I wasn't aware of brass plated steel cases until a recent purchase from freedom munitions. I thought I ordered my usual hum-drum 9mm 115 grain RN range ammo. I opened the shipping box and found I ordered "American Steel". Thinking it was a packaging mistake, I checked out the shipping order and did a little online research. Just looking at the ammo I couldn't tell any difference. I was able to confirm these brass plated steel cases were attracted to a magnet, however. Can and should you reload these cases? Why are they priced slightly over normal brass?? I was always under the impression steel cased ammo was econ-O-junky.

To me its a new one!
Someone has to pay for the plating process and I can't imagine that its very thick so I don't know that you'd want to resize it.

Steel case is typically cheaper.

You can reload steel case but you'd have to read up on it.

It's not necessarily junk but many people seem to equate dirty with junky. I look at it as I'm either shooting or not.

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INHO I don't want steel cases in my loading dies. Friends who have tried it report short case life, including 1st reload failures.
I am NOT a fan of Freedom Munitions ammo for more than one reason.

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Science plus Art

Never heard of brass plated steel cases.. Are you sure they are not copper washed steel cases like you typically get when buying Soviet surplus 7.62x54 rimmed ammo?

Oh no..........

now we have to start reading the fine print and foot notes !!

Bummer.

Here is a past thread on them.

US Made, Brass Plated Steel Cased Ammunition.

There is a lot of junk out there, always run a strong magnet over your range brass to pull out the stuff.

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Still Running Against the Wind

I found a bunch of the stuff a while back. Didn't know they plated steel with brass, thought it was only the shiny zinc type coating. Live and learn.

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never get out of the boat

Neither have I - mind posting a pic?

I used to do brass, nickel, zinc and copper plating for antique car restorations. Brass plating has very narrow parameters for it to come out nice and is expensive. I wonder if it's really brass or some other flash plate like zinc and chromate.

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Si vis pacem para bellum.

.... but it's still a steel case and it won't be worth sizing. Just get some 'brass' brass.

Once shot stuff can be had pretty cheap and better outfits have higher quality.

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"He was kinda funny lookin'"

You can try, but I doubt you will find the results satisfactory.

Since steel has a dfferent "modulus of elasticity" from brass, you may find dies designed to resize brass may not adequately resize steel cases resulting in inadequate neck tension to hold the bullet.

If you try it, proceed with care knowing that you are doing something experimental. Check each step and be prepared to abandon the effort if it doesn't work right.

If you do achieve success, please come back and share with us what you did to get it to work.

Why would you even consider anything like this that may cause problems when the cost of 9mm brass is so cheap? Last time I looked, there were several companies selling cleaned 9mm for less than $40 per 1000.

It's not experimental. Plenty of people do it. Don't ask me why but they do and there's tons of info online about how to.

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[QUOTE=Eddietruett;139637816]Why would you even consider anything like this that may cause problems when the cost of 9mm brass is so cheap? Last time I looked, there were several companies selling cleaned 9mm for less than $40 per 1000.[/QUOTE

It would be easy to collect spent cases with a magnet.

It's what they say it is

Brass or copper it's still steel cases.

I have bullets (projectiles) that a brass plated and some that are copper plated.

American Steel


Freedom Munition’s American Steel is here and is going to change the way you look at steel cased ammo. Our steel cases are made in America, they are brass plated for enhanced feeding and reliability and loaded with an X-Treme bullet. American Steel is new ammunition but at a remanufactured ammunition price point.

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Still Running Against the Wind

Sellier & Belot had a 115gr 9mm loading called Range Safe and I inadvertantly found some (about a dozen, or so) cases mixed in with my brass: noticed them as I sort by manufacturer after cleaning and before any actual reloading. They have a red paint around the primer cup, and were a little bit more difficult to re-size, took a little more effort to hand seat new primers.

They fired and ejected normally, no difference that I could discern... I didn't bother to try and reload them a 2nd time. I have all the brass 9mm cases I can ever imagine needing and almost always find a box or two of once-fired ones at the range: all nice and shiney, and all the same manufacturer, usually.

Cheers!

I've reloaded plenty of the Winchester steel cased 9mm. No problems whatsoever. I have a big magnet on a rod that I use to pick it up with. Some of it has been loaded 4 times, plus the factory load.

is that plain steel case - or brass plated steel case?
also, I wonder what primer they use - berdan perhaps?

That presents a new twist for my range, which does not allow steel case (we recycle the brass to keep our costs down). If that starts getting through the front desk, it will cause problems when we get to the recycler.

No idea

They use modern normal primers you'd use

You'd have to Google it. Its been years since I looked at it

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[quote=roundgun;139637830]That got right past me! Lol. You would think a lazy guy like me would have picked up on that immediately. When people ask me why I like Revolvers, I tell them I'm too lazy to chase brass.

Left side is brass plated steel case. Right side is traditional brass case. Head stamp for the steel case does have "ST" FYI.


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Man! without a magnet or the ST headstamp ya almost couldn't tell the difference!