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Steel Cased ammo usage in M-1 Carbine
GTaylor
Member Posts: 5 ✭✭
I`ve heard different feedback concerning using steel cased ammo in a WWII vintage M-1 carbine. Considering that the rifle is in very good condition, including the spring, should there be a concern for jamming with steel cased ammo? Thank you for your input.
Comments
Brass cases will not wear the chamber and other steel surfaces - as will steel cases on the same or simular chamber and steel surfaces.
Why is it that many people use wooden, plastic or brass rods and cleaning utensils for cleaning their shotguns, pistols and rifles?
Why do most knowledgable people use brushes with bristles of brass or even plastic for cleaning the actions and trigger assembles, rather brushes with bristles made of steel?
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I would suspect that during WW II there was a point at which the US government was keenly aware of shortages and was much more concerned about military personnel having ammunition that would propel bullets/projectiles than their concerns about replacing barrels before the next war or two.
I seem to recall pennies that were NOT made of copper during some part of WW II.
Brass is an alloy of Copper and some Zinc. With shortages of copper, brass was at a scarse commodity I suspect.
I have heard Copper referred to as another "precious metal" - as in Platinum, Gold, Silver . . .
( Copper has a hardness of 3.0 on the Mohs hardness scale. )
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brass
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IF - one desires less wear on the action and chamber, it would seem one might choose brass rather than steel - regardless of the quality of the steel or which Nation produced it. JMHO
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You may wish to put in a "Search" here on the Forums regarding this question, as it has been discused in the past some. Most important is a matter of your wants and needs.
Example: "Steel vs. brass cases" http://forums.GunBroker.com/search.asp?mode=DoIt
Good luck and good shooting to you. [^]
My answer is that because steel cases tend to expand more than brass ones, and other reasons, steel cases can be more difficult to extract from gun chambers. That's why cartridges designed to be made out of steel (like Russian 7.62x54R or 7.62x39) are "cone" shaped. . .to help ease extraction.
In guns designed to run brass cartridges, steel ones can potentially lead to increased gun jamming. The only way to really know for sure is to test some of the ammo in question in your given gun and see what happens. It may run fine, it may give the occasional jam, it may jam on every shot; this varies from ammo to ammo, and gun to gun.
Even if the gun does jam occasionally, that may be a worthwhile price to pay given a possible alternative of not firing the gun at all due to unavailability or greater expense of brass cased ammo!
Edit: As to my own personal experience, I've never fired steel cased ammo though an M1 carbine and can't comment specifically on that. For what its worth I generally try to avoid shooting steel cased ammo in guns not built for it, though I have used it before, and would do so again if nothing else were available or if I needed ammo and couldn't afford better ammo.
In my experience, the steel case stuff runs 100% though commie-bloc pattern AK and SKS guns designed for it. Never had a problem running 40 year old surplus steel cased ammo through my Mosin bolt action guns either.
I've only run a small amount of steel case through AR pattern guns, but when I've done it, the stuff has run 100% for me. . .not everyone has this experience. I have had some reliability issues with other .223 caliber guns. In terms of pure function, I've had good luck with steel (and aluminum) cased ammo in 9mm and .45 ACP; but not so much with .380 ACP.
If I were you, I'd just buy a box and see. At best it works fine, and at worst you'll have 20 single shots!
quote:Originally posted by Alan Rushing
brass is softer than steel . . .
Brass cases will not wear the chamber and other steel surfaces - as will steel cases on the same or simular chamber and steel surfaces.
Well, first of all, hardness isn't everything. You can cut a rock with water. . .its mostly a question of pressure and time. (See here for a cheesy example:
Wear and tear isn't just a function of hardnesses, its also a function of chamber/cartridge fit/dimensions and how most relative motion there is. EG ordinary guns do still eventually wear out firing brass cased ammo.
While it is true that the mild steel that cartridges are made from is somewhat harder than the soft brass in brass cartridges, even the cartridge steel is still quite a bit softer than the high-tensile strength hardened steel that gun chambers are made from.
With respect to wear and tear, the most important issue isn't so much mechanical wear of steel cartridges caused by going in and out of gun chambers or expanding a bit in place, its lower elasticity of steel cartridges leading to a poorer seal around the neck of the cartridge, increasing erosion that way.
Here's a state of the art summary on the relative effect of steel vs brass cartridges on the service life of AR-15 rifles. Obviously M1 carbines are a little different, though I think the same principles apply.
http://www.luckygunner.com/labs/brass-vs-steel-cased-ammo/
Its well worth reading this in its entirety, but the bottom line is even though steel cased ammo will wear out guns faster, you can still get pretty long functional service lives with steel cased ammo if you have to. If you aren't "rapid firing" the guns to deliberately increase wear and tear (as they did in this torture test), the service life will probably be even longer yet.
As with almost all firearms and their individual performances, you'll have to try it for yourself to see how it functions in your particular rifle.
Steel does NOT expand as well as brass, nor as fully. Extraction on straighter-walled cases is harder on the component parts due to "blow by" and residue left on the inside chamber walls.
Brass has a "self scrubbing" aspect to it, where dirt tends to want to stick to it, and gets extracted with the fired case, stuck to the case walls.
Steel does it too, but not as well, since it doesn't expand as well or as fully to the inner walls of the chamber.
But the Combloc rounds being tapered to aid in extraction is spot-on and one of the reasons for the Russian guns' reliability, whether it be PK/PKM, AK, Suchka...what have you.
I now have a better understanding of the use of steel cased ammo, which I plan to use in my vintage 43` M-1. Geo.
didn't take it to Joe grease knuckles who kinda knew what he was doing...........