polymer coated steal rounds

[shepp]

so ive been looking at bulk ammo, and from what i read here steal caseings are a NO NO, what about polymer coated? just curious, still prolly will go with brass but i thought i would ask.

[Robocop1051]

I'd leave all steel casings for the G3 family rifles, and the FN's. They were built for those types of ammo.

The wear and tear you put on an ar308 bolt is unnecessary. You'll eventually wear out parts that are a pain in the ass to repair. You can get away with one or two, now and then. But the more expensive your rifle the more I would shy away from steel.

I have a few hundred rounds of steel NATO 7.62, and it shoots great from my buddies HK91. That ammo will never see the inside of my AR308.

[shepp]

Thanks!!!

[mrraley]

This is what I usualy tell people in my classes...

Let me start with this analogy for you...

Would you purchase an expensive car and run cheap gas through it? If your answer is no, then why would you buy cheap ammunition for your rifle?

As an armorer I tell and teach my students to avoid steel cased ammo for the following reasons...

1. Steel cased ammunition does not expand and contract like brass cased ammunition does.

2. Most steel cased ammunition is either lacquer coated or polymer coated.

3. Lacquer coated ammunition can have a tendency to become soft after repeated shooting and the chamber is warm. Allowing debris to be lodged between the coated casing and the chamber. Lodging the casing and causing a failure to extract. 

          4. A lot of the coatings are not properly measured. So some caotings are thicker than others making the dimentions larger which can create a stuck casing too.

I hope this helps and answers your question.

[shepp]

This is what I usualy tell people in my classes...

Let me start with this analogy for you...

Would you purchase an expensive car and run cheap gas through it? If your answer is no, then why would you buy cheap ammunition for your rifle?

As an armorer I tell and teach my students to avoid steel cased ammo for the following reasons...

1. Steel cased ammunition does not expand and contract like brass cased ammunition does.

2. Most steel cased ammunition is either lacquer coated or polymer coated.

3. Lacquer coated ammunition can have a tendency to become soft after repeated shooting and the chamber is warm. Allowing debris to be lodged between the coated casing and the chamber. Lodging the casing and causing a failure to extract. 

          4. A lot of the coatings are not properly measured. So some caotings are thicker than others making the dimentions larger which can create a stuck casing too.

I hope this helps and answers your question.

yes thank you. i knew the steal was bad but i wasnt sure if it was because of the reason that brass is softer then steal and has more give, and maybe the coating helped with that give, but those reasons also make alot of sense

[mrraley]

Glad that helped and hope it cleared things up for ya.

[Spaniky73]

This is a great post from another thread. You should watch the video.

First, always check the owner's manual and see what it says about ammo. Many makers' warranty will be void if steel cased ammo is used. That being said I've fed my DPMS AP4 AR-15 Wolf (black box) 55gr fmj & hp, 62gr fmj & hp, and Brown Bear 55gr fmj. No issues with any of them. Granted I'm not firing 100s of rounds at a time, but I've had no issues with any lacquer or polymer coating build-up ever. I've fired Wolf (black box) 150gr fmj through a PTR91 I used to have without issue too....it was actually giving me better groups than Austrian brass cased surplus. For my pistols I've shot Brown Bear and Wolf through my XD9 and Wolf through my G21SF and Taurus 1911 without any problems either.

I understand the thought of only using higher grade stuff through a higher grade rifle or whatever, but if a rifle going for $1500+ (or whatever premium cost) and it can't handle "cheap" steel cased ammo, then IMO I'm going to look elsewhere. Let's not forget that the U.S. military during WWII was using steel cased .45ACP ammo....which a few months ago MidwayUSA had on sale, and it sold quick. When I was researching for what .308 AR I wanted, DI or piston, I emailed companies and asked them about steel cased ammo. POF and PWS both said they run Wolf regulary through their guns. So hence I now own a POF :). But, once I'm able to shoot 300+ yards I'm def. going to get some match stuff to see what my POF can really do. Unfortunately, stuck with 100 yard range at the moment :(.

