I first want to state I am not a reloader (yet). All of my 357 and 44 magnum brass gets shared around amongst my friends.
My question is are they a bit of a gamble strength wise? Is there an inherent risk of the casing splitting, separating or expanding in the cylinder? The rounds are usually a bit cheaper, are the few cents saved per round worth risking a cylinder?

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U.S. Coast Guard, retired CPO

Yes the aluminum cased ammo should work fine in your revolver. As you noted aluminum ammo costs less than than brass case .
I've put hundreds of rounds of the aluminum cased 9mm ammo through my Glock 34 with no issues whatsoever. If you're not planning on reloading you can save $$ using it.

I went through the NRA Law Enforcement Handgun/Shotgun Instructors course with a Glock 19 and aluminum Blazer ammo. Shot close to 500 rounds with nary a problem.

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John 3:16
WAR EAGLE!

No problems with aluminum cased ammo. I’ve even reloaded some of the brass with no issues.

No problems with aluminum cased ammo, works better than a lot of the others.

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SWCA#2288
SWHF#407

Never had a problem with aluminum cased ammo but I have not shot a lot of it. In general aluminum is more susceptible to metal fatigue than other metals but unless you try to reload the cases that doesn't matter.

The little bit that I have shot has been CCI Blazer aluminum. No problems with reliability and just as accurate as their brass cased Blazer ammo. The big thing about the aluminum case is that it is not intended to be reloaded, it is intended to be used only once.

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VCDL, GOA, NRA

As stansdds says above, quality factory aluminum loaded cases such as CCI Blazer are excellent, and I have watched one sponsored competitor rise to Master shooting 50,000 rounds a year of Blazer 9mm. For the first time it is shot, it is accurate and safe. I have shot several cases of it in competition over many years with zero problems from it.

Heed the advice NOT to reload it, and you will have no problem with aluminum. When aluminum is fired, it work hardens severely and WILL FAIL IF RELOADED, maybe not the first time, but certainly MUCH quicker than brass. Aluminum cannot be annealed as simply as brass, and fired aluminum is for recycling not reloading, for safety.

Yes, I know personally some adventurous types who have reloaded .38 aluminum and shot it in .357 revolvers without injuring themselves or the guns, but they quickly produced a growing pile of split cases, and a .357 revolver shooting .38s is probably the least affected by split cases of any type of handgun.

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Science plus Art

It's ok for range ammo,but not for duty ammo. The crimp is weak on the bullet and gets weaker in long term storage. Most military does not use them.

I’m not getting really what you consider a gamble? Often brass will split along the length of the case, and case heads are known to fail. Some military calibers even have available a, “broken shell extractor” for that caliber if the case head is ripped off during the extraction step.

I have had zero problems when using aluminum cased ammo, and have used it extensively at a class when nothing else was available, and they were high round count days.

I have reloaded both 9mm and 45 GAP CASES that were aluminum with absolute success. They weren’t full charge, red line loads, but they fed, fired, and extracted as any brass cased ammo would.

Blazer or federal aluminum wouldn’t have been with us as long as they have if they were a “gamble.” Have you had any issues, or are just wondering?

Regards from the Commonwealth,
Rick Gibbs

There is no added risk of case failure, and actually case failure is not such a big deal, as long as we are talking about a normal load. A split case will mean a lot of extra gas and particles exiting the gun, but the cylinder will hold without any problem and be none the worse for wear.

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Pisgah

The aluminum cases are not reloader friendly .
Brass is more expensive and can be reloaded ... aluminum is one shot deal ... you can reload them but the aluminum is brittle and tends to crack and split in just a few reloadings .
Aluminum cased blazer has been on the market for a number of years ... test it in your gun to make sure it likes it before buying a large quantity ! Some pistols don't care for the stuff and wont eat it .
Gary

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Certified Cajun
NRA Member

I have seen aluminum cases split or crumple at the mouth with cartridges that had been repeatedly chambered and ejected. A friend was using Blazer range ammo for carry. One magazine had three damaged rounds. He changed his ways after I showed him the defects. Used as intended, aluminum cased ammo is fine.

I've probably fired thousands of Blazer alloy in 9mm, and many hundreds of .38. i don't have any experience with .357 in it, but I would try it wil confidence.

as mentioned in the above logs, it is for target use and maybe SD use, but

it is also intended to be only loaded into a gun, just one time, with the round being
sent down range, before it is extracted and then tossed into the garbage can.

Never a problem with 9mm. However, I’ve had .357 cases stick in my 686-6

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George

My experience has all been with 9mm and I have had no problems in many thousand rounds. My largest purchase was 8200 rounds on one of my trips South where I could buy it at Academy. In those days it was around $4.00 per box.

