Brass vs. Steel Cased Ammo – An Epic Torture Test

Hondatech said:
Negative. Went and magneted one of my Norc 5.56 rounds, does not stick to the bullet.
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I also checked and had NO magnetic reaction when touching a magnet to Norc 5.56, copper jacket all the way, no bimetal

In regards to the OP. After reading the entire article, I would say "Don't shoot steel case"

This means MFS is wearing your barrel (Among other things) much faster, for those of you who shoot MFS, I decided not to shoot steel cased ammo long ago.
 
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I am surprised you want to shoot more of your remaining bi-metal. Some rough math based on the article (if it is linear) shows that that every 300 rounds of bi-metal will take an additional 5% of life from your barrel.

Clobbersauras said:
Well, I have a 10.5 AR so barrel life is shorter than a regular AR anyway.

And, according to the test above:





Now, these guns were abused to the point that they were too hot to hold and that rounds would cook off in the chamber, but given what I read above I'd think it prudent to stick with the AE that I usually shoot out of my rifle. Though, shooting MFS may give me another excuse to buy a new barrel....
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Keep in mind that metal softens as it heats up and they shot them till they were to hot to hold so that explains why they were so badly shot out. If you keep the barrel temp cool enough it stays harder then the soft steel jackets and therefore less wear
 
I <3 M14 said:
I've got a dumb question...

Why would the case composition have anything to do with barrel wear?
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It can factor in throat and chamber wear. Wear in the rest of the bore has more to do with the projectiles themselves and the case itself has little bearing on it. They go over this in the article.
 
I love the amount of time they spent looking this over.
I am incredibly jealous as I would love nothing better than to be able to spend this much time, money and ammo at the range.

Only two things I really picked up out of this.
One is that barrels wear.

Two, ARs can be incredibly finnicky when it comes to powder.
Particuarly when it comes to the burn rate as some rifles are far more pressure sensitive due to their DI operating system.

I would highly recommend Collector Grade publications two volume series on the AR, "The Black Rifle" and another on the SA80, "The Reluctant Rifle" to say as much and more in incredible detail about powders, burn rates and the development of both the AR and the 5.56mm round, as well as the failure to pay attention to those developments by Enfield.
 
i remember way back when people usta moly their bullets for errosion ... will it make a come back?

will there be another bear defense thread ?

will i have another cup o coffee?
 
I think you guys also have to take into account just how fast they were dumping ammo through - I believe they mention somewhere in the article that the rifles became too hot to hold at one point. That's not normal usage by any means and they make mention of that fact in the article as well.

Given our situation with 5 and 10 round magazines I don't think most Canadian shooters should be losing sleep over shooting steel cased ammo.
 
I suppose that if we tried this same test in Canada, we'ld probably wear out the magazine housing from all the mag changes before we got through all the ammo.
 
DaveMachine said:
I think you guys also have to take into account just how fast they were dumping ammo through - I believe they mention somewhere in the article that the rifles became too hot to hold at one point. That's not normal usage by any means and they make mention of that fact in the article as well.

Given our situation with 5 and 10 round magazines I don't think most Canadian shooters should be losing sleep over shooting steel cased ammo.
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Oh absolutely.

They were doing mag dumps over mag dumps over mag dumps. We can't get our AR-15's hot enough (not even as hot as a 30 round dump) with 5 round mags, even the 10 rounders don't make a difference.
The inside of the barrels got so hot that the steel was litterally in a malleable state, causing the barrels to become smooth bores with the bi-metal bullets.

It is also important to note that the "brass Bushmaster" performed flawlessly, this is likely due to Busmaster moving to the Remingon facility in NY and producing (apart from the 1/9 twist) mil-spec barrels with correct 5.56 chambers, something unheard of with Bushmaster rifles before.

HOWEVER, two of the four rifles had LOOSE barrel nuts, torqued to less than 5 ft-lbs, out of the box. That, right there, is why you don't buy a Bushmaster to begin with, along with other known brands. Bushmaster has long been known to cut corners and have poor QC. When they noved to NY, the former Busmaster employees went to work for Whindam Weaponry...

Under normal conditions, an AR bbl should still have acceptable accuracy at upwards of 40k rounds. Shooting crappy steel ammo may cut that in half and extractors will wear out fast. And the gas tube getting clogged up... that's unheard of. Crap ammo is crap ammo.

The fact of the matter is that 95% of Canadian shooter won't shoot enough stell cased ammo in their lifetime to see a difference.
 
Well, no sense in running MFS ammo anymore. I bought some since it was cheap and local, but I've ordered some Norinco .223 now.

Thanks for the link.
 
S&B 5.56 M-193 uses Bimetal bullets with Brass casing, so it isn't just steel cased ammo that uses that type of bullet. A tech at LMT noted under normal use, bimetal bullets only cause 10% more wear in a barrel vs copper only jacketed bullets.
 
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