Why aren't steel casings reloadable?

I bought the EC 42 .45ACP ammo at Surplus City in Colo.Springs in the early 60's.They had a lot of it available.I still have some of the cases.
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Ken, this stuff goes in cycles, I have a few aluminum 45 ACP cases that others claim do not exist so I so I do not talk about them. And then there was EC, I have no ideal how many changes Chrysler went through but there is a claim the steel cases were made at the other EC plant in Evansville, In. The other plant was called 'the other EC plant", to avoid confusion the other EC plant had head stamps with a 'S' added. This helped employees know where they worked.

And then there is another claim, the other claim claimed the steel 45 ACP cases were made at the ECS plant, problem, there is something wrong with one claim or the other if your EC cases are steel cases.

And then there was another plant making ammo south of Eau Clair, Wisconsin; they named that plant the DM plant, the DM stood for DM Des Moines Ordnance Plant - Des Moines, Iowa: a division of US Rubber Co. (January 1942 to July 1945). And I wondered? Why did they name the DM plant DM instead of DI if they named the EW plant EW instead of EC.

And as usual the employees were claiming they had the name first. Most of my steel cases were made by Federal, it is alleged Federal made shotgun shells before they took over the TW operation, that was when Federal had to learn to make bottle necked cases.

F. Guffey
 
Can a steel case eventually cause spalling? Steel is hard, brass is soft, steel hammered against steel with that amount of of force seems kind of wrong, while brass will not only absorb a bit of the shock, but also lessen the complete energy transfer by eliminating the hard elastic impact.
 
The ECS headstamp stands for Evansville Chrysler Sunbeam.

To meet the ammunition quotas assigned to Chrysler, they needed to expand production capacity.

The easiest way to do that was to purchase a company that already had heavy machinery and metals fabrication capabilities -- the Sunbeam Refrigerator Company of Evansville.

ECS was NOT an aid to tell workers where they were employed. Jesus Christ, where do you come up with this stuff, Frank?

And no, having steel cases stamped EC vs ECS is NOT a problem.

The ECS plant made both brass and steel .45 casings, just as the EC plant made both steel and brass .45 casings. Both plants made BOTH types of cases.

However, the majority of steel .45 ACP cases were apparently made at ECS.





"Why did they name the DM plant DM instead of DI if they named the EW plant EW instead of EC."

I already explained to you WHY Evansville Chrsyler had the EC headstamp, and why Eau Claire had EW.

Try reading what I wrote.

Evansville Chrysler was assigned the EC designator by the Department of Ordnance BEFORE United States Rubber Corp became a defense contractor for ammunition.



Regarding Federal Cartridge Corporation...

Federal was founded in the early 1920s, a reincorporation of a small ammunition manufacturer that had opened in 1916.

Federal manufactured .22 rimfire ammunition in the 1920s -- I don't know about other types of ammunition.


Federal did not "take over" the Twin Cities Ordnance Plant.

Federal, in conjunction with the War Department, BUILT the plant.
 
Mike,

Interesting history. Do you have any recommended reading for this topic?


F. Guffey said:
This helped employees know where they worked.
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:D. Sometimes you just crack me up.


briandg said:
Can a steel case eventually cause spalling?
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If you look at the photo of the 1911 barrel I posted, I would say spalling is the least of your worries. If the finish, be it varnish or phosphatizing or iriditing remains intact, then spalling should not occur. Also, I had a Lyman carbide die that cracked when I accidentally ran a steel case through it long ago. Mid-1980's some time. It still resized cases after that, but they all came out with a scratch from mouth to pressure ring corresponding to the crack location and a few would no longer get small enough to hold a bullet properly. I don't mess with steel cases anymore, as the potential additional capital cost and die replacement delay aren't worth it to me. And not just replacement of sizing dies, but potentially of barrels, as well.
 
This topic has got me wondering, when, where, and why did steel cased ammo come about??

Haven't done any serious research, but I don't recall any mention of it before WWII. Not in the US, at any rate. I do have some 1939 German 8mm ammo that I just checked, and it is definitely steel cased.

Did steel cased ammo come about as a "wartime expedient"? (or a planned "expedient" in advance?) in nations that had more steel than brass resources?

I note no effort by US ammo makers to market steel cased ammo until fairly recently, while some have been making aluminum cased ammo for decades now.