Is brass softer than steel? Yes, of course. But materials used to make today's firearms should be of stouter stuff than steel cased ammo. If steel cased ammo is so terrible why would Hornady and Black Hills now offer ammo with steel cases? They're not exactly known for producing crap ammo are they?

Here's some food for thought:

[barrysuperhawk]

I hate Steel vs Brass threads, invariably some space shuttle door gunner instructor shows up and tels us all how awful steel cased ammo is for our precious guns.  The worst part is some new shooters that don't know any better accept his internet creds and believe the propaganda.  It's hogwash, all of it.  Maybe if you only shoot 20 rounds out of your safe queen in a year, I can see only shooting brass.  Otherwise Sucumbing to the FUD is just bad.  Let's see if I can catch the high points:

Steel is too hard to expand like brass, so will not seal as well - Bullcrap, think about the relative pressures here, hell even .22LR expands and seals sufficiently [remember the Junior .22LR in the wax paper boxes?]

Steel will wear out your extractor/firing pin/ etc.  - Bullshytte.  Moving parts wear and break.  When you break a part using brass, you don't blame the brass, but if you are using Steel cased ammo - then it must be the steel, not the 5000 previous rounds that wore that part out.  And Spoons made Rosie Fat.

Steel QC is lower than brass - Bullpuckey.  Winchester and Federal individually have each had more ammo recalls than all of the animal brands put togeather.  Google it.

Steel will blow up your gun - Bullbiscuts.  The most common complaint I have ever heard about steel cased ammo is it isn't as hot as brass, and the Velocity is lower, yet even Companies who should know better, ilke DPMS put blurbs in their manuals about steel cased ammo and double charges.  On a lark, I pulled a Wolf .308 round and guess what I saw, the exact same loading density as my FGMM, and it even looked to be a similar powder.  See the pix below.

The Lacquer/Polymer will gum up the works, cause things to stick, cause stuck cases, etc.  - Bulltaters.  Residue from the bullet/primer sealant look ugly, and some of the animal brands definately user dirtier powder than their brass counterparts, but here's a couple of experements you can try at home.  #1 take a spent case an heat it to try to get the coating to melt.  Eventually it will burn, but then apply the exact same amount of heat to a brass case and see what happens to it.  The flame required to Fork with the coating on steel cases will also totally fork up a brass case.  #2 look on the ground at the range and try to find even one piece of steel that the coating has flaked off of.  Unless they have been stepped on or rained on, most steel case lands on the ground looking BETTER than once fired brass does.  Stuck cases - I have seen 3 in my life that were steel and 4 that were brass.  In every case, [that I have personally seen], the gun was filthy [should have been cleaned hundreds of rounds ago].  Brass cases seem MORE likely to crack down to the casehead than Steel, in my experience.

It will void my warranty - Bull...waitaminute, I cannot disagree with this, some chickensnort companies WILL void your warranty if they find evidence of steel cased ammo, or if you tell them you used it.  I merely present this as an example of how lawyers are ruining our society, spreading FUD in the name of liability.  It is wrong and terribly unfair, but it is reality.

Steel won't fit/feed/extract right in your gun  Bull...waitanother minute  Ok, there are a couple of instances where this is true.  In .45ACP, TulAmmo 230 Gr bullets are shorter and fatter than their Winchester counterparts, which can lead to some feeding problems in some 1911's..  If you were to seat the Winchesters to the same  COAL, you would have many of the same issues.  The fatness or the ogive also presents problems by occasionally contacting the slide stop on some guns, locking the slide open with rounds in the mag.  Also, x39 AR's are pretty famous for not liking HP ammo.

One last data point.  Nobody can argue that Hornady puts out some of the best ammo there is, and even they have some out with a steel cased ammo line.  No doubt it is still made by Boris in Unpronouncableastan, but I cannot see Hornady being willing to risk their corporate good name on a line of ammo if it really had all of these problems when they could just as easily named their "generic" ammo line something totally different. 

In closing, Steel case is different than brass, and in many peoples minds different = bad.  Don't believe the FUD.

