Posted on 05/27/2012 5:48:19 AM PDT by FLAMING DEATH
We've all been there...walking around the local gun store (or, as I like to call it, the Magic Goody Shop) and seen Russian-made steel cased .223 ammo selling for quite a bit less than the brass versions of the same rounds. And, many of us have fallen to temptation and bought scads of the stuff, thinking of how much money we'll save, and how we can plink 'til our heart's content for pennies on the dollar.
And then, many of us have faced the bitter disappointment of repeated malfunctions and losing money when we give away a large pile of ammo that simply won't function properly in our guns.
I've seen quite a few stories of people trying to shoot steel cased ammo out of an AR-15 rifle with less than satisfactory results. The most common issue is the dreaded "stuck case", where the case wedges itself so firmly in the chamber that the extractor simply doesn't have the "oomph" to move it. In fact, most often, the only remedy is to put a cleaning rod down the bore of your gun and whack it with a hammer.
That's what I had to do. My AR was particularly finicky, barely firing 50 rounds of Wolf or Tula before hanging up completely, bringing an early ending to a day at the range. The thing would run like a champ all day long on brass, even crappy brass, but a couple boxes of Tula would bring it to its knees.
I began reading about this on the Internets, and it is a common problem. Many have the completely WRONG idea about what causes this, however.
First, it is NOT caused by a "lacquer coating" cooking off and leaving its residue in the chamber. If you don't believe me, get a spent shell and hit it with a blowtorch. Nothing's coming off of that sucker. If you've bought your ammo in the past few years, it doesn't even have lacquer on it.
Second, many people believe it is because the steel expands, and, being less flexible than brass, wedges itself in the chamber. That's not true either. But, steel being less flexible that brass does contribute to the problem.
The answer is simpler (and fortunately more correctable) than either of those.
Steel doesn't expand like brass does in the chamber. This allows a slight gap around the cartridge case upon firing. That gap admits powder residue and carbon into the chamber, which begins building up on the sides. Pretty soon, the dimensions of the chamber are too small to allow the casing to move freely in and out. The next time the bolt slams a round into the chamber, it wedges there, unable to be moved without physical intervention.
"Well," you might say, "the 7.62 x 39 rounds that I shoot are steel cased, and they don't have that problem". No, they don't. But, it is not because the blowback of residue into the chamber isn't happening. It is because of the shape of the round itself. The sides of the 7.62 x 39 are tapered enough that they can still overcome friction with the sides of the chamber. The .223 is far straighter, and so it is far more difficult for the extractor to overcome the frictional forces of the now smaller chamber that has a good hold on the straight walls of the shell case.
This is the problem I had with my rifle. On multiple occasions, always after firing less than 50 rounds of steel cased ammo, I have had a major stoppage with my AR. It always involved a spent case hanging up in the chamber, it always was impossible to clear without jamming a cleaning rod down the barrel and knocking it out, and it almost always put my AR out of action until I could take it home and work on it.
Once, while in the presence of a buddy of mine, I experienced the problem and he said, "You need to run a little brass in every mag to keep it cleaned out."
That didn't make sense to me. How did brass keep the action clean? Besides, common knowledge was that you never mix steel and brass when shooting...that mixing the two would only make this problem worse.
Then I read this article on the Box O' Truth http://www.theboxotruth.com/docs/edu18.htm about steel case and brass cased ammo. Although their hypothesis confirmed my friend's statement that brass ammo could help clean the chamber, they stopped short of recommending (or figuring out) that running steel and brass together can make a gun run more reliably.
I figured it was up to me to test it.
I started by cleaning the chamber thoroughly and soaking it down with CLP. I then loaded my mags with one round of brass case for every 9 of steel. Then, I headed to the range.
Fully expecting to get a stoppage before the end of mag number two, the AR kept eating the steel case well past that point. The brass coming out eventually carried a considerable amount of black deposit on the outside of it. It was rock hard and couldn't be scraped off with a fingernail. I did a variety of shooting, including slow firing (shooting once every 20 seconds or so), sustained slow firing (shooting once every five seconds), fast firing (shooting as fast as I could pull the trigger) and even some bump firing (near automatic rates of fire).
The AR had two hiccups, probably attributable to the Russian ammo's lower power. On the first, the round didn't quite come all the way out of the mag. I gave the bottom of the mag a whack and it kept going. The next, the bolt didn't appear to come back far enough to grab the next round. A quick pull of the charging handle fixed it. The gun seemed to run fine otherwise, and most importantly, no casings were getting stuck in the chamber. After five mags and nearly 150 rounds, I was running out of time and would be late for another engagement, so I packed it up to continue testing later. Besides, the gun showed no signs of slowing down. I was satisfied.
I have seen other options recommended, such as changing uppers or barrels to get a chromed chamber, or using a chamber reamer. Both would probably work, but for the occasional use of steel cased ammo, both seem to be overkill. A 100 round box of cheap brass cased ammo should let you shoot 1000 rounds of steel case, if this method works for you. You might even be able to tweak the ratios and get away with 1 for 20 or 1 for 30.
If you have an AR that doesn't like steel ammo, but have a stockpile of it or have a source where you can get it for cheap, it's worth a try to mix some brass in with the steel and see if your AR will run it.
Good to know. Pretty much anything made by human hands will have varying tolerances. You’ve raised my curiosity, though.
Do you sort (and subsequently reject) some ammo because of accuracy concerns, or do you feel that it could be unsafe or damage your gun? Or, maybe both?
