually uses a steel cased bullet as well. This will wear out the rifling in the barrel MUCH faster than conventional copper coated bullets.

That being said, the steel cased ammo is usually so much cheaper than brass case ammo, that you can replace your barrel when it wears out and still be money ahead.

 

[Chris142]

My Kahr says not to use steel ammo. Dunno why.

 

[FordMan59]

Only steel cased ammo I've ever used was Russian Surplus 7.62x54R in my Mosins. I keep an eye out for deals on ammo and when I buy brass cased ammo it's usually just as cheap or cheaper than buying steel case ammo. Those old Mosins were built like tanks so I don't worry about using steel cases in them. I've still got a few cases of Russian surplus 7.62x54R that I bought when it was plentiful at about $ .17 a round. Most of it was bought on stripper clips. I took the ammo off the stripper clips and sold most of the stripper clips on eBay. I made all my money back plus enough extra to pay for my Mosins. I've got a case of aluminum cased .45 ACP that I bought at a store closeout for about $11 a box but haven't shot any of it yet. If any reloader is interested in buying 9mm, .40, .45 or .223 brass send me a PM. I have a few thousand of all except .45 ACP.

 

[thastinger]

Modern, no. Wolf or something similar are non corrosive. But the old spam can stuff, not so much.

The old "spam can stuff" is Berdan primed brass cases

 

[thastinger]

Since I reload, I have rarely bought anything other than brass.

Aluminum, as mentioned above, is not much less expensive than brass so I've not had a reason to want it. The only exception was Cabelas at least use to sell some of their house brand Herters ammo in aluminum with a Nyclad-type blue nylon coated bullet and I did like that for a clean range ammo.

The tides do turn a bit if it's something like my Mosin, which I haven't shot in years, and ammo use to be so cheap that it wasn't worth reloading. Of course that comes with the caveat that a lot of the steel case for that has corrosive primers so you need to clean the gun like crazy after shooting it.

Also, for any milsurp ammo, it's not uncommon to find Berdan primers in brass. If that's the case, at least for a common caliber, that kills a lot of the advantage of brass just a range/plinking ammo(it does have some technical advantages in terms of how it fireforms and seals to the chamber, but that generally doesn't come into play unless you're a long range/high accuracy shooter) as Berdan is generally difficult to reload. Some dedicated folks do it for oddball calibers, but even once you get the old primer out they're still not nicely standardized like Boxer primers and aren't easy to find.

I've broken more decap pins than I would like to admit when reloading 7.62x39 and 7.62x51 brass, almost impossible to find all the Berdan brass on the first visual sorting pass.

 

[Pablo]

I've broken more decap pins than I would like to admit when reloading 7.62x39 and 7.62x51 brass, almost impossible to find all the Berdan brass on the first visual sorting pass.

Same with 7.62x25. That and split cases with eastern bloc stuff.

 

[thastinger]

The tooling comment is interesting. I’ve got a very tight chamber in one gun. It specs out with a go/no-go, and shoot factory ammo fine, but it doesn’t like the reloads my buddy* did. The rounds fit in his chamber checker, and he resized them, but the gun doesn’t like them. It’s a Daniel Defense. Totally reliable (and a great gun) on factory ammo.


*I’ve mentioned this guy previously. He used to have an ammo manufacturing side gig. Driven out of business by falling prices four years ago. This isn’t an amateur with a bench. His set up is several hundred square feet with several automatic presses.

You could still roll your own, using new brass cases or roll sizing the used brass. I've found the small base full length sizing dies work best.

 

[thastinger]

Same with 7.62x25. That and split cases with eastern bloc stuff.

There are a few Berdan primer decap options out there...but I haven't seen a Berdan primer for sale for years now

 

[CleanSump]

Three notes.
1) It's an AK and the Soviets and Chinese put thousands of steel cased rounds through rifles with a respectable life cycle. Otherwise, logistics would have dictated replacing the steel cases to make the rifles last longer.

2) Steel projectile jackets are no concern to the average rifle or pistol barrel life. The copper or gilding metal clad steel is way too soft to do much to your barrel steel. Many nations have used, and continue to use, steel jacketed ammo. The Germans, the Russians/Soviets, the Chinese since before WWI. Armies don't continue to buy stuff if it is known to drive replacement and cost up. Norma made steel jacketed hunting ammo for decades and no one noticed a problem.
During WWII, the US manufactured and used BILLIONS of steel clad 45 bullets in their pistol ammo. Yes, billions of rounds of 45 with steel jacketed bullets. They were tested and found to be of no detriment to barrel life before production began. That is not an exaggeration, it is recorded fact.
The US has issued some 50 Cal and most 20 MM in steel cases for since forever LOL.

Lacquer and plastic coatings on cases can goop up a chamber and extractor.
AKs extractors have been made to use steel ammo. If your civvie version wasn't, poor you for buying an inferior product that doesn't meet the design.

3) Aluminum cases? Been on the market for decades. The only problem is in the minds of someone who hasn't used it. It's OK, we understand it's only been common in the lower tier plinking ammo since before you were born.

 

[BlueOvalFitter]

There is nothing wrong with SCA. When I'm shooting target practice, I am using SCA about 99% of the time. And none of my guns are broken because of it.

 

[swampdodo]

I know that brass cased ammo can be reloaded but are there other negatives about aluminum and steel cased 9mm ammo?

When I was living in FL, some of the indoor ranges would not allow it...brass only.