We saw this Turkish Sterling 9mm at Outdoor Limited and we wanted to know if it was a viable alternative to our beloved Wolf and Tula. The only way to know would be to get some and test, so the ammo fairy dropped off a big old box of lead on Saturday and we got to testing today:
To see where it falls on the steel case spectrum, we grabbed some of the usual and a few unusual suspects from what was on hand and an actual brass cased round just because. The subjects included:
- Silver Bear 115gr +P+
- Wolf milspec (sealed bullets and primers)
- Sterling 115gr
- Tula copper wash 115gr
- Novosibirsk LVE 124gr
- Winchester white box 115gr
Only after the testing did my dad show up with a box of the Tula zinc wash which would have been better than the 124gr LVE stuff to keep everything 115gr but alas, shade tree ballistics is not an exact science.
The test mules were a G19.5 and because I wanted something not-Glock on the table... a vintage Ruger P85. The P85 is what was used for the chronograph tests as well as half the accuracy testing.
The chronographing showed us this:
During the first run with the Sterling we got those two really low numbers so we ran another 5 to see if that was 'normal' for this ammo or not. It appears to not be, the ammo is just lower powered than anything else and those variations were bad, but not horrible. There was noticeable flash (from the shooters viewpoint) from most of the Sterling when fired under the shelter where the chronograph was. None of the other ammo produced the fireworks.
That silver bear... still hot. It runs 1350 fps out of my G34 and is LOUD. P85 barrel is shorter but you can still see it's moving.
For accuracy we fired 5 round groups at ~12 yards from the bench. One shooter on the G19.5 the other on the P85:
I reordered the chart to show best to worst, that's not the order they were fired in. I want to say that horrible group with the Silver Bear out of the P85 was just a flyer but it wasn't, the whole thing was spaced out. Ick.
After the data collection we proceeded to just shoot some of it through the G19.5, a sig365x, a hellcat and a few through a XD-E. It's softer shooting in all the platforms as you would expect by the lower velocities and for the most part it ran OK. The P85 was choking on everything (it's got a new mag that hadn't been run before, I don't think it's good) so we're ignoring it as far as reliability goes. The hellcat/p365x/XD-E were fine but the G19.5 did have one legit FTF while bench testing but was fine off hand:
All that said, I would buy it again. I would need to run a lot more of it through my G34 before I used it in a match like I do the tula and wolf, but for practice I think it's OK. Being slightly softer can't hurt, it still knocks the steel around sufficiently. Sadly it's 22 cents a round, which is damn close to the 25 cents FG&G is charging for brass. Good on FG&G, but I want my steel 20% cheaper than my brass, not 10%. OL was my go to pre-plague, not sure they're going to earn my business going forward but we shall see.
The other tester can out himself if he wants to comment.
To see where it falls on the steel case spectrum, we grabbed some of the usual and a few unusual suspects from what was on hand and an actual brass cased round just because. The subjects included:
- Silver Bear 115gr +P+
- Wolf milspec (sealed bullets and primers)
- Sterling 115gr
- Tula copper wash 115gr
- Novosibirsk LVE 124gr
- Winchester white box 115gr
Only after the testing did my dad show up with a box of the Tula zinc wash which would have been better than the 124gr LVE stuff to keep everything 115gr but alas, shade tree ballistics is not an exact science.
The test mules were a G19.5 and because I wanted something not-Glock on the table... a vintage Ruger P85. The P85 is what was used for the chronograph tests as well as half the accuracy testing.
The chronographing showed us this:
During the first run with the Sterling we got those two really low numbers so we ran another 5 to see if that was 'normal' for this ammo or not. It appears to not be, the ammo is just lower powered than anything else and those variations were bad, but not horrible. There was noticeable flash (from the shooters viewpoint) from most of the Sterling when fired under the shelter where the chronograph was. None of the other ammo produced the fireworks.
That silver bear... still hot. It runs 1350 fps out of my G34 and is LOUD. P85 barrel is shorter but you can still see it's moving.
For accuracy we fired 5 round groups at ~12 yards from the bench. One shooter on the G19.5 the other on the P85:
I reordered the chart to show best to worst, that's not the order they were fired in. I want to say that horrible group with the Silver Bear out of the P85 was just a flyer but it wasn't, the whole thing was spaced out. Ick.
After the data collection we proceeded to just shoot some of it through the G19.5, a sig365x, a hellcat and a few through a XD-E. It's softer shooting in all the platforms as you would expect by the lower velocities and for the most part it ran OK. The P85 was choking on everything (it's got a new mag that hadn't been run before, I don't think it's good) so we're ignoring it as far as reliability goes. The hellcat/p365x/XD-E were fine but the G19.5 did have one legit FTF while bench testing but was fine off hand:
All that said, I would buy it again. I would need to run a lot more of it through my G34 before I used it in a match like I do the tula and wolf, but for practice I think it's OK. Being slightly softer can't hurt, it still knocks the steel around sufficiently. Sadly it's 22 cents a round, which is damn close to the 25 cents FG&G is charging for brass. Good on FG&G, but I want my steel 20% cheaper than my brass, not 10%. OL was my go to pre-plague, not sure they're going to earn my business going forward but we shall see.
The other tester can out himself if he wants to comment.
