From: "E.J. Totty", [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Steve, and Guy,
You two are giving me a head ache!
Only kidding.
As an aside, with every lot of ammo that I purchase,
(and I buy ammo in thousand round lots - some larger)
I take (10) randomly selected rounds from different boxes,
and first weight each of them. I check overall dimensions,
measure seating, and concentricity of the bullet seat.
I then disassemble them and check the individual
pieces, and the powder charge. In the latter, I have received
several lots of Norinco ammo that had a rather strange stick
of propellant rather than a usual loose powder charge.
All of the bullets have a steel core, about .15 inch dia.,
down thorough the center.
I have several hundred that have a steel jacketed ogive,
flashed with copper, as is the case - which is also steel.
To clarify, the center core is steel, wraped in lead, and
packaged in a steel ogive.
I have dimensioned these after discharging them, and
it appears that they might be reloadable at least once. I plan on
a few trial reloads in the future when the time permits.
Virtually none of them has ever cracked, or shown
signs of deterioration when fired. I realize that steel isn't the best
choice for a case, but it seems to perform quite nicely otherwise.
I have an SKS that was made before 1989, and it apparently
has a hard chromed barrel. The performance hasn't degraded any
since I purchased it 10 years ago. It's still reasonably accurate with
the iron sights. It has seen over 6000 rounds through the barrel.
Now, what puzzles me in your respective statements
above, is the term 'steel cored'. How, would you explain, does a
steel cored (is this an entire core of steel, or a steel rod, or what?)
bullet commence to destroy a barrel? If you are inferring that there
is an imbalanced condition resulting from a misplaced CG of the
bullet, I could understand; but otherwise I am drawing a blank.
ET
--
If you have steel going against steel it will wear out
faster than lead (which is softer) against steel. Obviously
there is more to it than that, hardnesses of the steel etc.
If you have a copper jacket and a lead ogive around the
core obviously it will not wear the barrel out any faster
than a totally lead cored bullet.
I did hear a lot about the Norinco ammo causing problems.
There appeared to me to be two different types, both
7.62x39 but in different boxes, one was steel jacketed
the other appeared to be copper jacketed (and reportedly
lead cored). As I very dimly remember one type came
in a green box and the other in a yellow box and it was
the steel jacketed stuff that people seemed to moan about.
I have to say at the time I did wonder whether people
were having barrels wearing out simply because they were
shooting so much of the stuff as it was so cheap (this
was early 90s). There was a guy I used to shoot with
who got through thousands of rounds of the stuff over
the course of a few months at Tamiami range near Miami.
The point is if you have ammo to burn, you go to the
range and perhaps have a bit more of a plink than usual,
i.e. firing off a lot more rounds a lot more rapidly
than with your other guns. I mean who cared? At the
time you could buy an SKS for $99 and a case of ammo
for the same price (or even less).
Some of the SKSes were a bit dodgy as well, a large
batch were recalled. Not sure what the metallurgy of
the barrels was up to but presumably it is inferior
to your average commercial rifle in the West.
According to my log book I shot both types of ammo
through a MAK-90 and got better scores with the (supposedly)
lead cored stuff, but I'm not sure that means anything
out of 100 rounds fired (especially out of an AK).
Anyway, Chinese rubbish is not really my field of
expertise, so I will leave it to Alex to report back
his results.
Steve.
Cybershooters website: http://www.cybershooters.org
List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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