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Steel Casing Info

I've always run steel-cased ammo in my AK-47's. A year ago I wouldn't have been willing to purchase steel-cased ammo for my other guns. My standards have changed as ammo prices have risen. If I could find it on shelves, I wouldn't hesitate to buy steel-cased ammo for the majority of my handguns and rifles.
 
Just last week I bought some Red Army Standard steel case 9mm ammo that is distributed by Century International Arms. While I didn't have any malfunctions with the ammo, sparks flew out of the gun every time it was fired. I only shot 25 rounds of that stuff and I couldn't believe how dirty the gun was when I cleaned it.

The only other steel case ammo I've shot with that gun was Wolf and I couldn't tell the difference between that and my brass ammo.
 
I've run quite a bit of Wolf through both my XDs and my Hellcat, with no issues and no major increases in filth. Granted, I clean after every session so they never really get THAT dirty anyway. I'd suspect any "dirty" issues aren't because it's a steel case round, but because it's a cheap round, and they likely use a cheaper powder formulation to keep the round cost down. I don't see any way the case material could affect how clean/dirty a round burns.

I haven't seen any bore or ramp or ejector scarring, either.

Think about it - a thin steel case is a LOT softer/weaker than a hammer-forged barrel/ramp/chamber...and, it's the same SHAPE as brass casing. It's not like they have goofy edges or points sticking out, that the firearm isn't made for.
 
I've related several times on how I ran a lot of it through a Glock 21 in both a ”shoot to failure” (no cleaning) and to see if there was any adverse wear.

After many thousands of rounds, I couldn’t see any additional wear and tear on it.

However, Lucky Gunner did a test with identical AR's, and there was obvious barrel wear and breakages seen with the steel, but not the brass...but the money saved (it was a 10k round test) would have bought another entire AR...let alone just another barrel and a few extractors.

I have some steel in my “deep storage”—that is, when there are no more options left, I’ll run it; and, I did like running steel when I used to take super high round count classes (think 1-2k rounds over the course of a weekend class) where I wouldn’t get the brass back, either.

I truly think it's one of those things where the issues get pretty overblown...but there are drawbacks to it that need to be acknowledged.
 
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