Allow me to suggest tht you never allow her to actually fire it. In fact when you do you should tell her that it’s a monster that she wouldnt enjoy in the least.
In the same breath tell her you’re going to need another for spare parts, just in case.
(The recoil isn’t nearly as bad as so e would have you believe. )
This one’s a carbine, but I used to have one of the long ones. She saw me fire it once about 6 years ago. I’m a big guy, and she saw it stand me up straight (you always have to lean forward with one of those). It was near dark, and she saw the giant fireball come from the muzzle and heard the blast.
There’s no way she’ll ever ask me to shoot it.
Good man.
Accuracy (and in a rifle with a tight chamber, reliable functioning). The only rounds I’ve *ever* spotted that I would call “unsafe” that came from a western (ie, NATO country) source in *any* caliber were some Fiocchi 9x19mm (aka 9mm Luger) rounds where the primer somehow got turned sideways in the primer pocket. I’ve never had a clear-cut safety issue with western (NATO) sourced ammo in any other way that I could spot externally. Unsafe loads (eg, they used the wrong powder), one can’t tell from outside examination until after a round is fired and you’re looking at the primer deformation, case pressure signs, etc.
I sort brass for accuracy. Getting accuracy out of a rifle comes down to several factors:
1. getting repeatable muzzle velocities, which means cases of identical volume (usually found by filling with water or weighing them), making the powder charges as identical as possible (some really anal retentive guys get down to less than 1/10th of a grain), and of 90% load density or better, and using powders that show themselves to be as temperature insensitive as possible,
2. on bullets of identical weight and shape, (weighing the bullets and inspecting them for any deformation),
3. getting the bullet centered into the chamber, which requires (in many cases) turning the necks of the cases on a mandrel to get uniform neck wall thickness...
and then some changes to the action, (particularly the firing pin, cocking piece, etc - which aren’t as applicable to an AR) depending upon the action type, a really good crown on a good barrel, etc.
Basically, it’s a lot of work the first time through a batch of brass, but once done, you put the non-conforming brass off to the side (or you sell it off to other people so it isn’t able to be mixed in with any of your selected brass). You then treat the selected brass very well, not using super-hot loads, using a fairly tight headspace to keep the brass from growing too much, making sure you don’t over-work it without annealing it, etc, and you can re-load it quite a few times.
Think I’ll just live without steel cased .223 and consider the 20 rounds I put through the rifle a forward assist functionality test. System ops check good.
Ha!
Bought mmy wife a Colt M4 AR. She is getting ready for deployment and is having hard time qualifying(I get to keep the gun once she qualifies ....)
After running over 300 rounds of good ol Remington, thought we would use some Tula ... the very first time the gun cycled, no round was pulled from clip. After that it was nothing but a nightmare of problems. With most common is the next round hanging up half way.
Anyone need 200 rounds of crap ... great for practicing clearing rounds
I guess I spent too much of my youth trying to get a Ruger Mini-14 to work. Accuracy mods, magazines that didn’t quite work, as well as the malfunctions which never ended.
Been thinking that for about 10 years.
I’ve kept testing on mine and, using the occasional brass “cleaning round”, it’s not given me any problems. I have a few hundred rounds through it...
How much do you want for that 200 rounds? I’ll take them if you want to PM and work out the details...
After more than a year, is this method still working for you?
I went ahead and pinged anyone who seemed to have an interest in this thread when I posted it.
“The AR-15 and steel cased ammo - how to make Wolf or Tula shoot reliably.”
Yes. I haven’t had a single malfunction of any kind using this method, and I’ve shot a lot of steel cased ammo during that time (although less over the past year than I’d hoped overall).
I found that I can get by with only one round of brass per 30 round mag. When I had the issue in the past, it usually happened on the 3rd mag of steel, so as long as I can get 1 round of brass through it per mag, it continues to run like a top.
Pretty happy with this fix. I really wanted my gun to be able to shoot steel case, and the alternative fixes I looked at were going to be very expensive.
Have you (or anyone else) tried it, or are you considering trying it?
Thanks for posting. I had considered several times coming back and posting a follow up, but never seemed to find the time...just happened to be off today because of the weather, and saw your post first.
Thank you for the bump and re-post!
Thank you.
I don’t have any guns (freak boating accident, of course). My friend... is planning to buy an AR and would like to be able to shoot it without taking out a loan. Since steel case ammo is 5.27 at Walmart, it’s great that you figured out how to make it work. AR owners are forever in your debt.
You’re the only one I’ve seen figure this out.
Yeah. I’ve wondered why this isn’t more common knowledge. I heard it from my friend, who’s ex Army and a collector of vintage combat firearms (has several old 1911’s, Lugers, Mausers, and a sweet Colt AR-15 Sporter with a slab-side lower and full A1 style furniture).
He’s the one who turned me on to this method, although the first time he told me, I had the same reaction as many, that is, common knowledge says never to mix brass and steel case.
If I hadn’t done it myself for a while now, I’d not believe it myself.
I think it’s largely a matter of chamber dimensions. Steel 5.56 works fine in my Bushie, but not in some other makers’ rifles. I have no qualms or worries about the next 1,000 rounds of steel I’d fire, just start with a clean gun and keep her lubed. No worries at all. And some Russian steel 5.56 X 55grain hollow points I have are WICKED accurate from my rifle for some reason. What’s not to love?
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