Hmmm. Very interesting! Just how hard is that steel? Also, how does the hardness of that steel compare with the hardness of the nickel plating?

Bobby: I use nickel plated brass in many calibers that I load for and have for many many years. I have never had a problem with my dies, my guns or brass life with any of these following calibers I presently load nickel plated brass for:
17 Remington
22 Hornet
222 Remington
223 Remington
22-250 Remington
243 Winchester
257 Roberts (in the past)
25/06 Remington
280 Remington
To tell the truth I normally do not seek out nickel plated brass for my various Rifles. I do actively seek it out to use though when I own more than one Rifle in a particular caliber. Then I use the nickel plated brass to keep the brass seperate and "dedicated" to a particular gun.
I have been very happy over the many years I have been using the nickel plated brass!
No complaints of any kind nor abnormal wear what so ever in my experiences.
I only use Redding, R.C.B.S and Wilson dies for my reloading. No experience with Lee stuff.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

No way a nickel plating should be hard enough to scratch a properly hardened die part. I'd blame the die. I've run thousands of nickeled cases through various (non-Lee) dies with no problems.

Is the issue Nickel.....or Lee?

Are your cases plated on the INSIDE of the case neck? Mine do not seem to be. If they were, wouldn't that affect the insdie neck diameter? I think you have another problem other than the nickle cases.
Peter

No the die is working properly. I have several calibers in the collet dies and never have had any problems with them. This is the first time I've used nickle rifle brass and I had nothing but trouble trying to get it sized and loaded without ruining something. Definitely not worth the trouble.

I only have some brass for a .223 that's nickel plated but its not plated inside of the case. ?????

Hey! I've been promoted ! beudy.

JAL, I found some once-fired nickel plated brass (Speer I think) that I reformed and annealed for my 7.65 x 53mm Arg. Mau. They never split, but after reading concerns about it scratching FL resizing dies on this board I tossed them away. ...Maven

I have the same issuewith my 7 mag. I have tried everything. When I seat the bullet into a charged case it shaves some copper from it. Not just a little but a good bit. I have tried everything I could think of to prevent this. This was my first and last batch of nickle plated brass.

Some nickle plated brass is not plated inside, but a lot of it is, and I have no use for any of it!! I used it in several chamberings over a couple of years, but experienced enough problems that I decided it was not worth the hassles. I avoid the stuff now, and if I acquire it inadvertently, I just discard it or give it away. Plain brass is the way for me! Regards, Eagleye.

There is electrolytic nickel plating[used on cases] which cannot be heat treated . There is electroless nickel[ no electricity used in plating] which is actually nickel with phosphorous and that can be heat treated.This is sometimes used on firearms , some Browning HPs have been electroless nickel plated.

Though my profile says -'occupation -retired' it's actually retired metallurgist......And Grizz is right, those of us who are myth busters live a hard lonely life .....Profile updated !

billt...Let's try this one more time.....You said your carbide die scratched new unplated brass cases, after you used it to resize your nickel gunshow cases......And I said the exact same thing.....I quoted you....
You claim the gunshow cases f%%ked-up your carbide die. You infered the nickel cases scratched your carbide die to the extent you had to get a new one, because the old one scratched new virgin unplated cases....You then went on to tell us about all the super tough nickel alloys, out there, that "eat up carbide end mills".
And I went on to tell you that the plain, soft, nickel, that is plated on cartridge brass, can, no way in hell scratch a carbide die.....I'm not sure it could even scratch the aluminium body of some seating dies....In other words, SOMETHING OTHER THAN THE NICKEL PLATING ON YOUR GUNSHOW BRASS, SCREWED UP YOUR OLD CARBIDE SIZING DIE!!!!
And, by the way, the guys at Lyman, are probably 9 to 5, working stiffs, making 12 bucks an hour. Just puttin in their time 'till "sundown pay day".......
Anyhoo, I am going to keep using nickel, handgun cartridge cases, and keep resizing them as they come from the range, (without cleaning), until I get too old to reload, or until I experience the phenomena of soft nickel, destroying hard carbide dies.......Grant.

"And, by the way, the guys at Lyman, are probably 9 to 5, working stiffs, making 12 bucks an hour. Just puttin in their time 'till "sundown pay day"......."


I rest my case. Bill T.

The only legends I pay any attention to is people like Jack O'Conner, Col. George C. Nonte Jr., Ken Waters, and others I can't think of right now,(need that morning coffee first)! If you were running a carbide end mill in nickle alloy steel and it got ate up, you were running it too fast or didn't have the coolant turned on.

As has been stated by mete, the rockwell hardness of the nickel plateing on our brass shells is 22-35. Now I will make a guess that some of the tools that we use for handloading,(chamfer or case trimmers), might be made softer than that because the manufacturer knows that they will only be used to cut brass. High speed steel is expensive as raw blanks, and requires more expensive carbide tooling or grinders to machine it.

But as for the dies, they are made of a lot tougher steel, then heat treated to a hardness much higher than nickel.

Barrels are made of chrome-moly,( or stainless). If a barrel is so soft as to be scratched by something of RC 35 hardness, it needs to be replaced with one that is harder.

As was stated in another thread, again by mete,(or was it ass clown), nickel can be heat treated to a rockwell high enough to possibly scratch dies. One problem though, the heat required would melt the brass base metal!

I've been called a pot stirrer by some on some boards, because I enter into arguments, some times getting hostile. I apologize for the comment I made Bill. I'm just trying to be the voice of reason on a subject I think needs to be adressed.

Here's that thread from a couple weeks ago. Notice mete's posting as well as ass clown's.

http://www.accuratereloading.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=842753&page=3&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=14&fpart=1

I have a 7-08 collet die that I used to neck size many nickle cases with. it don't look like that! How the hell did you get the case neck to drag on that mandrel? In my collet die it doesn't even touch the mandrel except right where getting pinched by the collet. The brass then springs back away from the mandrel, not touching the mandrel while being withdrawn.

Bobby, you have some type of abrasive inside those cases that is doing that scratching! Nickel is just not hard enough to do that.

"If you were running a carbide end mill in nickle alloy steel and it got ate up, you were running it too fast or didn't have the coolant turned on."


And thats your analysis, "I didn't have the coolant turned on". You need to get off this hardness kick your on. It isn't about hardness, but TOUGHNESS! Any 8th grade science student knows that something hard will damage something soft. Waspalloy, Inconel, high nickel Stainless, are all soft, yet tough enough to make short work of the best coated Carbide, and or Ceramic tooling. Why do you think the cost of machining these materials is so high? It isn't because they remove easy. Nickel is TOUGH material, and a steady diet of it will trash most ANY steel die, or punch. Rockwell and Brinell readings compare HARDNESS, not TOUGHNESS. Bill T.

The hardness of the steel is a function of how "tough" the mandrel needs to be. It has to be tough enough so as not to break the primer punch, yet hard enough to last through many resizings, as always a balance.