School me on Russian Ammo

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jahwarrior

jahwarrior

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can anyone tell me the difference between different brands of Russian ammo? i've shot Wolf ammo before, and while it's dirty, it ran fine. recently, Walmart began offering Tulammo brand ammunition in addition to Winchester, Federal, and Remington. $15 for 50 rounds of .45ACP sounds a lot better than $19, to me, but i've never used it. how about Silver Bear, Barnaul, and Golden Tiger?
 
Wolf is just an ammo marketer, their ammo could be from any Russian producer. Other than that, just about all Russian ammo is the same; steel case, acceptably accurate, very reliable, kind of dirty.
 
@loadedround- All the Russian ammo has been polymer coated for years. If you dont reload its great plinking ammo.
 
I've shot a ton of those brands in 7.62x39 and x54r, around 500 rounds of silver bear in 9x19 and many 9x18 rounds as well. My friend fed his AR-15 quite a bit of silver bear too. No problems with any of it. Accurate enough, some batches seemed dirtier than others. I've heard the lacquer can melt and build up in the chamber but I've never had a problem with it. I'll probably pick up some of the .45acp next time I'm in Wal-Mart.
 
There is no lacquer. There are issues with steel cases not expanding to seal the chamber allowing crud in the chamber. That is what can cause issues.
 
Just be careful some have corosive os simy corosive primers . not a problem if you claen your gun after sooting .
 
Tulammo is made in the same plant as Wolf.
No idea if the specs are the same.

I do know that my AR hates Tulammo.
Out of a 20 rd mag I usually get 3-4 FTEs

With my reloads or any brass cased factory ammo?
Zero issues.

And seeing it was cheap I bought a whole case of it too :banghead:
 
I have not shot that much wolf ammo, but I use wolf and tula primers for reloading. For bench rest it is better than CCI. After 40,000 rounds I have one that did not fire and that might have been one not fully seated.
 
Depends on your gun. My Colt Target AR 15 has no issues with them, My M 4 has a tighter chamber and will seize them up when warm. Same stuff, both 5.56, not .223.

My commie guns, love commie ammo.
 
I almost exclusively shoot Wolf brand ammo. I have also shot Silver Bear and Tula. They are all the same to me. I have never had any problems in any of my guns. It's cheap so why change?
 
I have also not had a problem with wolf in my AR....mine is a colt as well.

I have used the Tula ammo in some of my other eastern bloc weapons and never had any problems with them.
 
Wolf offers a guarantee on their ammo, the others do not. The quality across the board of Wolf, Tula, Herters, Silver/Brown Bear etc is similar - steel cased w/ some sort of coating, cheap powder, mostly berdan but some boxer primed, inexpensive bullets, less than stellar accuracy, but good for fun and volume shooting.
 
Shot about 400 rounds of herters steel cases ammo out of a s&w m&p15. No issues at all. A box or two of wolf and tula. No issues. Has a differnt smell and never realy noticed that it was dirtier.
 
I have shot countless rounds of "Monarch" 9mm, .40S&W, and .357Mag, which is made by Barnaul in Serbia. Laquered as well as brass cases. all shot great, although the laqured case stuff has a weird smell to burned powder.
 
I've only bought TulaAmmo around here, in these handgun calibers; .380, 9mm, .40S&W & .45acp. That said, I find that the 9mm works in all my pistols in that caliber, .380 works fine in my Ruger LCP & Sig P238 but my Kahr hates it, with many FTF's. .45acp works in both my Springfield XD & Kimber. .40S&W is what I have the most trouble with as neither my Steyr M40 or my S&W M&Pc, but for different reasons as the Steyr has FTE and the S&W has FTF at times. For now I won't buy the .40S&W Tulammo anymore. LM
 
so, i guess the general consensus is that Russian handgun ammo works just fine? works for me. i'll be picking up a few boxes for the weekend.
 
I've used Tula, Wolf, Brown Bear and Silver Bear ammo, along with a fair amount of surplus ammo in 9mm, 9x18, .45ACP, .223rem, 7.62x39, and 7.62x54r. I've never had any problems with it.

rem22long40x said:
Just be careful some have corosive os simy corosive primers . not a problem if you claen your gun after sooting .
Click to expand...

"Just be careful. Some have corrosive primers. This is not a problem if you clean your gun promptly and properly, after shooting."

Here you go, I fixed that for you.
 
Though there is still some lacquered case stuff still floating around, it hasn't been produced with lacquered cases in many years (I want to say at least 10, might be wrong.) But reliability is generally an issue of gun it's being shot out of. I've shot plenty of steel cased ammo out of Springfield 1911's Glocks, Sigs, XD's, and AR platforms (to include M16's) and it all depends on the gun. Loose tolerances and you should be fine, tight tolerances and you'll likely encounter issues the more they're shot.
Interestingly My Iver Johnson M1 Carbine(receiver only, the rest is G.I. I know I built it!) it probably the most temperamental gun I own and it digested roughly 100 rounds of Tula this weekend, With any luck the quality of this inexpensive ammo may be on the rise!.
Also the weird smell everyone seems to notice after shooting this stuff is due to the higher ammonia content in the powder they use. Try being around a half dozen AK's really rock & rolling; putting a lot of fire down range, it can be difficult to breathe!!!
 
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