[Bruce Aman]

does anyone know if brass cases are made for 5.45x39?

[Jeremy2171]

You can make them from .222 rem. I need to start as soon as I find the free time...

[Bruce Aman]

thanks jerry,i think my steyr will work better with brass.

[mshootnit]

there was some foreign brass but it was expensive, like a dollar a round. I am in a conundrum because I refuse to shoot the corrosive ammo in my sub 2 moa AK-74, and the quality Hornady load is as expensive as 5.56.

[Jeremy2171]

There is no harm in shooting corrosive if you just wash the rifle down with hot WATER then clean normally...

[M1key]

The Saiga shoots mil spec Bulgarian WASP (mildly corrosive) as accurately as Silver Bear...just under 1.5 inches, with scope.

YMMV

M

[Semyon Vasilii]

where are you running into problems? and what makes you attribute it to steel cases?

[HorseSoldier]

There is no harm in shooting corrosive if you just wash the rifle down with hot WATER then clean normally...

+1. You need to be thorough, but as long as you take care of the weapon it'll be fine.

(It does clash with the "shoot it, throw it in mud puddle, come fish it back out a year later, and it'll be fine" AK mythology . . . but what can you do? ;))

[SharpsDressedMan]

Flushing with water is a little harder if you have a nice wood stocked AK............

[A_Matthew]

Flushing with water is a little harder if you have a nice wood stocked AK............

You could take the wood off...

Or you could just get your barrel chrome lined, and then you wouldn't have to be worried about which ammo you shoot.

[Sam1911]

You could take the wood off...

Or you could just get your barrel chrome lined, and then you wouldn't have to be worried about which ammo you shoot.


I hate to be negative, but you must not have a great deal of experience with autoloading rifles and corrosive ammo to say something like that.

There are enough parts of a self-loading rifle that get exposed to combustion detritus that flushing out ALL the bits of your rifle is very important if you're shooting corrosive ammo. (Think, gas block, gas tube, bolt carrier, etc. The whole interior of the receiver gets coated with soot and firing debris.)

Having scraped large rust blooms out of the gas tube of a '74 that sat unattended overnight between days at a class, I won't make that mistake again.

A chrome lined barrel and piston will help the gun resist becoming useless under bad field conditions, but it is NO substitute for proper cleaning and care.

[A_Matthew]

Sorry, I misread the post. I stand corrected.:)

[rcmodel]

Or you could just get your barrel chrome lined,You can't just chrome line an existing unlined barrel either.

It would be too small after the plating built up in the bore.

Barrels that are going to be chrome lined are bored & rifled slightly oversize to make up for the plating thickness added later.

rc

[rcmodel]

You can make them from .222 rem.Not to sure about that.

There are several importent case dimension differances between the .222/.223 case and the 5.45x39 Russian case.

Mainly rim thickness, and head size.
The .222 Rem case head & rim is .378", and the 5.45x39 is .394".

rc

[Jeremy2171]

.222 works fine for the conversion even though its a tad on the small side.

[stubbicatt]

I have done the 222 to 5.45 conversion. the case head is too small for this, and you will experience some case head separations, or annular splits at the case head. Some of the brass will survive, but it is badly bulged ahead of the case head.

I found it simpler to just resize good quality .224 bullets to .222, and insert them in 5.45 steel cases. The Hornady Vmax bullets took the resize easily, and improved accuracy over what was then available from Wolf. Beware of OAL. The Hornady bullets have a different ogive, and must be seated to a shorter OAL than the milsurp/Wolf bullets.

I did not experience any feeding issues with the shorter cartridges.

YMMV