Steel Jacketed Ammo #2

[ontargetrange]

All,

After some further investigation I have found some of the ammo and had it tested as best I could.

Results:

Nothing on the box says "Steel Jacketed Bullets", see attached PDF. We have this box thanks to a customer that went to the OC gun show and bought "cheap" amm to shoot. We swapped him out a box of Federal factory.

Steel appears to be fairly soft alloy, and since they are from Russia we could not totally quantify the exact alloy, but it appears to be in the 1006, 1008, 1010, 1015 alloys. Low carbon and easy to cold form, and cheap to produce. Generally there is a lot of scrap metal recycled into these alloys.

Please review the attached PDF for the SAE specifics of SAE1010 alloy. All of the listed alloys are very close to the same in properties and to save time I just picked a middle of the road alloy.

NEXT, we tried to determine the copper wash/plating of the bullet. As best we could measure it and try to determine it's alloy as well, it doesn't look good for the shooters. It is a "Wash" of a copper alloy. little copper and lots of tin.

There is a VERY thin coating of a Copper/Tin "washed" onto the outside of the bullet. Thickness was measured and guessed at .0002 to .0004 thousandths of an inch..003 to .005 thousandths of an inch. This is the lubrication and protection needed to fire bimetal or steel jacketed rounds from any firearm.

Based on our findings we can only warn shooters that they are saving money in one area that will cost them more in the end.

We are not allowed to use steel jacketed rounds on our range guns and any of the manufacturers that finds us doing so can and would yank our ability to be a certified range for their programs.

Each time you fire one of these rounds you are rubbing steel against steel under pressue and heat. It will cause permanent damage in a short period of time to your firearm. But then, like anything else, do as you want. It is your firearm and problem. We are here to help if we can.

[Mssr. Eleganté]

...Thickness was measured and guessed at .0002 to .0004 thousandths of an inch.

And for those keeping score at home, .0004 thousandths of an inch is about 0.01 microns. A human hair is about 100 microns. So ontargetrange is claiming that the copper wash on the ammo is 10,000 times thinner than a human hair.

I will continue to shoot steel jacketed ammo, but thanks for making all of this crap up to try and scare us away from using it.

[Dark Mod]

I guess thats why all those Ak's the russians use with steel ammo dont work anymore after 500 rounds. Or why the 100 year old mosin nagants with 50,000 steel core rounds through them have the rifling completely busted.

Ive put no less than 3000 rounds of brown bear 9mm through my XD and there are no noticeable problems with the rifling.

Ranges stand to sell more of their ammo if they ban the cheap stuff. they also cant farm the lead later if they allow it, or sell the brass. All 3 amount to enough income that a range would be crazy to allow steel core ammo, so i dont blame them. Im sure the insurance doesnt want the ranges letting steel core stuff in there either, but lets not pretend its going to ruin anyones gun. I read somewhere that steel ammo will wear out your barrel 15% faster than lead

A new barrel costs like max $200? Id save Several thousand over the life of the barrel by buying cheap steel surplus. Hell, id save enough money after a few range trips to buy a new barrel.

And ive never had any failures to function with steel cased ammo in any gun, even the notoriously finicky AR.

If its good enough for dozens of military around the world its good enough for me

[ontargetrange]

[Mssr. Eleganté]

When you say .003 thousandths of an inch are you really trying to say .003 inches? Because .003 thousandths of an inch is 0.000003 inches.

[Dark Mod]

I think he was remarking on the fact that you said .004 thousanths of an inch instead of .004 of an inch. which would actually be be 4 thousanths of an inch, not .oo4 thousanths of an inch.

I doubt the income would be replaced if you just decided to sell steel core ammo. A certain percent of your ammo sales will come from people being told they cant use the ammo they brought with them, and therefore have to buy from the range. That part of your business would completely dissappear if you sold and allowed steel core ammo.

Also if you did allow steel core ammo, you would see nothing but steel cases lying around on the floor (per your own admission in the first thread that you noticed alot more people using steel lately) which dont bring a very pretty penny when you go to resell them. Neither do the projectiles you would farm.

As i said before it makes perfect economical sense to outlaw steel, and I certainly hope your in the business to make a profit, so i definatley dont mind you making one. Ill take that one step further and say i hope you prosper.

But lets not kid ourselves here, steel isnt going to destroy your gun after 1 round, and i can think of a ton of anectodatal evidence where it hasnt hurt guns after 50,000 rounds.

Im not closed minded in this, but i have examined the evidence available to me. If someone can show me some pictures of bore damage caused by steel after under 10,000 rounds i may reverse my position. But for now all i have for your counter arguement is some wierd PDF sheet with a bunch of numbers i cant understand.

[Dark Mod]

By the way, i wont be renewing my membership at my current indoor range, and am looking to find a new range. Your website doesnt really say, but can i shoot .223 there? If so i think you found yourself a new member

[ontargetrange]

By the way, i wont be renewing my membership at my current indoor range, and am looking to find a new range. Your website doesnt really say, but can i shoot .223 there? If so i think you found yourself a new member

We have MANY who shoot their centerfire rifles here -- check our page for the rules on doing so.

As far as steel is concerned we sell lots of it every week. In fact we will be selling thousands of rounds next month at our parking lot sale. March 17th.

For CalGunners the doors open at 8AM sharp -- we will be putting out an ad shortly about the sale.

But I digress --- in my write up of thickness I have reverted back to my very old machine shop days. We always wrote up thicknesses the way I did above. I forget that when I deal with anyone not from the old school like me I have to use proper english. So the correct answer is as you stated = three to five thousandths of an inch, or .003 to .005 of an inch. And two to four ten thousandths of an inch = .0002 to .0004 of an inch.

I was taught back in the machine shop days to say and write certain things certain ways and it popped out at the wrong time.

As far as steel on steel, it is never good for either part unless there is lubrication. With the limited wash of copper alloy there is just not enough to spare the rifling from eventually buring out. How long will that take I don't know. There are just to many varibles to measure.

Most of the rounds we are seeing still have lead in them and are recycled just fine. We just get a slightly reduced rate for larger quantities of steel jacketd rounds. Still we are getting paid for the recycle, so keep shooting I like getting paid for the scrap.

[justMike]

Great discussion above, thanks for it. Now does anyone care to discuss the possible merits or lack of them for the military cupronickel jackets as on Turk 8mm and some others? I'll be interested to hear what knowledge is out there about that system of gilding.

[Mssr. Eleganté]

Great discussion above, thanks for it. Now does anyone care to discuss the possible merits or lack of them for the military cupronickel jackets as on Turk 8mm and some others? I'll be interested to hear what knowledge is out there about that system of gilding.

Most Turk 8mm (the early stuff with the silver colored projectiles) is steel jacketed with an extremely thin cupronickel plating. Swiss GP11 is the same. Most European ammo uses steel jacketed projectiles with a thin copper or cupronickel plating. It's so thin you can scrub it off with a green 3M kitchen pad. It is less for lubrication and more for preventing the steel jackets from rusting.

Cupronickel jackets were mostly phased out before WWII because they left such hard to remove residue in the rifling. The cupronickel plated steel jackets don't leave as much residue.