As promised the "Pull" pictures:

[img width=810 height=607]http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/ff153/barrysuperhawk/20120330_205459.jpg

[img width=810 height=607]http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/ff153/barrysuperhawk/20120330_205747.jpg

[unforgiven]

Nice job brother barrysuperhawk well done left out bullberries <lmao>.

[Tripledeuce]

  As for the steel cased 45 ammo, I can tell you, from personal experience, that it HAS caused numerous broken extracters in quite a number of 1911's.

    in the mid 70's a batch of steel cased 45 ammo came on the market.

  I ,personally, replaced over  two dozen extractors for customers who admitted that they were using steel ammo at the time of the malfunction.

    Respectfully

  Terry

[edgecrusher]

i trust mrraley, not that anyone else's opinion is less important, i just like his credentials

[Matt.Cross]

Hornady does indeed make steel cased ammo, but it's for competition shooters (like 3 gun) and shooters who cannot police their brass for reloads. The coating on that ammunition is only on the case, not the entire shell, and the bullet itself is an SMK, not a jacketed bullet like most Mil-Surp.

[DustinIL]

  As for the steel cased 45 ammo, I can tell you, from personal experience, that it HAS caused numerous broken extracters in quite a number of 1911's.

    in the mid 70's a batch of steel cased 45 ammo came on the market.

  I ,personally, replaced over  two dozen extractors for customers who admitted that they were using steel ammo at the time of the malfunction.

    Respectfully

  Terry

My question would be is it breaking because of the steel ammo, or were the extractors made of inferior steel and therefore would have broken eventually regardless of case material? Please don't get me wrong, I totally understand the reasons given for not using steel cased ammo, as mrraley stated. My only response would be that my guns aren't meant to be safe queens and therefore will only get XYZ type ammo through it. The only gun I have that I worry about what type of ammo I use is my M1 Garand, and that isn't about case type, put powder type and risk of damaging the oprod. Using the expensive car analogy, of course run what fuel is recommended, but they also recommend only form XYZ gas stations and even only ABC oil brand.....which is the same as nearly every other brand, but whoever made the deal with the automaker to be put in owner's manuals and some "advertising". If your gun maker starts mandating FGMM or Black Hills match ONLY in your gun are you going to do that? Until I see a thorough testing comparison of steel cased ammo being used; durability, reliability, etc. in an unbiased testing platform I'm taking the anti-steel cased opinions with a grain of salt, as all of us should do when reading info from the interwebs. Again, YMMV and it's your money and gun.

If someone is willing to do some T&E with a donor gun, I'd be willing to chip in for the cost of ammo. But when I say a thorough test, I mean THOROUGH: using as many types of steel cased ammo as you/we could get our hands on; Wolf (WPA black box and mil. classic), Brown Bear, Tula, Silver Bear, Golden Bear, Golden Tiger, Ulyanovks (sp?), and others I don't know or forgot, with as many bullet types and weights as possible. Again, my thought is that with today's metallurgy knowledge and advances in manufacturing, ARs and AR bolts, bolt carriers, extractors, etc. can't be made of superior materials than "soft" steel used for ammo cases?

Or how about this: instead of trying the polymer or lacquer coated steel cases, try the zinc plated (Silver Bear, MFS, etc.) or brass plated (Golden Bear) ammo?

[kickstart]

I don't worry about the steel cases but the copper plated steel jacket bullets only get shot in my AR's because changing a barrel in them is no biggie. Get your magnets and check the bullets in your steel case ammo.

[Tripledeuce]

      At the time period I'm talking about, the only extractors were GI surpless, or genunine Colt.

    Not much of a choice, but no inferior parts, either.

  Respectfully

  Terry

[planeflyer21]

I personally use steel and brass and have no issues.

My friend shoots LOTS of steel case through his M&P15 with no issues.

Steel comes in lots of different grades suitable for everything from rebar to armor plate, just as brass comes in different alloys.  For ammunition cases, they use the more pliable alloys of either.  The girl's BWK-47 in .223 puts a massive dent in brass and steel cases.

Jon