Steel Cased pistol ammo...Good or Bad ?

Shooters Pistol Range in New Milford, CT has recently posted signs prohibiting the use of wolf ammo in their facility.

If you watch that show on Showtime about the gun shop in Colorado (I can't remember the name of the show) they have a big sign on the door to the range that says "No Wolf or Russian ammo." Maybe because it's kind of smoky? Dunno.....
 
If you watch that show on Showtime about the gun shop in Colorado (I can't remember the name of the show) they have a big sign on the door to the range that says "No Wolf or Russian ammo." Maybe because it's kind of smoky? Dunno.....

No it's because a lot of the Russian ammo might be steel core and it's hit or miss even in the same brand. Sometimes you'll get steel core and sometimes you won't so i'm sure they don't want to risk their precious backstops.

As far as Wolf, Silver/Brown Bear, etc being bad for a firearm is simply conjecture. Yes it's dirty, smoky and smelly but it won't hurt your gun just by shooting it.

The last 2 years i've qualified using .45 Wolf and both years people have made remarks about me using it. Funny part is I think i've outscored all of them using crappy ammo :)
 
I've never had a problem and I've shot many tens of thousands of rounds of it over the years.

Wolf .45 is reloadable, I've done it and it works in the press just like brass. Blindfolded, you'd be hard pressed(no pun intended) to tell the difference between steel and brass cases.
 
Arguments I've heard about using steel cased ammo in a firearm:

Increased Chamber Wear:

This is highly unlikely. As EC pointed out, the case hardness is still much lower than the barrel/chamber hardness. Any increase in wear from inserting/extracting is likely to be "in the noise" compared to throat errosion from the hot-gas jet following the bullet out of the case.

It's actually possible to get hardened brass (not the type used in cartiage cases) harder than most steels. The imfamous "Cop-Killer" bullets were hard machining brass bullets with a green teflon coating, the later added because the brass was harder than most barrel steel. Media pressure caused congress to make teflon coatings illegal.

Chamber/Bolt contamination Due to coating:

While I've heard support for and against this, it is possible that the ploymer/laquor coatings used on steel cases may deposit on the chamber and result in chamber or bolt contamination. This would also likely vary from manufaturer to manufacturer as they use different coatings.
Note: I've seen some bolt-face / firing-pin contamination from military primer sealant (visual) but never seen it built up to the point of interfering with operation. Anyone seen this interfere with operation?

Lower Expansion / Improper Seal:
Totally have to aggre with EC here. If the case weren't expanding to seal the chamber, you'd know very quickly since the bolt face isn't sealed and you'd have a hot gas jet coming out of the chamber back at you. Also, it's very hard to imagin that even a low-pressure 19k-psi round wouldn't expand the steel case the few thousands of an inch of clearance.

Steel will generally have less less spring-back than brass (and so does alumimum) so the ejected case will tend to be slightly larger with steel or aluminum verse a brass case. This "could" result in higher extraction force being required to remove the round, but again, I suspect this is minimal unless you're considering a minimum spec "Match" chamber.

As for why a range might ban Wolf ammunition:
A lot of Eastern Block and Russian ammunition manufactueres used bi-metal (copper clad steel) or copper washed steel jackets and/or steel cored bullets. All of these increase the wear and tear on the metal back-plate verse copper or guilding metal jackets.
Also, scrap metal dealers are going to offer less money for mixed metal scrap verse brass scrap, so they may be trying to increase their return on their floor sweepings as well.
 
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Arguments I've heard about using steel cased ammo in a firearm:

Increased Chamber Wear:

This is highly unlikely. As EC pointed out, the case hardness is still much lower than the barrel/chamber hardness. Any increase in wear from inserting/extracting is likely to be "in the noise" compared to throat errosion from the hot-gas jet following the bullet out of the case.