I understand its popularity because its cheap(er), and former communist bloc countries will churn out as much as they can, because "crazy americans buy anything, and they pay CASH!!!"

I understand steel's cost advantages in military applications, where the individual weapons firing it aren't expected to last a particularly long time, and a system to repair or replace them exists. Something private owners don't have.

SO, if you know, please enlighten me, where, and when did steel cased ammo become so common? WWII production in Europe & Russia?? somewhere else?

The way I see it, steel cased works ALMOST as well as brass, once. After that, it should be recycled, NOT reloaded.
 
Experimentation with steel cased ammunition goes back almost as far as the self-contained cartridge.

In the early years of the self-contained cartridge the biggest obstacle (as with brass) was the technology of deep drawing metal blanks into metal cases.

That's why copper was first used for US .50-70 and .45-70, and only later transitioned to brass in the 1880s.

By the late 1800s, drawing technology was sufficiently advanced to allow the Germans and British to begin experimenting with steel cases for both military and commercial ammunition.

The first military use of steel cased ammo was, I believe, in Germany at the end of World War I, and it became more common during World War II and after the war, especially in the Warsaw Pact.

I suspect the biggest reason why steel cased ammo was more prevalent in the west is because the largest deposits of copper and zinc, the two primary components of brass, are in Western nations, or nations that are friendly to the West.

During World War II use of steel cased ammunition rose dramatically in Germany because as the war progressed they were increasingly shut out of copper and zinc; the same with Japan.

The United States began producing steel-cased .45 ACP (and steel pennies!) because, even though we had the largest output of both copper and zinc at the time, supplies of both metals, both critical to a huge array of war materials, were hugely stressed.

But, the US was experimenting with steel-cased ammo long before World War II... Frankford Arsenal was prototyping .30-06 steel cases as early as 1906 or 1907.
 
"Interesting history. Do you have any recommended reading for this topic?"

Nick,

Unfortunately there's no comprehensive sources on WW II ammunition production that discusses the setting up of war time production, assignment of headstamp codes, etc.

It's information that I've gleaned from a multitude of sources (Chrysler's official company history, Department of War records available through the Library of Congress, etc.

One sources that I managed to download without realizing it is a book:

"The Ordnance Department: Planning Munitions for War" by Constance McLaughlin Green, Harry Thomson, and Peter Roots.

It was published in 1990 by the Center of Military History.

Like other sources, it has bits and pieces of the "big picture" on WW II small arms ammunition production.
 
Ah! 44AMP, more information for you from the book I cited to Nick...

Page 489:

"A few steel cases for artillery ammunition had been made in the United States and Germany during World War I, but the results had not been altogether satisfactory in either country.46 Because of the abundant
supplies of copper and zinc available to the United States, and the many difficulties inherent in the use of steel cases, little attention was paid to the matter during the years between the wars. In 1939 and 1940 a few cases made of seamless steel tubing were submitted to the Ordnance Department by commercial producers for test but none proved satisfactory. As a result,
when Ordnance engineers and representatives of industry were suddenly faced in 1941 with the problem of manufacturing steel cases they had to begin virtually from scratch."


It then goes on to talk in depth about development of steel cases for both artillery shells and for small arms ammunition.



Interestingly, it was wartime pressure on the copper and zinc supply that helped force adoption of the 7.62 NATO round.

With powders that were developed over the years the .30-06 had roughly a half inch of air space between the powder and the base of the bullet.

That half inch might not seem like much, but shortening the case by that amount save that much brass.

Again, that doesn't seem like it would be much savings...

Until you multiply the amount saved from one cartridge case by the BILLIONS of cases that were manufactured during the war.
 
There was a man that that became know as 'Captain Who', I thought it was interesting because the man that gave him the nick name included a question mark at the end of the name; from that day on no one included the question mark. And then time passed and he decided to write a book, I believe the book title went something like "This is my story and I am sticking to it".

Workers at the Eau Clair, Wisconsin plant believe they made cases with EC head stamps, they claim they did not make many of them before they changed to EW. It means nothing to me but this is their story and I am sticking with it.

F. Guffey
 
Everything Mike said appears to be correct.

There is an important thing to keep in mind. Steel is as cheap as manure ant and just as common . Zinc and copper both are not only less easily available, but the cost may be twenty times that of steel.

