Brass, Aluminum and Steel ammo

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I have had problems will all of them, steel, aluminum, plastic and even brass.

How well they work depends on who made them/their QC and what you use them in.
 
And the cases were 45 long colt. This was just an experiment, nothing more. It just proves that it can be done not that it should be done.
No people or firearms were harmed in this experiment.
 
bearcreek said:
Are there really people who take the time to put a drop of oil on every steel case? If that's what's needed it's worth the $.015 extra to not mess with it, IMO.
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I have sprayed wd40 in a magazine when I was getting malfunctions. It's more of a bandaid at the end of an extended range session.
9mm aluminum is the only thing that functions in my tec9.
 
GAF said:
And the cases were 45 long colt. This was just an experiment, nothing more. It just proves that it can be done not that it should be done.
No people or firearms were harmed in this experiment.
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One of the nice things about revolver brass is how many times it can be loaded. Probably aided that experimental effort. I wonder if the same would hold true for a cartridge that head spaces off the case mouth where neck tension is more critical.
 
GAF said:
And the cases were 45 long colt. This was just an experiment, nothing more. It just proves that it can be done not that it should be done.
No people or firearms were harmed in this experiment.
Click to expand...
Change that to a higher pressure cartridge and I bet the results would be way different.
If I couldn't afford to buy brass, I would be confident using light loads.
 
Bfh_auto said:
Change that to a higher pressure cartridge and I bet the results would be way different.
If I couldn't afford to buy brass, I would be confident using light loads.
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The thing about aluminum is that it will burn under the right conditions. When various agencies were testing aluminium 7.62 and 5.56 cases, there was a problem with "case burn-through". It was caused by a microscopic crack in the case head, and hot, high pressure gas would establish a flow path through it. With brass or steel, a minute amount of gas would leak and that would be the end of it, with aluminum the crack would rapidly expand, due to melting and burning of the aluminum.

This type of failure was relatively rare, but inevitably would destroy the weapon.
 
lysanderxiii said:
The thing about aluminum is that it will burn under the right conditions. When various agencies were testing aluminium 7.62 and 5.56 cases, there was a problem with "case burn-through". It was caused by a microscopic crack in the case head, and hot, high pressure gas would establish a flow path through it. With brass or steel, a minute amount of gas would leak and that would be the end of it, with aluminum the crack would rapidly expand, due to melting and burning of the aluminum.

This type of failure was relatively rare, but inevitably would destroy the weapon.
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True. I've welded aluminum and if you burn through, it's spectacular.
I hadn't thought of that side of it.
 
lysanderxiii said:
The thing about aluminum is that it will burn under the right conditions. ,
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After The Incident of 2010, including house fire, I salvaged a lot of ammo that had been thoroughly wetted by fire hose and then rain through the burnt out roof, and left a while before recovery.
The case of Blazer Aluminum 9mm LOOKED good, the outer case was wetted, but the individual boxes barely damp. No sign of corrosion on the cartridges.
So I took them shooting. My companion remarked on the flash out the ejection port. I picked up some empties and found several burned through, one very badly. When cleaning the gun, I found the chamber flame cut. FLG polished it up and there is no problem with extraction, but the marred area of the chamber still visible. I pulled the remainder to salvage the bullets. A few had wetted powder or primer but most were dry inside.
 
Danny53 said:
Our range allows steel and aluminum cased ammo, I just will not fire steel cased ammo in anything but my SKS carbines. I have read the U.S. Army used steel cased ammo in the 1911 pistols during WWII but I'm not comfortable with shooting it in mine.
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Nickel plated steel was used, a reaction to the critical shortage of brass. I have a case of nickel plated steel case .45 ACP made in 1943, unopened.
 
TomJ said:
For what, range ammo? Most indoor ranges here don't allow steel case ammo, but the gun club I belong to does, so you should confirm what's allowed where you shoot assuming it's for range use.
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I've not run into this. What would be the reason for a steel case ammo prohibition. I could understand steel jacketed.
 
FlSwampRat said:
I've not run into this. What would be the reason for a steel case ammo prohibition. I could understand steel jacketed.
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I have no idea. We have three ranges in the Chicago area which prohibit them and one that as far as I know allows them. I copied and pasted the language referring to this in one of the range's rules.
  • No steel case or steel core ammunition is allowed on the range.
 
