I use nickel in my .223, .22-250, .25-06, .270, .30-06, and .338 mag and so far have not incurred any of the difficulties described in any of these posts. Maybe I'm just lucky.

Grizz
Most of this is old wives tales and myth.

Well here are some more old wives tales and myth. Nickel plating is the first stage of chrome plating. Why, well look it up in your chemistry books.

Nickel is very hard and is a large constituent of stainless steel. The more nickel the harder the steel the tougher the machining. Some impellers used on pumps, pumping corrosive acids are so hard they can only made with tungsten carbide tools, No they are not made from chrominum.

Now why would you nickel plate cartridge brass in todays high tech money grabbing competition. Not because Mr Grizz likes it.

And why do you never see nickel plated brass with the BR clan,ha? Is it because these guys are dumb and don't know good brass when they see it.

Good cartrige brass is made with 75% copper,zinc, tin, lead silver and some aluminum or there about. This sort of alloy is very tough and requires annealing during the many stages of drawing and a final annealing when done. Note, Lapua brass perhaps you can see it if you look.

Now you can also make cartridge brass with 85% of copper and zinc and leave out the expensive silver and tin.
With such an alloy you can almost complete a cartrige case without annealing. On the end the cases are maybe still soft and wont need to be annealed.

Since nickel plating makes the cases hard and tough and hides all surface impureties of the soft brass it is a good economical deal, instead of expensive alloys and many annealing steps. Plating on the other hand is cheap and fast in a big galvanic tub and has a shiny sex appeal.

If you like there are a lot more old wives tales.

When the Nato Cartridge was first indroduced it was based on the 300 Sav case. This configuration was bad economy, beause it produced 17% scap and rapid fire trouble, hence the long sloping shouder of the 308.

Now somebody figured out how to toughen up cheap alloyed brass by nickel plating, we are now getting steep shoulderd brass. Like WSSM Ultra Mag etc. But the brass is not cheap to buy. We are made to believe how expensive its manufacture. Well, you can have your nickel plated brass for what it's worth.

I have to agree with 280ackleyrized, nickel doesn't do anything to IMPROVE my reloads, so I can't really see the need for it. Maybe it don't hurt either, but it's not worth the argument, or the change to use it.

[quote
I really can't understand how the INTERNAL volume could be diminished by an EXTERNAL coating???

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In THEORY, the case now has thicker walls after being plated. The chamber is the ultimate outer limit of volume for the powder, and the chamber minus case is the usable volume...so thicker walls==smaller volume==higher pressure from the same powder charge. That's the theory, and its correct, but...

In REALITY, the difference, as noted earlier, is very small.