Golden bear 223 personal experience

C

Come and take it.

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Shot 40 rounds through my ruger sr556 with no malfunctions. Not enough to prove the reliablity of the round but a great improvement over lacquer coated and zinc plated.

I wonder if the brass plating works better because of the tendency of copper and the steel of the chamber of not bonding under heat. Also some copper alloys are often used in bearings due to the low friction.

While zinc plating from silver bear is a known bonder to steel as galvanizing is a simple and reliable process to produce a weather resistant metal.

I am looking for a low cost hunting or defensive round as I consider fmj mil-spec brass cased to be pretty pathetic in terminal ballistics. Praying on a bullet yaw is not a gamble I want to make.

The cost of hunting or defense brass cased ammo is too much for my budget when considering purchasing by bulk.

the sr556 is not very fond of steel cased ammo. Not sure why but maybe it has something to do with more difficult extraction and the highest gas setting not being enough to reliably eject. but if I can find a steel case ammo that will work I am all for it.
 
the silver bear is actually awesome. Then again I'm not shooting it out of a finnicky gun. My Vector Ak can easily print an 8-10" group offhand at 150 yds with the stuff. Never had a malfunction, either. If it wasn't for the Silver Bear I'd consider selling my AK's!!!!!! That's as decisive a statement as I know of. Very little ammo for the ak is worth the material it's made from and I place the Silver Bear at the top of the heap for price and performance. It's a mainstay.

as for .223 ammo, I don't think you're going to find anything "defensive" for cheap. I will catch hell for this I bet, but in a defensive role my AR (if I owned one currently) would stagger Federal Milspec 55 gr fmj 2-1 with the 1 ratio being a 55 gr hornady vmax assuming your barrel ius a 1:9 twist. I would do this because I'm cheap, and feel quantity trumps quality in this case. It's not a .308, so some volume can't hurt. I like the Fiocchi too. Federal, PMC, and Fiocchi in bulk staggered with some boutique loads.
 
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ARs should work well with steel case no matter what it's coated or plated with. But like you say some brands are picky and some manufacturers won't stand behind their rifle if you use steel case.

Still, I'd keep trying to find steel case that works well for plinking, informal shooting to keep cost down then find something better for defense and accuracy. Maybe as you get more rounds down the bore something else cheap will be satisfactory. No doubt with experimentation and reading Ruger forums you'll find out what the SR556 likes.

Maybe a stronger extractor spring/insert and O-ring/D-Fender?
 
I hope I’m not changing the subject or high jacking this thread here….

Has anyone checked Golden Bear or Silver Bear .223 for run out?

I bought a case of Wolf black box and about 30% of the rounds have excessive run out. Something like .005+. I’m looking for decent plinking ammo at the reasonable prices of steel cased stuff. Actually prefer steel cased so I can just sweep up the cases and throw them away. I don’t need any more .223 brass.
 
I can only attest to the 7.62 version, but I've never encountered a defect of any kind with silver bear and have put out around 800 rds of it through a BEAT to crap MAK90, a nice Bulgarian, twoWASRS and a very nice Vector. and handle two or three times that. I MAY have had 3 or 4 ftf but it was more likely due to a bad mag than the ammo and it happened in the third world condition MAK90. It's a whole different animal than the wolf, prvi partizen and golden tiger garbage. I won't even shoot Wolf out of my AK's for fear of squibs. I personally wouldn't shoot anything steel cased out of my AR's at least when evaluationg the gun's reliability, but if I was going to it would be silver bear....
 
Thats the first time I've ever hear someone trash Prvi Partizan.
Prvi Partizan ammo is good stuff. I've shot a few thousand rounds in several different calibers and never had any problems.
It is head and shoulders above silver bear.

As to the steel stuff. If your rifle can't/won't function with steel cased ammo then there is something wrong with your rifle.
 
my gun hasnt horribly functioned with any steel cased ammo. I reveiwed the ruger forums already and it is a problem with all sr556s that for some reason gas pressure is low with steel cased so you have to turn the gas setting up.

My intent of questioning is to try to get some feedback or technical knowledge on whether brass plated does in fact do better.

The very first attempts at making steel cased ammo. Norinco, began with brass coated/ plated cases. lacquer came later and obviously not because it was a better choice but because it was cheaper.

Than again maybe I am answering my own question.
 
Hard to say, each chamber is different. My AK and two ARs have no problems at all with lacquered or polymer coatings or Silver/Golden Bear. But I don't have the SR556 so not much help to you except for a thread bump. Hopefully you'll get more responses.
 
Shoot a couple hundred rounds of Brown Bear in a short matter of time (heating rifle up), that lacquer will start to gum up the chamber. That's the only thing I don't like about Brown Bear. That crap lacquer seems to build up after a lot of rounds through a hot barrel.

For an example: I once shot about 400rds in 15mins or so and a round actually got stuck in the barrel. It was still a live round so we gave it a few minutes. It was a PITA as the bolt locked forward as well, so I had to take a rifle rest bag and knock the bolt back.

Ended up heating the barrel/chamber up with a blowdryer later than night to get it really hot, then soaked everything with Hoppes and cleaned normally. Didn't have a problem after that.

I have since bought some Brown Bear every now and then, but now I try to buy anything without that lacquer such as Yugo, WPA, SB, etc.
 
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