Steel Shell Casing. Are they bad for your gun??

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utahheadgear

New member
This might be a silly question, but I wanted to ask anyway. Will a steel shell casing (as opposed to brass) damage or accelerate wear on the chamber of a firearm??

I've been thinking of picking up some Wolf brand ammo for my .40 S&W because of the great price, but wondered about the steel casings. I know steel cleaning rods aren't good, and wondered if the same applied for shell casings? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused1.gif
 
I tried it in my Taurus Semi auto 40 but I had problems with it ejecting the spent shells. I agree with butchloc the wolf is pretty crappy but it does go bang. It works good in my SKS (as far as ejecting)but hitting the broad side of a barn takes some good shooting. I don't think it will hurt the gun but you get what you pay for.
 
The only time I would use a steel case is in a plinking firearm that has a chrome lined chamber like the milspec AR15 or AK/SKS variants out there.
No way would I use them in a good quality bolt gun or any of my stainless steel or standard non chrome lined barreled AR's. If you have any doubts about using steel case ammo then you are better off staying with brass. The lacquer coating on some of the Wolf brand ammo will stick to a smooth finished chamber and creat all kinds of problems. An AK or SKS chamber is large and rough cut so the lacquer will not be as much of a problem.
 
I don't know for sure if it is bad or not but would not run any steel cases in my guns. I believe they can cause damage as steel on steel is not good in my opinon.
 
The US military has used steel cased ammo in the past, a lot was used in WWII.

The steel case itself isn't really bad for the gun. The biggest problems with steel cased ammo is from either a laquer coating that has been reported to get stuck inside chambers when rapid fire builds up heat, but Wolf has remedied this problem a couple years ago by going to type of powder coating.

The steel used in the steel casing is pretty soft. Remeber, not all steels are equal. The steels used in the construction of your blaster have been surface hardened and are much more durable than ammunition casing steel.

I've heard people theorize about possible peening occouring from chambering many, many steel cased rounds. Nowhere however, have I ever seen anybody offer any proof. Slide and bolt velocities are quite slow when stripping and feeding ammunition resulting in softer impact of parts, and again, because the gun's parts are a stronger breed of steel, unless you are using a junk-drawer-parts-gun I really can't see this happening within the service life round count of the gun.

The biggest problem that lies with the steel cased ammo is that it tends to be very dirty, and in some cases, unpleasant in smell. The purpose of steel cased ammo is to reduce production costs and allow more corners to be cut to maximize margins. Overall consistency of such ammo tends to be quite low when compared to even slightly more expensive ammo. For handgun ranges this may not be so evident, but with rifles it becomes very visible with increased group sizes.

I don't use it simply because I reload. While you can reload steel cases, they are very, very hard on the dies. The other reason is that it's too dirty for more likes, but not much worse than the Winchester white box value pack .45 ACP. I know of one action pistol shooter who picked up a sponsorship from Wolf and has had pretty good things to say about the ammo, including their willingness to work to bring the load down a little so it is closer to power factor without being unnecessarily over.

One very often overlooked attribute of steel cased ammo is that you needn't feel too guilty about leaving it on the range. Over time it will simply rust away.
 
I have heard only bad about the cheap wolf ammo. For one, like mentioned before, you should never try to reload steel cases unless you really want to buy a new set of dies. Also, the components used in the ammo is usually way below par, and this is what makes them so dirty and inaccurate. Something else to consider is the primer used in this ammo. I have heard opinions from some guys that think the primers used for the wolf brand ammo are much more corrosive than standard factory primers. Kind of like the old military primers were. This can cause all sorts of bad things to happen to your throat and barrel, not to mention the residue left in your chamber. I sure wouldn't put one down my barrel.

Kyle
 
The Wolf primers are not corrosive. As for inaccuracy, it's really only evident in rifle cartridges, not so much in handguns, at least not any worse than Winchester value pack ammo, and the fouling from powder isn't much worse than that which Winchester loads their value packs with.

In fact, the only difference I feel there is between the Winchester value pack handgun ammo is that the Winchester is brass cased. Both leave a lot of powder fouling and have velocities that jump around the board. I have plans to do a head-to-head test of the Winchester and Wolf fodder between 9mm, .45 ACP, and .223. One of those roundtuit projects...
 
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