Friend Of The Blog, Tam, over at View From The Porch is doing one of her revealing 2000-round handgun torture tests. Succinctly, over time shoot 2000 rounds of a variety of ammo through the chosen gun, with no additional cleaning or lube, and chronicle the results. What has been fascinating, to me, is that as of late she has been noticing that steel-cased ammo, in certain magazines, is having issues where the rounds bind up and rattle around in the mags. As best I can tell from reading her posts, this is a problem that doesn’t seem to happen with brass-cased ammo..at least, not nearly as often as with the steel stuff.
Why is this interesting? Two reasons. First, steel-cased stuff is often a tad cheaper and when you’re laying back a lot of ammo every dime matters. Secondly, same rule for mags…sometimes the non-OEM mags are cheaper than the factory ones. Combine those two statements with a crisis where you may or may not have any choice but to use whatever magazine and ammo you can scrounge up and you have a potential for a pretty significant failure point.
As I’ve been reading the posts, it appears that the problems have been in the non-Glock mags. Of the non-Glock mags, the Magpuls perform best but are susceptible to an infrequent issue with the steel cased ammo. The factory Glock mags seem to do just fine.
The obvious lessons would seem to be: don’t shoot steel cased ammo if you can avoid it, and use factory Glock mags. But, as we know, here in the real world we’re faced with ugly choices.
I’m a snob. For my autopistols, the preference is: US brass ammo, quality European brass ammo (S&B, Fiocchi, Norma, etc.), and at the bottom…this stuff. But…if it’s all you can get…….
My own policy with steel cased ammo is to shoot it only in guns designed for it…basically Commie calibers in Commie guns. I’ll shoot steel 7.62×39 out of an AK with no reservations at all…but I’ll only shoot brass 5.56 out of my AR’s. (Yes, I know, I know…everyone says it’s fine to shoot steel cased ammo out of your AR.) For me, between reloading my own ammo, and having career goals that are a bit higher than WalMart shopping cart wrangler, I can afford to lay in a few cases of brass-cased ammo. But…as I said…sometimes ya gotta shoot what’s available. So, from that standpoint, it looks like the only reliable way to have the best of both worlds, brass and steel, is to use the factory Glock mags. Fortunately, we’re past these days and you can get a nice, shiny, factory Glock mag for about $20. So…go get a dozen.
I hope Tam explores this sort of failure further in her shooting adventures. As far as I can tell, it’s not something I’ve seen mentioned anywhere else. Some US manufacturers like Hornady are offering steel-cased ammo these days and I’d be curious to see if the problem persists with their offerings.
i’m on the fence with the steel stuff. i had issues with steel 45acp. had one stick in the chamber and ripped off the extractor trying to get it out. had to use a rod and not a little tap to get it out and then a 40 dollar extractor, rare gun, and then hours hand fitting the damn thing. took a while to get confident in that gun again. i’ve shot it in my ar however with zero issues. and DAMN its cheap! i shoot it in my vz58 no issues there either. i have found that rattle issue in other guns and mags but they seem to function fine.
Implying that S&B is the same, quality-wise, as Fiocchi or even Norma(!) is wrong. Very wrong.
S&B 9mm ammo functions reliably, but it is nowhere near the accuracy of Fiocchi ammunition. Not to mention a top-tier manufacturer like Norma. We’re talking a difference between keeping all rounds on a post-it note at 25 meters (Fiocchi) and failing to keep them all in an IPSC Metric target A-zone (S&B)…
I also prefer Fiocchi, but my experience with S&B is not nearly as bad as yours.
I’ll just leave this here =)
http://www.commanderzero.com/?p=3722#comment-44888
I agree about using only Glock mags. I note that Wranglerstar fellow shot 10K rounds through his Glock 19 without a failure. Then he bought Magpuls. Problems. Use only OEM. The only exception I make is on the Missus’ Mini 14. The Promag steel 20’s have been flawless. Note I have read it is really dependent on the rifle. Over 2K with the Promags IN THIS RIFLE and no problems at all. NOG
“I note that Wranglerstar fellow shot 10K rounds through his Glock 19 without a failure.”
The more shooting I do, the more skeptical I become of these claims. Heck, there are only a couple manufacturers these days I trust to ship 10,000 rounds without a couple defective ones.
Shot a case of the Russian zinc plated steel case through the ARs, found a single round laying around this summer and damned if the case didn’t get lodged in the chamber, it was a real b&@$! To get it out, like hours.
