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Posted: 7/27/2010 1:53:54 PM EDT
| I am looking for something that is cheap for range use that will not ruin my barrel. In the talk of steel / brass I have been told that steal will mess up a barrel. Can, and how quick does it hurt the barrel? |
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The steel is the case, not the bullet, so your barrel will be fine. Typically the only issues with cheap steel cased ammo is that it usually runs a little dirty and the lacquer coated stuff can add some more gunk to your bolt/chamber but nothing a good cleaning won't take care of.
If you're worried about it the brass cased stuff is cheap enough now to plink with. |
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To put some truth on the "steel hurt" issue, SOME bullets (typically com bloc, but not limited too) use steel jackets instead of copper jackets. Then they are copper clad, washed or plated for gliding material, so they move faster and wear the barrel less.
If you get copper clad steel jacketed ammo and the copper is sub standard (think too thin of a layer), you can get quicker wear after the first few inches of rifling in your barrel (the copper wears out after that and you get steel on steel down wearing down your barrel). So, steel jacketed ammo (the bullet jacket, not the bullet case) can in the above case hurt your gun. Hurt defined as wearing out your barrel life quicker. You can test for steel jacketed ammo with a magnet, but it could also be steel cored or have a higher iron content in the lead or jacket material too. (aka, false positives are likely) Like I said, you will see this mostly likely in forgien (typically com bloc) ammo, but it will still take 1000s of rounds to do this wearing down. BEWARE, copper clad steel jacketed ammo is often M80/7.62x51 ammo that is made by lake city. So, clearly some of this is pretty good stuff. Don't count it out because it has steel in it. |
| I have a Buchmaster that I bought back in Y2k (good excuse to buy another gun at the time) I have shot at least 12k rounds through it before I started noticing a loss of accuracy. And yes Charley Brown It ran it like a champ. If I have a rifle and it wont run steel case I start looking at why and if I cant fix it then it will get sold. |
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