![]() If you shoot any real volume, it doesn't take long to pay off the investment in a press and other associated equipment. My reality is that at any given USPSA match, I usually pick up about double as much brass as I shot (after helping tear down stages at the end of the match - I'm not an annoying brass rat), and I usually get primers for closer to 3 cents per, so I'm sitting at $5/box or just a hair over, and neither of my pistols has ever had an aluminum or steel case in its chamber. The high end of that estimate is $0.14/loaded round, or $7 per box of 50. Small pistol primers are 3-3.5 cents per, and powder will run 0.75-1.5 cents per loaded round, depending on which powder you choose. 124/125 gr coated bullets can be had in the neighborhood of 6 cents/bullet. 9mm brass is effectively free in most places, and where it's not free, it's 2-3 cents/case. The true way to saving money on ammo is not buying aluminum or steel-case, but rather loading your own. I actively avoid it, regardless of the price, and would only use steel cased ammunition if there was absolutely nothing else available. ![]() Steel cased ammunition would be the last on my list to be used in my defensive pistols. Expect reliability issues in regards to extraction, as well as increased wear on the extractor. ![]() We've discussed these rounds on this forum a few times now, and while we cannot pinpoint a reason why this is so, steel cased ammunition widely available today tends to stick in the chambers of firearms. Steel casings are cheaper to produce it seems. Aluminum ammunition would be my second choice in regards to ammunition to use in my defensive pistols. This may also be the reason why aluminum cased ammunition seemingly tends to be loaded soft. You could notice the bullet setback just from chambering the cartridge once, so if you are the type that repeatedly chambers and clears the same cartridge, you shouldn't be doing so anyway, but I'd be especially careful with aluminum cased ammunition. I've put thousands and thousands of rounds of Blazer Aluminum through a 1st gen P99 with no reliability issues, but I did notice that bullet setback can be severe with this ammunition. On some pistols, this can lead to reliability issues in regards to ejection, with the most notorious cases of reliability issues being with CZ-75 pistols years ago when they were known for coming out of the factory with weaker extractor springs. All else being equal, I prefer to use brass cased ammunition.Īluminum casings are lighter than brass. Brass casings are what these pistols were designed around.
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