Good morning,

ANy opinions on whether a GLock can handle heavy use with steel cased ammo? A friend was thinking of getting some bulk Wolf 45acp for plinking. It's the typical WOlf steel cased ammo.

I have heard that the metal of some chambers is too soft for consistent use with steel cased ammo, unlike military rifles that have hard crhrome steel chambers.

Is this a legitimate worry?

I would think the Tenifer surface treatment that Glocks have would preclude any possible damage from continued use of steel cased ammo. However, I have no experience using steel ammo as it is not reloadable and I really think I shoot to reload as much as I reload to shoot.

The steel used for cartridge cases is very soft, it has to be since they are drawn in the same fashion that brass cases are. Guaranteed, the steel in the barrel is much harder than the cases, and they also should have a coating for corrosion resistance that actually prevents direct contact steel to steel. This could be lacquer, wax, cadmium, tin. All of these have been used.

Have your friend buy a test box or two before getting that case...guns are picky eaters.

As for damage to the chamber, I seriously doubt that anything bad wold happen...stuff is pretty soft. Have been reports of extractor damage but I haven't seen any first hnd (and I use to shoot a lot of 1940's dated US steel cased .45).

I wouldn't worry about "ruining" your gun with wolf, or any other commercial steel caseings. But TWO DIFFERENT glocks that I have owned wouldn't feed/eject worth a squat with it. My friends never had any issues, but I did.

My $.02

You should be plenty safe with the Wolf stuff... like the above poster said, its very soft steel, and coated so there isn't any metal to metal contact, and also, they are loaded on the low end of the pressure spectrum so if you are shooting a compact or subcompact gun, they will definetly not cycle right, but a full size should digest them.

They won't feed in my compact Beretta 8045F, but cycle fine in my buddies Dan Wesson Pointman 1911

I've put a couple of cases (1000 per) thru three different glocks (22,23,17C) and haven't had even a hic-up with the stuff. I've also used their 223, 7.62X39, and 45 stuff with no complaints. Granted it's far from match grade ammo, but for doing drills at 15-20 meters it did the job fine. And for about half the price of some of the regular brands. :D