Do you have any experience with the Wolf steel case rounds? Anyone feel free to chime in. It would be great to save some bucks with the price of brass what it is.
"Do you have any experience with the Wolf steel case rounds? Anyone feel free to chime in. It would be great to save some bucks with the price of brass what it is."
I bought a case of .45 and haven't had any problems with them. I've heard some people comment that their rifle ammo doesn't work well with some rifles but don't remember which ones. Of course I've heard people say that the surplus Indian 7.62 isn't very good but I haven't had any trouble with that either. The only drawback with it is that it comes in those little plastic packets instead of stripper clips which I prefer.
The Wolf steel-cased ammo works fine in those weapons meant to use steel-cased ammo, the AK and it's semiauto derivitives in particular. And it works very well in most bolt action rifles, since the Germans and Czechs fielded steel-cased ammo in WWII. The Russians have also successfully fielded steel-case ammo for their 7,62x54r Mosin-Nagant rifles and belt-fed MGs for 65 years now. It works.
.303 Lee Enfields seem to be an exception, possibly due to action stretch- their locking lugs are located at the rear of the weapon. British experiments with .303 steel cases [also for Bren, Vickers and rebarrelled .30 Browning MGs] were unsuccessful and recent Wolf steel-cased commercial offerings have not included the venerable .303. [A pity, since it shares bullet diameters and preferred weights with the 7,62x53r Russian cartridge]
During WWII, the Evansville Chrysler plant stamped out literally millions of steel cases for .45 ammo for Thompson and M3 SMGs; it also functioned acceptably with the M1911 pistol though some reports of broken extractors were noted.
And that is the most common complaint with those using steel-cased ammo in weapons not originally intended for it. Happily, modern formulations of polymer coatings have come a long way from the early German and Russian versions that used lacquer as a waterproofing and rust inhibitor on the cases. And some of them smell pretty bad if left chambered in a hot weapon for a while.
But the use of steel-cased Wolf in an SKS or AK is like bread with butter, just meant for each other. And if yours is some other, note that Wolf is coming out with a line of *gold* ammunition with brass cases, which should make the reloaders happier. Made by the Prvi Partisan plant in Serbia, it's near match-grade quality, so expect it to be a little more expensive than the steel-cased stuff. We'll see....
The steel cases aren't the problem, the lacquer on the cases is. It melts and sticks in the chamber. German machine gunners always tried to find brass cased ammo, because having a plugged barrel in your MG-42 when facing a human wave or Russians is a bad experience.
The only real problem with steel cases that I know of is that it's hard on the extractors of 1911-type pistols.