I have a M&P in 45acp. It will shoot all manner of brass and steel case is no problem. But, aluminum will not work. Clean, dirty, hot or cold it will not run. Aluminum works fine in all my other auto and revolvers. If your unit runs aluminum great if not, well then plan B.

In semi-auto handguns, repeatedly chambering the same round will loosen the bullet, for any type of casing.

The "gamble" is dollars-worth of damage for cents worth savings.

I buy quality revolvers, semi autos and rifles so I buy quality ammo. I don't take my rig to Wally Molly for oil changes for the same reason.

I have no intentions of reloading, so, I will pick up a box of the aluminum 357 ammo and see how it shoots.

Thank you for your input, I appreciate it!

Don

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U.S. Coast Guard, retired CPO

I have shot thousands of 9mm, and hundreds of .38/.357 with zero issues. I tried reloading some 9mm aluminum cases just to see if it would work in a pinch. The first two loadings of the batch of cases worked fine with standard 9mm 115 gr. bullets loaded to standard velocities. On the third loading, I ran into several issues. Oversize primer pockets, failure to hold a bullet, or if they did manage to hold everything together, the cases split about 80% of the time. After that, I wouldn't mind loading once fired aluminum cases, but only if nothing else was available.

I haves only shot aluminum case .38 Special and .357 Magnum ammo and very little at that. There was a time long ago where I bought 150 rounds of each and they shot fine in my revolvers. Never tried anything but brass cases in any semi-auto I own. Not that I think it will hurt anything it's because I reload and want the cases.

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Freedom is never free!!
SWCA #3437

Since you asked.

There's no good reason to do this....but

There's no good reason to do this...but, part 2

Thousands and Thousands of aluminum cases later, I've yet to have any issue with it.

Heck, back in the 80's I went through thousands of those plastic cased .38 special ammo without an issue.

I've shot thousands and thousands of rounds of 9mm aluminum Blazer with good results.

I am not as crazy about Blazer aluminum in my revolvers. I tried it for a while but quickly went back to brass. It's been a while but I think sticky extraction was an issue.

The only problem I have had was some years back I shot some in a 45 ACP revolver using moon clips. The cases expanded in some manner and I actually broke a demooner tool. Other than that, I would use the Blazer for virtually reason, and I never worry about repeated chambering because I almost never unload a firearm other than by firing it.

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NHI, 10-8.

No issues with quality made Aluminum ammo - however IMHO the savings just aren't enough for me to even consider them. There have been times that I could buy AE Brass cased ammo for less than Blazer!

Went through a CHP class with blazer aluminum 9mm. My Walther PPS REALLY did not like them. Every type of failure you can imagine and some new ones I had never seen. Should have tried them in it before I went, but just grabbed the cheapest thing I had on hand. It has never hiccupped with any brass cased ammo. Gave away the several hundred rounds I had left.

Not so much in shooting ammunition loaded with aluminum cases.. Fun usually starts when you have to punch out the old berdan primer. Then sizing, which may leave you with case mouth splits. And in firing you may end up with neck or body splits. supposedly the alloy will only allow a couple loadings if you are lucky. I usually get to see the side effects after such a case has been fired. Frank

Years ago I was given a box of aluminum cased Blazer in .25 ACP. I didn't have a .25 ACP pistol so I bought a nice Beretta 950BS "just because." The Blazer ammo functioned just fine and I have reloaded those cases a few times. Some of the Blazer cases are Boxer primed and some are Berdan primed. I will say that those .25 ACP aluminum cases are quite robust and I still reload them today with the #3 buckshot round ball. But I wouldn't reload aluminum cases for any other cartridge and I have no desire to ever shoot even the factory loaded stuff in the 625.

A couple points of clarification.

1) Work hardening isn’t the issue with aluminum, it’s fatigue. Cartridge cases, brass, steel or aluminum have to expand to seal the case agains the chamber wall. Brass is nearly ideal and steel is strong enough that while it also fatigues it doesn’t do so at the nearly the same rate as an aluminum. Steel has a fatigue limit below which it doesn’t have a fatigue life.

For example a paper clip in normal use holding a couple pieces of paper together will last for decades. Put it over too many sheets however and it will exceed its fatigue limit. Put it over an even taller stack of paper and it will exceed its elastic limit (I.e it will not go back to its original shape). Either way it’s now working off a limited fatigue life. The greater the bend the greater the fatigue, and bending it back into shape further reduces the fatigue life.

Aluminum on the other hand fatigues with each load cycle, ot matter how small and it will fatigue much faster at higher loads closer to its elastic limit. Those qualities don’t make it well suited to reloading as it will have a very short useful life.


