What do you guys think about reloading Win nickle casing'g verse's brass casing's. What are the pro's and con's.

I reload some nickel cases in .270 Win and here is what I found:
1. They are more brittle and develop a little higher
pressures than regular brass.
2. Harder to trim and will dull a Hornady case trimmer.
3. Same loads tended to be a little faster (50fps) than
regular brass cases.
4. Difficult to anneal necks compared with other brass.
5. Higher SD's probably due to differences in neck
tensions and case elasticity.
6. Easy to clean up and stays clean.

When they start chipping around the mouth it is time to throw them away as these chips can cause problems in your
dies and splitting is next. Nickel cases are reloadable for
a limited number of firings before work hardening sets in
and then they are just too hard to reload easily compared
to regular brass. Federal nickel cases did a little better
than Winchester as for overall reloadability and life span.
If you hunt with several different calibers, they are useful to quickly tell which cartridge you are loading and
might prevent loading the wrong caliber. Pistol is a whole
different story and I have little experience other than a
few .357 mag loads that were not all that accurate after
reloading twice. If anyone has any information on annealling
nickel cases I would be willing to try again. The nickel plating seems to require higher heat than the brass beneath
it and this can cause over hardening in many cases. I would just throw them away after 2-3 loadings and not risk primer
and case problems. FWIW...BLR7

I'd have to agree with BLR7 on all counts. I bought 40 Rems in 30-06 once. Still have a few left, necks started splitting after a few loads that weren't very hot. The brass cases I've been using for the same load in the same rifle (six loads so far) are working just fine.

cobia79 wrote: If anyone has any information on annealling

nickel cases I would be willing to try again. The nickel plating seems to require higher heat than the brass beneath

it and this can cause over hardening in many cases.

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I think the reason that it's difficult/impossible to anneal the nickle plated brass is because it is actually bimetalic!



Two different metals which would take different temperatures to get to the proper temperature and brass is quenched when it gets to temperature and the nickle is probably just allowed to "air cool"!

In other words, if you quench the nickle plated brass, the plating probably becomes brittle and the brass becomes soft, so with this kind of change it leads me to believe that the two actually "partially" separate when the case is quenched and thus the nickle flakes away from the brass!

Howdy,

I've had my best luck with Win. .280 rem nickel plated by reaming the nickel off of the inside of the necks. I get a lot smoother bullet pull, and it is more repeatable. Otherwise, I've not loaded any of this brass more than four or five times. That seems to be about the maximum number of times that I want to risk it with any brass. Best to you and let us know how it turns out.

Coach