Since 2006 I have shot Wolf Ammo almost exclusively in my AR15-pattern firearms and have done so virtually without issue. I have fired upwards of 3,000 rounds/year (aggregate) in my carbines, with the majority of that shooting done with one Colt 6520 (see Tale of Two Rifles and Back In Black elsewhere on this site). I run Wolf for a thousand rounds or so without
cleaning and don't run into any problems until I'm very deep into that
thousand round count. Even then I've never encountered a stuck case
that didn't' come out with mortaring, and I've never seen a stuck Wolf
case in a Colt that required a rod to pound it out. *
How do I do that? Isn't Wolf supposed to be the WORST thing you can to do an AR? Isn't it dirty, smelly, bad for the gun, corrosive (no), and just generally a bad idea? Why don't I have those problems?
My suggestions for anyone looking to shoot a lot of steel cased ammo:
-make sure you have a 5.56 chamber. if you can't be sure of the chamber then have it reamed to be sure.
-you need to have a well-gassed gun. LMT and a few others may have tight gas ports.
-you need to tune your action spring and buffer to the lighter load.
-you need to deal with your extractor tension. A good 5-coil spring, black buffer, and possibly even an O-ring.
-you need to lube the hell out of the damn gun, specifically the BCG. Buy a large bottle of Slip2000 EWL and hose down the BCG before you shoot. Having a light coat of lube in the chamber will also help, but you need to make sure it's not dripping wet in this location.
-you need to clean the gun more often. If you're at a 3-day class and
you want to be sure that the gun will run every day, I'd clean the BCG
and chamber, ESPECIALLY THE CHAMBER, every night. Buy some Slip2000 725 Cleaner/Degreaser and hose down the BCG and chamber, and hit the chamber with one of an M16 & AR15 Chamber Brush. You may want to consider popping off the extractor and cleaning under it as well as the bolt face.
If you're the kind of person that can accept a thing at face value, take advice from those that have gone before you, implement said advice, and be happy, then the above is probably where you can stop reading. If, however, you are a "why" or a "how" kind of person, I'll attempt to go into further detail below.
*2011 footnote: Beginning in mid-2010 I began having stuck cases with Wolf ammunition in rifles previously known to run it and run it well. This leads me to believe that they changed something in their production in this timeframe, perhaps as a result of the panic buying of the years previous. Regardless of the cause, I experienced numerous stuck cases that required the use of a cleaning rod to pound out the case. This would occur at approximately 300 rounds in to an aggressive firing schedule. Once the stuck case occurred it would repeat with increasing regularity (one in less than 100 rounds fired would stick) regardless of ammunition used (to include Federal XM193 and Black Hills 75 and 77 grain, among others), leading me to believe that something was coating the chamber. Note, I do not subscribe to the internut theory that epoxy/shellac/polymer is melting from the outside of the case, but I do believe that the more rigid steel case allows more carbon and other materials to blow back around the outside of the case and get between the case and the chamber. Once the chamber was scrubbed the process could begin anew.
I switched to Brown Bear ammunition and had no problems. However, the above is the reason I have amended these instructions to include lubing the chamber as well as placing emphasis on cleaning out the chamber more frequently.