Steel cased ammo in your average AR? Any reason not to?

supernova said:
Bimetal jackets will wear out a .223 bore much faster than copper jacketed ammo. I'll dig up the link, but basically there was a test done with 4 brand new shrubmaster carbines each firing 10k of a specific ammo. One rifle was fed Federal while the other three sucked on a diet of bimetal. The rifle firing Federal copper jacketed ammo was showing wear at 10k rds but could still hold a group together. The others were tumbling bullets before 7k rds. This was done with full cap mags and heating the rifles up running them like $3 hookers. As for steel cased ammo, it seemed to wear out extractors a little sooner but for the price of a spare and the service life you still get, it was negligible. If you keep your rifle reasonably cool I could see you getting decent life out of the barrel. But it will need replacement sooner than a rifle fed copper jacketed ammo.

*edit* found it
h ttp://www.luckygunner.com/labs/brass-vs-steel-cased-ammo/

And to add, a 7.62 bore is far more resistant to bimetal jackets for multiple reasons. The land width is much greater than that of .223, bore surface area is greater, velocity is lower etc. This is why an X39 rifle can take a hammering of bimetal ammo that would ream your .223 out to a smoothbore, and still have nice sharp rifling.
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They also shot those things till they were damn near on fire and the hotter metal get the softer it is and eventually the steel jackets become comparatively harder then the barrel steel and wear it out much more. Now the real question is how hot do you let your rifle get?

In reality with the amount you save from shooting steel cased you can pretty much afford to buy a new rifle.
 
TRG-42 said:
That is a common misconception .....problem is actually steel case when fired does not seal against the chamber walls as well and lets by a bit off gas

There is a ton of info on "steel case sealing chamber" if you google it

Here is an example after couple hundred rounds of Wolf 7.62X39 shot out of a piston AR

It keeps building up in chamber ( ejection gets sluggish ) and periodically sticks to the case and this gets ejected ( partially ! )

wolf-6.jpg


I only had one that stuck the case , but in all fairness ejection became more sluggish but I ended up firing another 30 or so before it finally stuck a case

The residue is not "gummy lacquer " and actually flakes off easily

One pass with a large bore brush cleans it out

I don't hesitate to shoot 223 steel case out of my AR's
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I'm talking about old style ammo, not the new Wolf with the polymer coating. The old ammo was lacquer coated.
 
All very interesting. I've found a deal on some more norc surplus so improbably going to pick up a few cases of that, and 1000 rounds of tulammo steel case. If it shoots well, that will be what I stock next since it seems to be available and cheap. Al flahertys has some decent deals on .223 as well but won't ship. Tulammo canada.com ships for $10.... Not bad really.
 
I've shot steel cased mfs from my ar once and had a lot of failure to ejects, never had an issue with the brass cased norinco ammo, no issues that weren't mag related at least.

I just stick to brass. And the reloading opportunity in the future is an option I am a fan of.
 
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