I have just been re-reading Birster's book. He does a lot of tests of steel vs lead. Although I'm not 100% sold on his experimental methodology, his basic conclusion was that steel was a little worse, but not by much.
As far as the clay sports are concerned, it doesn't matter so long as everybody uses the same. In a letters response to a steel cartridge "test" in Pull! magazine where the author said steel would yield lower scores, somebody wrote in from a club (Kingsferry?) that was forced to go to 100% on-toxic, and he said it made no difference to the skeet scores/averages.
The one big disadvantage Brister found or noted was that steel shot wears the barrel - bulging the barrel just before the choke cones. Perceptible bulging could occur in as few as 500 rounds. Other guns might go 5000+. The thinner walled finer guns were obviously the ones that were more likely to suffer. I think that includes B25s which have relatively thin barrels.
Andrew.
As far as the clay sports are concerned, it doesn't matter so long as everybody uses the same. In a letters response to a steel cartridge "test" in Pull! magazine where the author said steel would yield lower scores, somebody wrote in from a club (Kingsferry?) that was forced to go to 100% on-toxic, and he said it made no difference to the skeet scores/averages.
The one big disadvantage Brister found or noted was that steel shot wears the barrel - bulging the barrel just before the choke cones. Perceptible bulging could occur in as few as 500 rounds. Other guns might go 5000+. The thinner walled finer guns were obviously the ones that were more likely to suffer. I think that includes B25s which have relatively thin barrels.
Andrew.
