Barrel wear

There is quite a lot of MEN and DAG 7.62 ammo available at the moment. This has a steel bullet with a nickel coating. There has been a lot of debate at my club about whether this will cause significant barrel wear.

Thank you for your enquiry. We have recently been asked a similar question regarding surplus military ammunition with steel jackets. As reports over the years on their effect on barrels has varied enormously we therefore posed the question to someone better qualified to answer the steel jacket, and also your enquiry regarding the more recent ammunition designed for use on ranges where lead projectiles are not permitted.RA:

I have heard that steel jacketed bullets can be hard on barrels, but this seems to more of a myth than reality. Such bullets have been around a long time and there seems to be no definitive evidence that they significantly reduce barrel life. The soft iron that they actually use on such bullets can be softer than the gilding metal or copper that is normally used. However, gilding metal or copper can act as a high pressure lubricant in its own right, and so may be kinder to the barrel in this respect. However, if the barrel is kept clean I do not see that there should be much of a problem.

Where there does seem to be a potential problem is the new "ecologically kind" lead free bullets being made by some manufacturers, who are using an iron/steel core instead of lead. I do not have specific information on the ones that you refer to but, from what I have heard, bullets of this type certainly do seem able to reduce barrel life quite considerably, possibly to about a third what it would have been with lead cored bullets.

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