will that cheap Russian steel case/steel jacket ammo ruin your barrel?

Steel jacketed? Definitely, however most milsurp is steel core, which has enough copper to protect the rifling.
I would avoid bimetal jacketed as steel on steel at high speed just sounds bad to me.
 
I have seen plenty of sks and vz58 with 4k+ and they shoot just fine.the high velocity of .223 may contribute to the accelerated barrel wear when using bi metal
 
Meh.

3k of Russian steel-jacket (plus a lot of regular .223) through my 10 year old Armalite and the bore looks and shoots like new.
 
Bravo Siera

I've run just about 13,000 rounds of steel core, through the same barrel. My group average has increased ~.75moa.
New was ~2.5moa.
 
A few things I didn't think was realistic about the test....realistic as far as civilian shooters go in Canada.
300 round mag dumps....that's a lot of heat, about as hot as you can get a semi auto, would add to accelerated wear.
Cleaning the bore at 5000 rounds, that's just neglect and also will add to accelerated wear.
Very few people will ever shoot that many rounds through an AR in their lifetime lol
I think if anyone replicated that test you would probably get the same results.
That said, a new barrel can be had for $200...so big whoop. I'd fire all the cheap #### out of a production barrel and not care really. If I had a nice barrel....probably feed it nice ammo :)
 
Hitzy said:
A few things I didn't think was realistic about the test....realistic as far as civilian shooters go in Canada.
300 round mag dumps....that's a lot of heat, about as hot as you can get a semi auto, would add to accelerated wear.
Cleaning the bore at 5000 rounds, that's just neglect and also will add to accelerated wear.
Very few people will ever shoot that many rounds through an AR in their lifetime lol
I think if anyone replicated that test you would probably get the same results.
That said, a new barrel can be had for $200...so big whoop. I'd fire all the cheap #### out of a production barrel and not care really. If I had a nice barrel....probably feed it nice ammo :)
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Exactly. It's harsher conditions than any of our rifles will ever see. Even if you do fire 10000 rounds of bimetal jacket through your rifle, I doubt you'd even notice any amount of wear compared to what the ones in the test saw.
 
Gunnerlove said:
It should it is at like 15% of barrel life. If it breaks 20K and still shoots inside 2MOA I will be surprised.
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If it does get to 20k, I'll have saved $3000-4000 in ammo costs, assuming it only sees steel-jacket from now on.

That more than makes up for buying a new barrel or three.
 
I don't really see the savings with the steel ammo vs cheap US stuff like UMC/AE/White Box.
Looking at $300-$350/1000 for steel vs $400-$450 for brass. If you reload it's a no brainer, even if you don't the brass is worth about $10/100 if you want to sell it....
 
Hitzy said:
I don't really see the savings with the steel ammo vs cheap US stuff like UMC/AE/White Box.
Looking at $300-$350/1000 for steel vs $400-$450 for brass. If you reload it's a no brainer, even if you don't the brass is worth about $10/100 if you want to sell it....
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$100-$150 a thousand isn't a significant savings to you? I don't reload for .223.

Regardless, I think the "steel-case, steel-jacket" thing has become more of an ideological issue than a practical one. None of my .223s have blown up or worn out, it's saved me money and allowed me to shoot more.

YMMV.
 
Hitzy said:
A few things I didn't think was realistic about the test....realistic as far as civilian shooters go in Canada.
300 round mag dumps....that's a lot of heat, about as hot as you can get a semi auto, would add to accelerated wear.
Cleaning the bore at 5000 rounds, that's just neglect and also will add to accelerated wear.
Very few people will ever shoot that many rounds through an AR in their lifetime lol
I think if anyone replicated that test you would probably get the same results.
That said, a new barrel can be had for $200...so big whoop. I'd fire all the cheap #### out of a production barrel and not care really. If I had a nice barrel....probably feed it nice ammo :)
Click to expand...

That was my thoughts as well. If i had a match rifle with a match barrel, no way i would shoot cheap surplus out of it, but other than that i'd never get anything that hot, that dirty that fast, and probably would never get to that round count to make that much of a difference.
 
Stevo said:
$100-$150 a thousand isn't a significant savings to you? I don't reload for .223.

Regardless, I think the "steel-case, steel-jacket" thing has become more of an ideological issue than a practical one. None of my .223s have blown up or worn out, it's saved me money and allowed me to shoot more.

YMMV.
Click to expand...

Sell the 1000 fired brass for $100 and it's basically the same price...
 
I didn't even know you could buy steel jacket.

Cheap stuff available to me: steel case, copper jacket with a steel core.

Do I run it through my AR? No ... but I might change my mind if I read the right arguments here. Who doesn't like saving money on ammo.
 
Tikka223 said:
I didn't even know you could buy steel jacket.

Cheap stuff available to me: steel case, copper jacket with a steel core.

Do I run it through my AR? No ... but I might change my mind if I read the right arguments here. Who doesn't like saving money on ammo.
Click to expand...

If its steel case and Euro or Chinese, its probably bi-metal jackets....
 
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