Why no steel-cased revolver ammo?

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seeker_two

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Is it an engineering issue due to materials? Or is there just little interest (though, with sales of aluminum-case Blazer ammo, I doubt it)?

Just wondering......
 
Because brass has much better qualities for what is basically a pressure vessel that has to expand and contract repeatedly during the loading and firing process. And because brass is not in short supply today as it was in WW II. If you plan to reload the cartridge, brass is about the best we have. If you're simply going to fireit once and throw it away, aluminum works fine. Steel can place unecessary wear on parts like extractors and it can rust during long term storage. It has no advantages over brass and some disadvantages.
 
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It seems most steel cased ammo is in military calibers.

As revolvers have been long out of favor with military forces, they probably never tooled up for it, and it probably wouldn't be cost effective to tool up for a small, mostly civilian market.
 
^^^This. :) Most steel-case ammo currently marketed in the USA is Russian, and my suspicion is that the American commercial market is only a sideline for the Russian manufacturers; their main market is probably military forces in Third World countries that are not beholden to NATO-spec suppliers for their ammo.
 
I suspect extraction difficulties.

Straight cases do not extract as well as tapered. Brass will at least retract nicely. Steel, I suspect there are issues with steel.

I think I found some steel revolver cases once at the range. Probably tossed them, they are not popular.
 
I believe the nazis used steel cases for 8mm ammo.

I don't know if it was because their supply of brass was constrained or whether it worked better in the MG-42.
 
Because brass has much better qualities for what is basically a pressure vessel that has to expand and contract repeatedly during the loading and firing process.
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Precisely. I've seen folks shoot steel-case 9mm through revolvers, and the fired cases stick something awful.
 
Then why did the Soviet bloc use steel?

Is it not cheaper?
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They did use steel, but not in revolvers. Soviet military surplus 7.62 Nagant ammo has just recently become relatively widely available here in the US. It's brass cased.
 
They did use steel, but not in revolvers. Soviet military surplus 7.62 Nagant ammo has just recently become relatively widely available here in the US. It's brass cased.
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That's because the Nagant requires brass cases. If they used steel, the gas seal system will lock up. 9x18 ammo was/is steel cased.

kozak6 is right, the reason is because Russian manufacturers are simply repackaging their military calibers for civilian sale. They would have to buy brand new tooling to retool their equipment. The downtime to retool costs money as well.

I reload steel cases, so as long as the steel cased .357 mag is Boxer primed I'll be good to go.:D
 
That's because the Nagant requires brass cases. If they used steel, the gas seal system will lock up. 9x18 ammo was/is steel cased.
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But what does 9x18 have to do with anything? It's not a revolver round, nor was it ever intended to be.

Sure the Russians played around with the idea of 9x18 revolver decades after the round was developed, but it was never produced in quantity and I haven't seen any reports of how well or not it worked anyways.
 
It is not an engineering issue. Brass is a better material for cases, however during the war there was such a demand for brass, not only for cartridge cases but for ships as well, that steel was used for as it was more readily available.
 
But what does 9x18 have to do with anything? It's not a revolver round, nor was it ever intended to be.
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I was pointing out that the Russians produced both brass cased and steel cased ammo at the same time, they COULD have produced the Nagant ammo in steel cased, but they never did. Likely for the reasons I mentioned.
 
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