Where the real problem lies is that with limited copper production, we had practically unlimited steel production.

You cannot substitute steel for copper or brass or zinc, and those three metals were essential to manufacturing in other sectors.

Zinc was indispensable for galvanizing and rust proofing. It was essential to manufacturing brass.

Brass was absolutely essential for hydraulic systems. Certain non wearing parts that required precision machining required brass. Brass was used in plumbing system because it resists water and machines well.

Copper as the only metal that could be used with electrical components. An electric motor armature may use hundreds of pounds of copper wire, power production requires tons of it. A plane of the time may not have needed a great deal of copper, but it probably used a lot of brass. A tank may have used a lot of brass in hydraulic systems. Wwii may have been the first war to have electricity and communication equipment everywhere. Even bomb and artillery fuses used brass.

These metals were essential to every system used, and steel was useless for anything more complex than stamping or items that depended only on strength.

The question on my mind has always been, why did we continue, year after year, to dump megatons of brass into trenches and fields, rather than devising steel components? We would have saved hundreds of millions of dollars to further the war efforts in every other way.

The answer depends on whether you trust military testing and science. If you believe that the military does what's right, the reason that copper and brass have been the unfailing standard for over a century is that steel is garbage!

Top level nations provide their soldiers with top level equipment. People in the former Soviet block, Asia, other second rate countries equipped their armies with Kalashnikov rifles and steel. Go to the third world countries, and see what you find there. Any quality equipment was provided by outsiders.
 
"Workers at the Eau Clair, Wisconsin plant believe they made cases with EC head stamps, they claim they did not make many of them before they changed to EW. It means nothing to me but this is their story and I am sticking with it."

Headstamp bunters were ground in the machine and maintenance shops located at each ordnance plant.

It's possible that a worker at Eau Claire ground such a bunter by accident.

Chris Punnett, in his book on the .30-06, claims that EC marked .30-06 ammunition was produced at Eau Claire. As far as I know, he's the only person ever to make that claim, and I have never seen ammo so headstamped.

If such ammunition was produced, it was produced unofficially.

The facts were, are, and remain:

Evansville Chrysler was assigned the EC headstamp/production code before United States Rubber became an ammunition contractor.

US Rubber's Eau Claire, Wisconsin, plant was NEVER assigned a headstamp/production code other than EW.

The US government assigned headstamp/production codes as a means of conclusively and uniquely identifying the plant/contractor that produced the ammunition.

The US government did NOT assign headstamp/production codes as a means of placating corporate sensibilities for anyone. Had they deigned to do so, they would have stroked US Rubber's corporate ego by assigning them a headstamp/production code of USR, EUR, or something else that incorporated a sense of the corporate entity.
 
Certain non wearing parts that required precision machining required brass.
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I'll tell you another place brass gets used, and that is "wearing parts" in some systems. Gear systems (low speed applications, mostly). Brass is used to BE the "wearing part". Mortars (and other artillery systems) us brass gearing in their traverse and elevation mechanisms. One of the gears will be brass, the other steel. This is because brass wears faster than steel. Sounds foolish, I know, why deliberately make a part out of softer metal that will wear faster???

The reason is actually sound, and rather clever when you think about it. Yes, the brass part wears out first, and when it does, you replace it. With a brass on steel gear system, you only need to replace the worn brass gear. With steel on steel, BOTH gears wear out approximately equally, and you need to replace both of them when worn. My Grandfather's cousin worked cutting the large brass gears that opened and closed the large front doors of LSTs (Landing Ship, Tank -known to their crews as Large, Slow Target:D) during WWII. I worked on mortar T&E mechanisms in the 70s. That's how they're made, one brass gear (often a big one) the rest steel.

The question on my mind has always been, why did we continue, year after year, to dump megatons of brass into trenches and fields, rather than devising steel components? We would have saved hundreds of millions of dollars to further the war efforts in every other way.
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Remember WHO was doing the "dumping". The military. The same people that dump/destroy millions of dollars of serviceable equipment when perceived outmoded, obsolete, or just "not worth the cost of shipping it home".

While I don't have actual numbers, I think its quite possible we destroyed/dumped more planes in the months after VJ day than we lost to enemy action during WWII. Entire squadrons, grenade in the cockpit, bulldozed into a trench, or pushed off the carrier deck into the sea. Compared to things like that, the cost we lose from not picking up our fired brass is meaningless.
 