It's actually possible to get hardened brass (not the type used in cartiage cases) harder than most steels. The imfamous "Cop-Killer" bullets were hard machining brass bullets with a green teflon coating, the later added because the brass was harder than most barrel steel. Media pressure caused congress to make teflon coatings illegal.

Chamber/Bolt contamination Due to coating:

While I've heard support for and against this, it is possible that the ploymer/laquor coatings used on steel cases may deposit on the chamber and result in chamber or bolt contamination. This would also likely vary from manufaturer to manufacturer as they use different coatings.
Note: I've seen some bolt-face / firing-pin contamination from military primer sealant (visual) but never seen it built up to the point of interfering with operation. Anyone seen this interfere with operation?

Lower Expansion / Improper Seal:
Totally have to aggre with EC here. If the case weren't expanding to seal the chamber, you'd know very quickly since the bolt face isn't sealed and you'd have a hot gas jet coming out of the chamber back at you. Also, it's very hard to imagin that even a low-pressure 19k-psi round wouldn't expand the steel case the few thousands of an inch of clearance.

Steel will generally have less less spring-back than brass (and so does alumimum) so the ejected case will tend to be slightly larger with steel or aluminum verse a brass case. This "could" result in higher extraction force being required to remove the round, but again, I suspect this is minimal unless you're considering a minimum spec "Match" chamber.

As for why a range might ban Wolf ammunition:
A lot of Eastern Block and Russian ammunition manufactueres used bi-metal (copper clad steel) or copper washed steel jackets and/or steel cored bullets. All of these increase the wear and tear on the metal back-plate verse copper or guilding metal jackets.
Also, scrap metal dealers are going to offer less money for mixed metal scrap verse brass scrap, so they may be trying to increase their return on their floor sweepings as well
.

All good points however, FMS, Sellior&Bellot and a few others have also used bi metal jackets on their pistol bullets so its not really just a Russian ammo trait. Much of the Wolf .45 I've used had excellent quality copper/lead bullets. Our own military used copper washed steel cases in .45acp ammo and tons of it was available as surplus for many years after.
I think there has been a pervasive "anti Russian ammo" sentiment in this country for years.......the real diehards of which are incorrigible. As much as many bitch about Wolf ammo........it all sells and it hasn't gone down in price. At one point in the not too distant past, it was unavailable and people were clamoring for it to combat the exorbitant prices of brand name, brass cased commercial ammo. I'll buy it as long as its available......it works great in all my guns and is just as effective as anything else I've shot and easier on the wallet.
Wolf is the "only" ammo about which I can honestly say that I've never had a failure to fire with, in any caliber used. No other commercial ammo company can claim that from my experiences, not Winchester, Remington, S&B, Fiocci, L-C,Federal, FMS,all have had at least one failure to fire attributed to ammo not the gun in my past experience.

As for cleaning up afterwards, doesn't matter, its part of the game and.....they're all dirty.
 
I'm with Eddie on this.

Speaking with some logical thinking, the steel used to make wolf casings is softer than any barrel steel you are likely to find (prove it to yourself, scratch a casing against your barrel and see which piece of steel takes the scratch). Secondly, wolf ammo is polymer coated, therefore the time the casing takes to heat up and exit the chamber, there is never actual steel on steel contact.

The only way steel cases are going to be a problem with your gun is if you are a lazy SOB and don't clean the excess lacquer/polymer from the inside of the chamber and barrel after shooting it. You can do this with lacquer thinner (go figure) or mineral spirits on a patch or brass brush.

Logic people. Just because you go to the range every weekend doesn't mean you're not dumb as a rock.
 
Wolf .45 is reloadable, I've done it and it works in the press just like brass. Blindfolded, you'd be hard pressed(no pun intended) to tell the difference between steel and brass cases.

I've accidentally reloaded the brass-plated steel S&B 9mm cases and found that the only way to tell they weren't brass was to either use a magnet or look for the split cases after the second time I fired them.

To anybody reading this:

Just because FGABF successfully reloaded Wolf .45 and I had some luck w/S&B 9mm, don't get the impression that all steel cases are reloadable, because they're not.

