Steel cased ammo through budget rifles

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bricz75

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There are a number of "budget" rifles out there these days. Savage Axis, Ruger American, etc. If a person were to shoot a good number of steel cased ammo through a budget rifle, are any of them known to be good with steel cased ammo? Are any of them known not to be good with steel cased ammo?
 
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Try it. I know steel case ammo does not work in my NEF Handi Rifle. Around 1 in 3 rounds, the case sticks in the chamber. Didn't take me long to abandon the idea.
 
bricz75 wrote:
If a person were to shoot a good number of steel cased ammo through a budget rifle,...
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Steel cases aren't a problem with a "budget" bolt gun (so long as they will fit in the chamber; my Savage Axis has a very tight chamber). What you have to watch out for is that a lot of imported ammunition (whether or not loaded in steel cases) has a hard "bi-metal" bullet that can accelerate wear on your barrel.

Check this out: http://www.luckygunner.com/labs/brass-vs-steel-cased-ammo/
The article talks about "brass vs steel" case, but as you read, you'll see that the concern with wear is not what the case is made from, but what the bullet jacket is made from.
 
I don't worry about shooting steel cased ammo. The extra wear on the gun will be minimal. You can buy a lot of ammo and get in a lot more shooting with steel. That being said. I mostly shoot brass. I used steel cased ammo when I go to the desert so I don't worry about picking up brass.
 
The issue with steel cased ammo is that it's low quality and usually Berdan primed. It might be hard on the extractor too.
Every rifle will prefer different ammo. There's no way to tell if a particular rifle will shoot any ammo well without trying it.
"...don't worry about picking up brass..." Tsk. Tsk. Your mom follow you around cleaning up after you? Yes, steel cases will be recycled by Nature, but in how long?
 
The issue with steel cased ammo is that it's low quality and usually Berdan primed. It might be hard on the extractor too.
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This is pretty much what it comes down to. Steel cased ammo works great (functionally) in firearms with more generous chambers...which is what it was designed to go into in the first place like the SKS or AK or RPK. But if your bolt gun has a tighter chamber, and most of them do compared to an auto-loader, then you may have problems. My brother has a bolt action .223 that is a real shooter, but cant get steel cased ammo to extract reliably....it is a Browning.
However, if it does work, then there really isn't any downside to using it besides potentially poor accuracy.
 
kenny53 said:
I don't worry about shooting steel cased ammo. The extra wear on the gun will be minimal. You can buy a lot of ammo and get in a lot more shooting with steel. That being said. I mostly shoot brass. I used steel cased ammo when I go to the desert so I don't worry about picking up brass.
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It's still worth it to run steel cased with wear on the barrel being a little more.
 
Mississippi said:
This is pretty much what it comes down to. Steel cased ammo works great (functionally) in firearms with more generous chambers...which is what it was designed to go into in the first place like the SKS or AK or RPK. But if your bolt gun has a tighter chamber, and most of them do compared to an auto-loader, then you may have problems. My brother has a bolt action .223 that is a real shooter, but cant get steel cased ammo to extract reliably....it is a Browning.
However, if it does work, then there really isn't any downside to using it besides potentially poor accuracy.
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Good point about steel cased being designed for and working better with firearms with larger chambers.

About accuracy, a person can experiment with different types of steel cased just like brass cased.
 
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