Everything that you are saying there is true, I can see that. I've noticed it before.

Brass on steel wear goes even further I guess, steel on steel getting for example a thousand cycles before both are shot is probably terribly inefficient. Replacing brass on steel, since that steel will last through many cycles of brass would in the long run cost more in various resources. I don't know what shop capabilities they had on board the big ships throughout history, but they had to be independent. A ship has to be able to keep itself functioning during warfare at sea. I'm not sure what that would require, but if they had to have a small scale foundry to cast bearings or other pArts, space would surely have been made. The machinist can p a city of a carrier is probably greater than a lot of factories concerning quality of work. Cutting a new set of hydraulic parts to the necessary tolerances doesn't happen at AutoZone.

I've got to argue with you on the last point. Running obsolete and banged up battle tanks into the sea and scuttling a ship is waste disposal.

Otoh, heaving ton after ton of fired brass casings into a scrap pile was a cost of doing daily business. It was being sent and discarded, and every cartridge was a drag on resources.

If the army could have switched from brass to steel, they would have. Four major wars have been fought with brass, and we have not used those opportunities for change.

We used syringes and needles hundreds of times, nothing was scrapped out. But all of that time, we toyed with steel, but never changed.

Since a shopper at Wal-Mart doesn't go through the solid vetting process, steel gets a pass.

I'd really like to see a complete listing of the requirements for military ammo. Temperature ranges that it must withstand, environmental contaminants, flexibility, acceptable performance with out of spec ammo or chambers, that sort of thing.

There must be a reason that steel is unacceptable to the techs at the decision making level or we would have changed.
 
One of the reasons I referred to non wearing parts was all of the objects I've owned and seen that were made of brass, cast and filed, so forth. The clock outside my door is all brass. Surveying equipment, etc, machining precise brass can even be done by hand filing.

America was honestly blessed by the eastern coal beds and the huge iron mines. The industrial age started here.

I read about steel production in the 1700s, people stacking charcoal and ore in retorts an cooking it up a few tons at a time. It's incredible how far we have gone.
 
I don't know what shop capabilities they had on board the big ships throughout history, but they had to be independent
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MOSTLY independent. Which is why there are supply ships and service ships as well. Larger ships have a very well equipped machine shop, and 'machinist mates" to run them. They do stop short of having a foundry, instead they have a supply of blanks (metal stock) that they can machine replacement parts out of, if its something that no premade parts are stocked for. Bearing, and such things would be stocked as already manufactured replacement parts.

Carriers, in particular, are well set up for this, because they are not only keeping the ship running in combat, but the aircraft, as well.

Yes, dumping all kinds of stuff as waste disposal is the term used. Just remember that perfectly serviceable equipment can, was, and is still today declared "waste" and disposed of, along with all the stuff that is actually waste.

After victory over Japan, a LOT of piston engine aircraft were disposed of, declared obsolete (and therefore waste) because jets were the coming thing. Entire squadrons of fighter planes were tossed. On land, generally destroyed, then buried, at see pushed overboard to sink. Multi engine bombers and other bigger planes were usually cut up and sold as scrap, when their utility was at an end. They were often retained in service for some time when the fighters were scrapped, as piston engine bombers could also serve adequately as transport and patrol aircraft, even in the jet age.

If the army could have switched from brass to steel, they would have.
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They did "try it out", as info in this thread details, some steel case .45acp ammo was made in 42-43. I have heard of small lots of .30 carbine steel cased ammo also, though I've never seen any.

As far as I know, no other calibers were attempted, as production items. And in 44 we dropped the limited steel case production we did use, and went "back" to brass for all our small arms.

Other nations, (Nazi Germany and the USSR, primarily) used huge amounts of steel cased ammo, and the Soviets kept on doing it, and Russia still does it today. We don't. Why???

PERHAPS, tis because we recognize that brass is a little better, and consider it worth the cost??

There must be a reason that steel is unacceptable to the techs at the decision making level or we would have changed.
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With small arms ammo, part of the reason might be simple inertia. OR it might be the hidden costs, like the cost of making and running the machinery to make steel small arms cases, vs the cost of the already existing stuff for brass. Our 105mm tank gun (M60 & M1) used steel cases, and I believe the 120mm in the new M1s uses a semi combustible case with a steel base.