Cartridge brass material is always between 70-75% copper and 25-30% zinc and that's it. It's a known material with very predictable properties. Steel contains iron, carbon, and possibly a myriad of other elements. Depending on the formulation and alloying elements, the properties of steel are widely variable. There's no way to know what's in a steel case, or how it will behave when it's reloaded. The manufacturer designs a case and chooses a steel that will work as intended when the cartridge is fired once. The case might heat harden or work harden, or not. It might spring back more than brass when it's resized, or less. It might flow funny when you resize it, or not. There's no way to predict it.

I know an old timer that , back in the day, used to reload steel-cased Berdan-primed ammo for European milsurp rifles. This was in the pre-internet days when you could get Berdan primers, and surplus ammo was not as easy to find as it is today. He stopped reloading steel because he had a case head separation on a once-fired case.
 
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I think they are concerned about the possibility of the steel cores.

It probably also has something to do with the steel cases diluting the brass buckets also.


I always pick up my brass, so they never get any from me.
 
As Far as price goes Cabellas definitly has some really cheaply priced steel cased ammo. Pistol, rifle dosent matter and when buying 1,000 rnds at a time or more as long as its not going to harm my guns then it def. seems like the way to go at least until i can start reloading. Obv. steel cased is going to wear the shell deflector on an AR a little more than brass but sticking a bandaid on it would prlly take care of that.
 
I think they are concerned about the possibility of the steel cores.

Wolf, Brown Bear, etc.... does not use a steel core in any of their handgun cartridges, to my knowledge. This rule just sounds like one to increase profits, more than anything else. (It likely forces anyone using wolf to buy ammo from the range, and it also gets the range more real brass to sell to a recycler or to a reloader. )

-Mike
 
Wolf, Brown Bear, etc.... does not use a steel core in any of their handgun cartridges, to my knowledge. This rule just sounds like one to increase profits, more than anything else. (It likely forces anyone using wolf to buy ammo from the range, and it also gets the range more real brass to sell to a recycler or to a reloader. )

-Mike

DING DING DING.
 
Chamber/Bolt contamination Due to coating:

While I've heard support for and against this, it is possible that the ploymer/laquor coatings used on steel cases may deposit on the chamber and result in chamber or bolt contamination. This would also likely vary from manufaturer to manufacturer as they use different coatings.
Note: I've seen some bolt-face / firing-pin contamination from military primer sealant (visual) but never seen it built up to the point of interfering with operation. Anyone seen this interfere with operation?

+1 this

DSA, DPMS and Bushmaster all do not recommend using steel case ammo. While DSA is not specific, Bushmaster I think follows the line of DPMS

http://www.dpmsinc.com/support/warning.aspx

" * Lacquer Coated Ammunition or Steel-cased, lacquer coated ammunition
* Wolf
* Norinco
* Silver Bear
* Any steel-cased (coated or non-coated) ammunition

The problem with this ammunition is that the lacquer coating on the case. As the barrel heats up, the lacquer turns to a soft, varnish substance and upon cool down, becomes very solid and difficult to remove. This effectively creates an undersized chamber and creates understandable problems." "


The problem is not with the steel case but the lacquer coating. If anyone has ever encountered a "sticky bolt" with their Mosin Nagants chances are you have experienced this phenomena...first question always asked is 1) have you scrubbed the chamber to remove any dried cosmoline? and if so 2) have you shot the lacquer coated ammo?

Now whether this is applicable to pistol ammo also I cannot say, but I would guess that overtime it is possible...but a simple solution may be to just make sure to scrub your chamber thoroughly also especially if it is not chrome lined. Makarovs shoot steel cased ammo all day and I am pretty sure that issue combloc 9x18mak was steel cased, BUT I do believe Military Makarovs were issued with chrome lined chambers.

Also I do not know if this effect is seen with Zinc coated ammunition
 
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