Who's using Wolf 223?

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I for one have shot thousands & thousands rounds of Wolf. I used to pay $85.00 a case of a thousand and free shipping if five or more cases where ordered from Elliott Brothers. This is when I had two gun stores. I still have substantially amounts left. I have shot it through just about every AR & Mini I have. Never any problem. Just keep the weapon reasonable clean. When I was in the Persian Gulf Iraq in 1990-91 the 6th Provisional French (Foreign Legion) where with us outside Basra. They were using the Bull pup & steel rounds that looked like they had obtained it from Wolf. Of course they didn't but they were Nato approved ammo for interchangeable reason. I asked one of them if they ever had a feed problem, the answer was Negative. The only difference is I think it shoots dirtier than most. Now thats my 2 cents on Wolf.
 
Only 5 rounds so far through my 1-8 WOA Varmint upper. 4 holes were touching and the 5th was 1/2" out at 50 yards. This was with their 62gr Polyformance ammo.
 
I've used several thousand rounds in 16" carbines without incident, and a couple thousand through a Carbon 15 pistol with 1 incident.

That was with the ancient lacquer coating and the wrong gas assembly on the gun from Bushmaster (since corrected at their cost); a FTE occurred, and the lacquered case seized in the chamber. This was after a couple magazines worth of testing, so the gun was hot.

It took a whopping 2m (mostly to get the tools out of the trunk) to fix the problem with the stuck shell and a cleaning rod.

Since getting fixed by Bushmaster, the pistol has digested a lot more Wolf without any incident, including the last of my lacquered stuff.

For the savings it represented at the time vs brass-cased commercial or Lake City flooor sweepings or godawful reloads, it was a hell of a bargain. It's still not a bad deal for plinking/fun ammo.

In handgun ammo, had zero issues with it in 45 or 9mm - it's noticeably hotter than the PMC bronze junk that I used last time I was out at the range and the MP5k and Uzi like it a lot, and I've thrown many, many, many cases of it downrange with my Sigs.
 
That was the reason for my question. I've shot thousands of rounds of it, and my experience is that people who shoot enough that $2.00 a box makes a difference have no issues with it. People who read once on the internet that it was bad don't want to use it in their pristine rifles.
 
I have shot the polymer coated HPs out of my Olympic AR with no problems. I have also shot it out of my Smith and Wesson M&P15T with not quite the same result. I have tried shooting it out of that twice, and both times it failed to eject on the first round. The case was stuck in the chamber so bad that I had to beat it out. I'm not going to try shooting it out of that gun again, but I will keep shooting it out of my Olympic.
 
My Stag AR-15 runs it fine up until it stops doing so, right around 200 rounds. At that point the chamber is so fouled it FTEs on every round.

A quick scrub with a chamber brush and some CLP gets it going again. I like it for cheap backup range ammo, but based on my experiences I have some nice brass cased good stuff as my SHTF stash.
 
Wolf is dirty and inaccurate, but I've never had a real problem with the 2k I've shot of it.

Rifles were chromed bore 16" middy and 20" rifle configured ARs. Chromed bore (do we detect a pattern here) 16" SLR106FR. BSW
 
my midlength AR (1x7 twist; chromed) eats it just fine. No failures, but accuracy is less than even UMC and PMC
 
No problems in my Bushmaster ORC upper.
Had an annoying problem though in my bushmaster gas piston upper (this is not a conversion upper but the actual gas piston upper sold by bushmaster that does not use their conversion kit). About one in 40 rounds or so would get the rim sheared off by the extractor when ejecting resulting in a jammed case. This was only with the steel cased wolf ammo. I solved it by simply changing the stock extractor and extractor spring with BCM's extractor and extractor spring (I did not use the o-ring).
 
My ARs have been on a steady diet of a combo of Wolf military classic and Silver Bear. I usually run Silver Bear because I think it's a bit hotter and a bit cleaner. I've ordered 500 rounds per week (every Monday) of one or the other for the last few months. Yeah, I shoot a lot.

The only problem I've had is recently with stuck cases. It dawned on me that since I went to a piston on my upper, I've been neglecting the rifle. I cleaned the chamber and bore and went right on shooting.

The steel cases are harder on extractors. I keep a couple handy just in case.

As for the rounds with the lacquered cases, those shoot fine too. Anyone that says that lacquer came off of the case and gummed up their chamber is likely full of doo doo. After having read about a guy trying it, I took a round, removed the projectile, fired the primer, put the spent case in a vice and commenced to heating it up with a torch. Guess what, the lacquer doesn't come off. Cases will get stuck if the chamber get too dirty. I can only speculate that it has something to do with the fact that steel doesn't expand and contract like brass does.