It is possible that changing over to steel cased small arms ammo simply isn't considered cost effective. Clearly the Soviets, and former Soviets have a different opinion.

America was honestly blessed by the eastern coal beds and the huge iron mines. The industrial age started here.
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We were blessed in that regard, its true. Also blessed with the isolation of the oceans and no militarily aggressive neighbor countries that posed serious threats.

To be correct though, the industrial age didn't start here, it started in England (followed rapidly by certain areas in Europe). When it got here, we gave it a tremendous boost, with American ingenuity and our natural resource, but historians will tell you the industrial age started over there, then came to America.
 
Regarding the industrial age you're right. They had metal, tools, factories, and their own engineers and brilliant minds. We took what was available, developed interchangeable parts, mass production,and took Industry to new levels.

Honestly, I think that Asia did the same thing we did. Exploited existing knowledge and the best technology they could gat, then turned their existing resources into trade goods. Looking back into the fifties, every tiny piece of junk was Japanese, and China exported nothing of value. It didn't take long for the Japanese to become a literal world industrial superpower, but now, the mountain has leveled.

I can't really understand what China really means. It generally produces trash. Stuff meant to go straight to the landfill. What durable goods they make are a riddle.
 
"Other nations, (Nazi Germany and the USSR, primarily) used huge amounts of steel cased ammo, and the Soviets kept on doing it, and Russia still does it today. We don't. Why???"

I already covered that.

Because the United States, and friendly nations in the western hemisphere, primarily Chilie, have MASSIVE copper and zinc reserves, which FAR outstrip anything that was available in the former Soviet bloc.

During World War II the primary reason why the US began to investigate steel case ammo was because of the threat of German U Boats.

Even before the war the US was importing significant quantities of copper ore into the United States. It was cheaper in a lot of cases (same story back then as today, producing in America costs more than producing in a third world nation), and with the massive upspike in demand for copper for war production domestic production couldn't keep pace.

Brass casings do have certain advantages over steel.

Better obturation in automatic weapons, easier production all around, easier storage characteristics (more forgiving of temperature and humidity swings), etc.

Not tremendous advantages, but enough that a wholesale switch to steel casings has never been seen to be warranted.

There's only one western nation I can think of that currently uses steel cased ammo -- France -- even though NATO standard specifications require the use of brass cased ammo.

The reason France went with steel cases for its 5.56 is because of the action type on the FAMAS assault rifle. It uses a delayed blowback system, which puts FAR more stress on cartridge cases. In the early days of testing they couldn't get it to work with brass cased ammo; there was a very high failure rate where the extractors tore through rims and sometimes the case head came off.
 
I have a lot of personal questions about the drawbacks to both types. I feel pretty certain that the lack of flexibility with steel, and a certain brittleness of some types, especially when cold may cause trouble. Although steel is always lacquered, if it starts to rust, that's not good. Unless exposed to a corrosive agent, from my experience, brass stands up better. You can see that at a range. Talking in terms of artillery, what pressures are generated at the breech, and would the initial blast seal the case to the chamber? The case mouth has to be heavy gauge, right? What sort of kaboom would it take to force it against the chamber walls, and given the springiness of most steel, how much gas is going to leak back as the pressure is reduced?

Better minds than mine made the decision. I guess that I could dig into some of the books I have from that period.

My book on gunsmithing by James Howe made me literally shiver. The guy had chapters on making tools. Making them by hand. Cutting your mills, checker files, rifling jigs, etc. There wasn't a brownells back then, and one had to make anything that wasn't commonly available. We really are a spoiled lot, need a bedding scraper? It's a click away.
 
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't France the only "NATO" nation that never actually formally joined NATO??

I'm pretty sure they weren't actual NATO members back in the 70s, though I don't know if that changed since.

According to what we heard back in those days, France didn't sign on to NATO so they could retain independent control of their nuclear weapons.

Most of us back then figured that no matter the officially stated reason, the real reason was that the French detest being legally required to have to work with, or cooperate with anyone (particularly former enemies) unless they WANT to.
 
France was one of the 12 founding members of NATO.

According to Wikipedia...

"France withdrew from the integrated military command in 1966 to pursue an independent defense system but returned to full participation on 3 April 2009."
 
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