2) Split necks and spider cracks in a case body are non issues as the gas is sealed lower on the case by the case web.


3) Incipient head separations will lead to partial or complete head separations and it’s also not a serious uncontrolled gas situation. The separation, partial or otherwise occurs when the case stretches after it has adhered to the chamber wall and doesn’t result in any significant gas loss. In the vast majority of cases the brass actually separates on ejection and even a fully separated case head is usually extracted and ejected from the chamber.

I’ve probably had a dozen or so separated cases over the last 45 years and I’ve only had one that left the case body on the chamber and it came out with a bronze bush. I’ve never had to use a case extractor.


4) Soft cartridge heads are where things get very interesting. For example, in the late 1980s I came across a batch of new, never loaded, I primed TW73 5.56 NATO brass. I found it across the border from MN maybe 200 miles away from the Twin Cities Ammunition Plant. The gun shop owner had come across it and both of us came to the same assumption that it was surplussed brass after things wound down in Vietnam 15 years prior.

I bought a couple thousand cases and and loaded practice ammo and Varmint ammo in it, loading it 500 at a time and wearing those cases out before going to the next 500. In the early 90s I loaded up the last 500 and was using it Varmint hunting in my Varmint AR-15 off a bipod when a shot sounded funny and I could not spot the round’s impact point. Then I noticed the rest of the cartridges in the magazine were lying on the ground, followed by noticing the magazine outside the magazine well was beer can shaped, and then that the bolt carrier wouldn’t move.

Upon further inspection I noted the bottom of the bolt carrier had fractured at the front and was bent straight down into the magazine well.

I had to drive the bottom of the carrier back into place with a hammer and punch to enable me to get it out of the upper receiver. Once it was out it was clear that the case head had failed and the max I’ve amount of gas had cut four of the locking lugs off the bolt and the rest had failed, allowing the bolt to be driven back into the bolt carrier, splitting it as it weakest point and blowing the bottom of it into the magazine well. This all happened before the bolt carrier could move back more than about 1/4”.

It needed a new bolt and new bolt carrier, and just to be safe it even though the barrel extension looked fine, it got a new barrel just to be safe.

After researching the possible cause of a new brass case failing, I learned that this happens when case heads are not properly hardened or become to soft when the case neck and shoulder are annealed.

I also found a reference to a lot of TW73 brass that had been condemned due to concerns over possible improper annealing and the potential for soft case heads. Twin Cities had condemned the brass in the barrels it was stored in a and sold it for scrap in barrels, without first crushing it to render it unusable. A local scrap dealer apparently bought it and left it in the barrels where 15 years alter another dealer eventually bought it not knowing it’s history and sold it as reloadable brass.

——-


As a result,

A) I don’t worry about using aluminum case ammo, but I don’t reload it.

B) I have a great deal of respect for the gas management capabilities of the AR-15 after a total case head failure.

C) I’m not inclined to buy new surplus brass from anything other than an established company (like Federal which will sell new military brass in consumer packaging that is either contract over run brass, or is factory second brass without safety issues).

D) I don’t anneal brass for anything other than case forming purposes. When I do anneal a neck and shoulder between case forming steps it’s the time tested method of doing it with the bottom half or three quarters of the case submerged in a pan of water to ensure the lower portion of the case receives no heat at all.


The current method of heating the case in an open air fixture relying on limited time and heat intensity to anneal the neck and shoulder before the heat transfers to the head doesn’t appeal to me. There be dragons there and too much heat can cause big problems.

Interesting nobody mentioned what I consider the biggest upside of aluminum=cased ammo, it's a lot lighter than brass. I'm content to carry a steel gun, so I'm not fixated on ultralight, but for a carry gun it's nice to shave a few grams where you can and for bulk ammo at the range or match, it's nice that your thousand-round case isn't quite such a brick.
I wish they sold new empty cases.

I have to agree with BB57 on several points but I didn't read that entire post.

I fired ten boxes of 9mm Blazer aluminum ammo in about three or four days thirty or more years ago. Couldn't tell it from brass-cased ammo but I seldom shoot anything that I didn't handload using brass cases. My only experience with aluminum cases.

I no longer anneal anything. When brass is worn out, it goes in the salvage pile. I used to have to anneal when I made .219 Zipper brass from .25-35 or .30-30 cases. Glad those days are behind me.

I'd never be so hard up as to handload aluminum cases, though they might work okay. I just think brass cases are better and have no complaints based on several years of handloading many, many different standard, improved, and wildcat rifle cartridges along with probably no more than a dozen handgun cartridges.