In any case, if your rifle won't run on wolf, it's likely not the ammo's fault, but a symptom of possible trouble with the rifle. The biggest problem that I've seen is short stroking.
 
I have run it through 2 Bushmasters, one a16 inch and the other a 20 inch. A 16 inch DPMS. A Golani(Galil), a HK 93, and a FN FS2000. I have not had a stuck casing or issue yet. I have used both the older laquered case and the newer polymer cases in the AR's. The HK, Galil, and FS2000 have all been run on the polymer case only.

I have had some people give me a hard time about using Wolf in a HK. My thought is the HK93 is a battle rifle and should be able to run what you may come across in battle. I don't expect a battle rifle to run on only match ammo.
 
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I ran some through my son's M&P 15 without issue and usually also run Wolf with my G19 and AK. Never had an issue with any of them.
 
Wolf (steel cased) is last resort ammo for me. I use it only when I have no other choice. That said, surprisingly, the only caliber of Wolf that has never given me problems is .223... Every other flavor of Wolf has been problematic in my various weapons. My AR15's have never had problems with it though.
 
I tried it in my Armalite m4gry (chromed chamber & barrel). After the first 6 or 7 rounds I had a FTE and had to beat the case out with a cleaning rod and hammer. Havne't tried it since and Sportsmans Guide refunded my money for the entire case.
 
my ak loves them and that's all i shot out of it. pretty good accuracy out to 100 yards with the 154gr lead nose. my bushmaster m4 jams every other round or so. i believe it was the military classic that have a bigger primer if i'm correct, those cycle fine.
 
Use it in my model 1 sales kitgun (20 inch, 5.56 CL) and my LE6940CK build (16 inch, 5.56 CL) ....M1S rifle had 3 torn off case rims in its first 500 rounds, so far that's the extent of my wolf-related problems.
 
I've got a early 90's Winchester Featherweight .223 that does very well with it.

Recently sighted in a new little truck gun (Handi Rifle/sporter barrel) and that was about 2" at 100 yards, which is good enough for this guns intended purpose. The Winchester will do about 3/4" with it.
 
I put 20 rounds through my Sig this weekend. Didn't notice much of a difference other than its dirty and lightly loaded. IMHO if anything its easy on the rifle, its loaded freaken light. I can't beleive it stresses the rifle as much as say M855 or MK262 NATO loadings.

If you don't mind cleaning and you just want to put holes in paper than its fine.

Personaly I like American Eagle and Federal because I really do mind cleaning.:D
 
I second that on the Wolf seems to be loaded with less powder. It seems to have less of a punch or something. It's been feeding fine in my Sig 556. Today I thought I'd try testing it's accuracy vs PMC, which is the only other 5.56 I have on hand currently.

The rifle is a Sig 556, prone supported with sand bags on all targets.

At 200 yards, PMC on left, Wolf on right target. Holes are a little hard to see on these targets but PMC hit 10 out of 10. Wolf hit 9 of 10 and was noticeably low. I thought it might just be my poor shooting or bad aim so
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Tried them side by side again at 100 yards. PMC on left again, Wolf on the right target. Again, Wolf was noticeably low, to the point where you'd have to zero the rifle for Wolf specifically.
p4140300.gif

So I don't think it's just me. I'll aim high with Wolf in the future and continue shooting center mass with PMC. The Wolf actually grouped ok, at least as good as my shooting. It feeds fine for me, does run dirty. Time to clean the Sig.
 
You can try some of that stuff in your rifle if you want.

I recommend that you load three mags each with 20 rounds.

Fire the first mag quickly without pausing.

If the gun has not choked by the end of the first mag, quickly insert the second mag.

Quickly fire 10 rounds from the second mag.

Cease fire.

Wait one minute try to fire the next shot (shot #11 second mag).

If the gun has not choked yet, fire four more shots.

Cease fire.

Wait one minute, and fire the remaining rounds in the mag.

Quickly insert the final mag, and fire all 20 rounds in rapid succession.

If the gun has not choked by the end of the third mag, you may conclude that your rifle *probably* tolerates lacquer-coated, steel-case ammo.

Otherwise, remember to bring a stiff cleaning rod to the range to bang the stuck cases from the chamber, and remember the stuck cases will be HOT.

The cleaning rod will also become extremely hot after two insertions in a hot bore.

This is what steel-case ammo (lacquer AND poly) do in the two AR’s from my collection.

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