I've always heard that when a brass round is fired that it expands and seals the chamber, then retracts to allow extraction, steel can't expand and retract fast enough and the extractor can get damaged. In the 6.5 grendel steel case is about 1/3 the price of brass, if you don't reload that would be enough savings to replace the extractor. A friend shoots a lot of steel 556 even though there is only a couple of cents difference when I order bulk making it a bad choice in my opinion.
 
Well, if you ever want to reload plan on using brass. If you're not reloading, brass or aluminum seem to be the most common for handguns. You'll get all kinds of opinions on steel case stuff in rifles. Personally, I use it in the rifles that were designed around that type of ammo, but since it isn't reloadable I don't use it in most of my finer rifles (for which I primarily reload).
 
Jim Watson said:
After The Incident of 2010, including house fire, I salvaged a lot of ammo that had been thoroughly wetted by fire hose and then rain through the burnt out roof, and left a while before recovery.
The case of Blazer Aluminum 9mm LOOKED good, the outer case was wetted, but the individual boxes barely damp. No sign of corrosion on the cartridges.
So I took them shooting. My companion remarked on the flash out the ejection port. I picked up some empties and found several burned through, one very badly. When cleaning the gun, I found the chamber flame cut. FLG polished it up and there is no problem with extraction, but the marred area of the chamber still visible. I pulled the remainder to salvage the bullets. A few had wetted powder or primer but most were dry inside.
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Perhaps I'm looking at it wrong, but if you're ammo survived an encounter with a house fire, the fire dept, and a subsequent rain, sat for what must have been awhile and still went bang, I'd call that pretty good. I've been around A LOT of firemen and know how they like to flood things. Good on you for testing them out. Sounds like decent SHTF stock.
 
Most but not all went bang and what did, damaged the gun. Not what I call usable for anything.
Others were as bad or worse; I pulled a lot of bullets. The only thing that Just Worked was USGI .45 ACP.
 
Jim Watson said:
After The Incident of 2010, including house fire, I salvaged a lot of ammo that had been thoroughly wetted by fire hose and then rain through the burnt out roof, and left a while before recovery.
The case of Blazer Aluminum 9mm LOOKED good, the outer case was wetted, but the individual boxes barely damp. No sign of corrosion on the cartridges.
So I took them shooting. My companion remarked on the flash out the ejection port. I picked up some empties and found several burned through, one very badly. When cleaning the gun, I found the chamber flame cut. FLG polished it up and there is no problem with extraction, but the marred area of the chamber still visible. I pulled the remainder to salvage the bullets. A few had wetted powder or primer but most were dry inside.
Click to expand...

Might not have been to heat damage of the aluminum case, might have been due to heat accelerating the breakdown of the gunpowder.

This is just an example of aging due to heat and the pressure rise of powder

EECPFU8.jpg

this powder is apparently heat resistant enough to brag about it in a power point presentation. Seventy one Celsius is less than 100 C, and 100 C is the boiling point of water.

This chart shows that the rate of deterioration of gunpowder is increased exponentially by heat. That is, the hotter it is, the faster the rate of deterioration. Humans think in linear terms so it is hard to wrap your brain around exponential processes, but they are all over the place.

rPNzqCj.jpg

So given the original age of the ammunition, plus an additional artificial aging due to a house fire, maybe that accelerated the aging of the gunpowder in the case. Maybe this forced the nitroglycerine in a double based powder to the surface and created a hotter flame right in front of the chamber. Could be something else going on, I don't know exactly, as I try to dump old powder, not test old gunpowder to determine how old gunpowder blows up and damages firearms.

I won't let authority use me as a crash dummy!

k3ZXCZA.jpg
 
Another concern in my state, which is rarely mentioned and quite misunderstood, is that a lot (if not all) of the commie ammo isn't just steel-cased. It's steel JACKETED. This matters, because it sparks big and easily. We have had more than one brush fire started by people shooting this stuff in places vulnerable to combustion. If you shoot it, be careful about when and where.

I used to have a hard rule: Use commie ammo ONLY in commie guns. But over the years I have lightened up. I have shot several magazines of Wolf through my ARs with no ill effects. I suppose if one were to do a heavy torture test, you might see some difference in cleanliness and wear, but I haven't seen any harm in occasional routine use.
 
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