I have a spam can of steel case Russian 5.56. My plan, post-apocalypse, was to trade it to someone I didn’t like. I also have some late-60’s vintage Israeli 7.62×51 for the same purpose. The Izzy is brass case but corrosive. I found that out the hard way.
Don’t buy a Glock!
I’ll not delve into the Glock fanboi-dom but I will say this.
In the safe there is an excellent 1911 Colt Commander, sitting next to an equally excellent 1911 Detonics Combat Master. I love both of those pistols.
I carry a G30 because it is a tool, not an art piece. It goes bang every time and I can beat the hell out of it without worry I’m screwing up a $1200 pistol. If it’s lost, I’m out $500… not $1200.
As for the OP, steel ammo would be for practice only, if I used steel. And the only after market mags I use in the Glocks are the MagPuls in 9mm.
I’ve approached this a bit differently: I’ve procured quantities of the lesser brands in common calibers, including steel case very lesser brands, and tested them for function. So far, in limited quantities, everything I’ve tried functions OK. I consider this as Something Good To Know. I do not consider this A Good Practice.
To me steel case ammo is both A Last Resort and Trade Fodder and keep it stored right next to the Factory Substitute Magazines.
Agreed.
Take it for what it is, but Yeager team did a video about steel cases and how they don’t rotate/slide properly in magazines especially if they’re dirty. I guess the key how brass cases work so well is that they’re (I know there’s a better term out there but can’t think of it) “self lubricating” as they move within the magazines. But I’ve also read posts how awesome Hornady steel cases are, yet crap on Tula/Wolf etc yet they’re basically the same type of steel (claims that Hornady imports steel cases from Tula), only difference is that Hornady is loaded a little hotter. Last year I shot 692rds of Tula 9mm in a class with only one FTF but that was due to me not seating the magazine properly – 3 G17 magpul mags and 2 G17 Glock OEM. Most of us won’t be shooting 1K rounds a range session without cleaning our firearms and magazines afterwards either.
The real issue with cheap Russian steel-case ammo — cheap Russian 5.56mm at least — has nothing to do with the steel cartridge case: the gunpowder used is much more erosive than that used in most 5.56mm ammo and causes much more wear to the bore and erosion of the gas port when fired in an AR.
Luckgunner did a very interesting experiment comparing Federal 5.56mm and 3 brands of cheap Russian steel-case 5.56mm.
http://www.luckygunner.com/labs/brass-vs-steel-cased-ammo/
Combine that increased wear and tear on the rifle with the feeding issues and the fouling issues, and it’s hard to justify buying the stuff. Any savings on ammo — if you’re shooting enough for it to be a significant outlay — will be offset by cost of new barrels and gas tubes.
Excellent read, thank you for sharing. Lucky Gunner continues to provide info in order to be better informed consumer.
Steel cases, handgun and rifle, seem to have more friction with the magazine and perhaps even the gun internals than brass case.
I didn’t use to think of it until taking a high round count AR class (and having to download a bunch of magazines I’d loaded up earlier), the first time with steel then again a few months later with brass-cased ammo. The worst was trying to download steel-cased 556 out of an aluminum magazine, took a lot of pushing. Steel-cased out of a magpul pmag, not so bad. Pushing brass-cased ammo out of any steel or aluminum magazine wasn’t too bad, and it was really easy to push brass-cased ammo out of pmags.
I’ve shot some (maybe a case’s worth) of steel cased AR ammo over the years and never had a problem with sticking cases the way some people report. But after noticing the felt friction force when downloading magazines, I finally switched to pretty much just shooting brass-cased ammo out of polymer magazines (I like Pmags and the Troy battlemags, but of course there are other good polymer ones out there than those).
For what it’s worth, I noticed the same difference in “amount of friction felt” with steel cased handgun (Glock 9mm) rounds and Glock mags, particularly the magpul glock mags. For some reason there’s a lot of sticking going on and it’s a real bear to get those last couple steel-cased rounds into a magpul glock mag.
What some people maybe don’t know is that steel-cased rifle ammo comes in two flavors, lacquer-coated and poly-coated. The poly coat has a much higher temperature rating then the lacquer. What this means is that when shooting rapid fire(or FA), the lacquer will sometimes start to melt off in the chamber. Which isn’t a problem as long as you continue shooting. It’s when you stop and things start to cool down that difficulties may arise.