Is 2021 the End for Brass cased ammo?

A

Aspect

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Is anyone else tracking the copper supply?

I don't think we're going to see the end of a buck a round for ammo after this panic buying is over. I ran across this link about copper shortages.

https://www.kitco.com/commentaries/2021-03-12/Copper-shortage-narrative-goes-mainstream.html

Copper is needed to make brass.

And it's going to get worse. Wind farms and electric cars take a crazy amount of copper.

I'm guessing steel or polymer cased ammo is the future.

I've read that you can do at least a few reloads for steel cased rifle cases, as long as it's boxer primed.

I hate the thought of shooting steel jacketed bullets. Is there such a thing as copper free ammo?
 
Prices will go up. In fact Winchester just today announced a price hike including 8% on handgun ammo, 10% on .22 magnum and 25% on primers.

Prices can't be expected to stay the same forever, especially with recent happenings in our economy. I am more optimistic than thinking that 9mm and .40 will not go below $1 though.

If you look at the distributor end, prices have not changed as much as is reflected in the market. A lot of the price hike has to do with lack of availability so retailers are having to make their margins on smaller quantities.

It may be a rough ride, but ammo prices will come back down eventually. How much, we'll have to wait and see.

There is bimetal ammunition which is zinc plated rather than copper. Some using nickel too. I've seen it in most of the common bulk calibers, both handgun and rifle.

I'm not sure of any bullet materials other than copper which are suited to monolithic bullets, but we do have options for coating bullets. There are even polymer coated bullets now, though I'm not sure if there has to be a base metal between the bullet and the polymer.
 
Perhaps the proposed Northern Minnesota Polymet copper-nickel mine will alliviate the situation.*

https://apnews.com/article/environment-minnesota-courts-pollution-58c5e207a0f9f315b751524e1a1e8cde

*PolyMet has been working on getting permits to open a copper-nickel mine in Northern Minnesota since 2004. A February 2021 Minnesota Supreme Court decision ruled in their favor however there are other hurdles the company must pass to actually open a mine. So maybe not in time to help with the current shortage or maybe not in our lifetime, or our kids lifetime.
 
nope, not hardly, especially when you consider us re-loaders re-using our brass. It will just get more expensive, like everything else.
 
Wind farms and electric cars take a crazy amount of copper.
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While it won't help lower the price much, if any, the answer to the supply problem will be recycling. Wind farms and electric cars and other things are going to eat tremendous amounts of copper, BUT they are also going to be used up and junked at a predictable rate, and the copper will be reclaimed and sold back on the market for use in other products.

We already have been doing that with lead, for years. The last lead smelter in the US closed several years ago. And even before that, most of our lead was recycled or from overseas sources.

So, things aren't likely to get cheaper or be more common, but I don't think they're going to go away, either.
 
There is hybrid metal case that can be reloaded 100 times. The case is going to be about $5 as a new component.

Poly cases are a thing, so is aluminum and steel.

I see it going to a fork in the road. Those who shoot factory ammo will go to steel and polymer and those who reload will go to the hybrid cases.

Hard lead alloys with polymer coatings on bullets up to 1500 fps or so and only copper for rifle projectiles.
 
Some of the largest copper mines on earth are in the US (Kenecott). We’ll be fine in the long run.
If push comes to shove, we can always draw copper jackets from the billions of copper pennies in circulation.

http://www.corbins.com/jmk-p-h.htm


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Last edited:
Hawg said:
Pennies aren't copper anymore. Since 1982 they're zinc with a thin copper plate.
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I know that. But every time i buy something and get change i check for copper pennies. I get a copper penny in change about half the time. There’s billions and billions of them in circulation.


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MarkCO said:
Poly cases are a thing,...
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I had a client in the last decade who was marketing the idea 5.56 and 7.62 in completely polymer cases to foreign governments. This design wasn't the stuff from 20 years ago with the brass head.

I don't know if it was ever produced. I've never seen it offered for sale.
 
I had a client in the last decade who was marketing the idea 5.56 and 7.62 in completely polymer cases to foreign governments. This design wasn't the stuff from 20 years ago with the brass head.
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True velocity is making some now and testing with belt fed firearms to reduce the weight. I've shot a few rounds. Surprisingly light weight. Acts a little funny in mag fed firearms sometimes but it will get there.

They're also working on it in the context of the NGSW/AR program. I believe it's in conjunction with the General Dynamics platform. Sadly, as much as I like that one I have a hard time believing they'll adopt it so we'll see what happens with the ammo.

Sig's new hybrid ammo with the .277 Fury uses a two part case with a stainless steel head which can withstand some crazy pressure like 80,000 PSI. The stainless steel head clips into a brass case. I don't see why aluminum or possibly even polymer couldn't be used in place of the brass.
 
As far as lead goes-Obama closed the last lead mine in MO about 7-8 yrs ago.

Some folks on gun sites were saying that was too bad-others said NO PROBLEM lots of lead to recycle, auto batteries.

Whenever a source of anything disappears it will be a problem before too long. Increased price is not a problem for many.
 
I wouldn't put too much stock in any report from Kitco that tells you to buy metals.
These guys are always pumping metals because that's what they sell. If you ask a barber if you need a haircut, he will answer 'yes'.
 
The Fury cases are the ones that have been, in testing, reloaded 100+ times.

I have shot the Polycase ammo, and two other brands and it works just fine in the AR15 platform.
 
Keep in mind that article about copper was from a web site that is involved in the sale of various metals, just like a stock investor promoter. I retired in 2007 and started watching daytime TV, they have been running the same ad about how silver is going to breakout to new all-time highs, buy it now. The only time silver went up a lot was when the Hunt brothers tried own the market and manipulate the prices. It didn't work out well for them. Consider the source. Of course if the world ends in 2032 does it really matter?
 
> I had a client in the last decade who was marketing the idea 5.56 and 7.62 in completely polymer cases to foreign governments.
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That comes around every ten years ago. One of the times, Dillon sank a bunch of money into it.

You have two temperature-related problems - case integrity in cold weather, and bullet retention in a hot chamber. Not necessarily a machine gun; semis can get pretty hot after a mag or two.

If it's too cold, the case splits. If the gun is too hot, the neck tension goes away, and when that happens, they can't meet the accuracy requirements.

The mil spec for 7.62x51 specifies performance across a very wide temperature range, it has to not cook off in a hot machine gun chamber, the extractor band has to be strong enough for existing extractors not to rip through it at min and max temp, it has to be water-resistant... each specification is close to the limits of what is possible with brass cases and conventional powders and primers.

The main problem is that every outfit I'm aware of was targeting the military market. One customer, guaranteed sales. But those military ammo specs have always been the deal-breaker.

Sporting cartridges, particularly the lower-pressure and rimmed types, would be much easier to make. Many of them, plain old polypropylene would work, assuming they chose a method of bullet retention that didn't let them back out during recoil. You have to use a mechanical interlock or adhesive; you can't get a temperature-indepenent interference fit like with a brass case. They'd likely be non-reloadable due to that, but they'd be plenty cheap... not that any savings would be passed on to the end purchaser.
 
I've seen similar threads every year since getting into shooting 10 years ago.
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Well Mr. Skeptic, I don't suppose you think we're going to get flying cars any time soon either!
 
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