I'm looking for 280 Rem brass made by Winchester that is NOT nickel plated. Does it exist?

Rumor has it Winchester makes this stuff?

http://shootersproshop.com/ind...1_115&product_id=100

I think Midway has it.

I only remember seeing Winchester 280Rem as nickel.

I read that Win only makes 280 brass with nickel, and that has been the case for several years now. So, my choices are Norma, Nosler, and Remington, which the latter is not something I want to do. I do not like RP brass.

Norma allegedly makes Nosler brass. I've heard this from multiple sources. I can get 100 pieces of Norma for about 112.00.

I do like the idea of Nosler having already wt sorted and fully prepping the cases though.

just ordered 100 pieces from sinclair, Norma.

Can't answer the question as to who makes Nosler brass. I did buy some of their 280 2nds about a year ago. For the life of me I couldn't figure out why they were seconds. The batch I had I spot checked the weight and didn't even worry about sorting them.

Price is around $21/50
http://shootersproshop.com/ind...1_115&product_id=100


That said I have used Norma 280 brass for my wildcats blown out and necked it up and down from 243 to 416. Some call it soft. What I found if I stayed in the 63,000psi range it would last the 5-6 loads I normally want. After that I pitch and start over.

Doc, I have several hunderd RP .280 most of which are sized and primed (and a few bullets plus dies). As I sold my .280 #1 this stuff is excess if you are interested please e-mail mrmichals@comcast.net Mike

What;s wrong with RP brass? I've loaded it for years, and so far no problems. Also, if you don't mind responding, what's wrong with nickel plated brass?

Mike, thanks for the offer. Very kind. I'm going to pass on the brass, however.

Greg, I do not care for RP brass for the most part due to past findings of internal inconsistencies in addition to some mentors who flat out tell me that RP is really junk when you are trying to get solid repeatable accuracy. I tried RP brass for many years and was never able to achieve the accuracy and repeatability that was easily done with Winchester.

As to not wanting nickel plated, it's not that anything is wrong with the nickel plating but reloading it. Refer to this article:

forget nickel

quote:

FORGET NICKEL-PLATED BRASS.... I liked the looks and feel of nickel-plated cases, but I don't load them anymore and here is why. The cases are strong and it is easy enough to outside neck turn them. That is not the problem. The nickel-plating on the case neck ID is like sandpaper. The only way you might be able to remove this grit is with a case neck ID reamer if you have a "tight neck" chamber and enough neck wall thickness to work with. If you have a loaded nickel-plated round laying around and don't believe me, just pull the bullet. It will look like you pulled it out of a tube of 180 grit wet/dry sandpaper. If you pull the bullet out of a brass case mouth that has been carefully chamfered and polished with the steel wool process above, it will be essentially like out of the bullet box. Want copper in the barrel? Start by sanding the surface of those nice polished precision bullets. Try it with a Moly Coated bullet and it is even worse; the nickel-plated cases scrape off the Moly. The nickel-plated case neck IDs don't get any better after you reload them a few times. They are still like sandpaper. Think about a few of those nickel pieces of grit imbedding into the copper of the bullet and what they do to your rifle barrel! I have heard that the nickel is hard enough to score some reloading dies and also wear down the expander ball. Any metal that hard, should be kept away from your precision barrel. I have heard that some people have had success in removing the nickel plate from the neck IDs with a stainless steel brush and a drill motor. I haven't tried it.

MORE ABOUT NICKEL PLATING.... This is interesting about the mechanical properties of the nickel plating:
Electrolysis nickel plating is a process for chemically applying nickel-alloy deposits onto metallic substrates using an auto catalytic immersion process without the use of electrical current. ...snip....
Hardness and Wear Resistance
One of the most important properties for many applications is hardness. As deposited, the micro-hardness of electrolysis nickel coatings is about 500 to 700 HK100. That is approximately equal to 45 to 58 HRC and equivalent to many hardened alloy steels. Heat treatment causes these alloys to precipitation harden and can produce hardness values as high as 1100 HK100, equal to most commercial hard chromium coatings. ...snip...

Note that if you anneal your nickel plated necks, you are hardening the nickel plating. It can be harder than many alloyed steels before you anneal and can increase is hardness as much as 2 fold by precipitation hardening. I sure wouldn't want those tiny little hard pieces inside the neck getting embedded in the bullet's copper surface and then fire lapping my nice shiny barrel.

Doc,

What you have posted above, may be totally true..and the finer points of it can be argued all day long...

however from all my personal experience with nickel brass, I have ZERO contribution to causing a load or round to be inaccurate as compared to the same load and same rifle using NON nickel brass...

As far as damage to a reloading die, haven't seen that either, regardless of what the experts say.. I've had grit in a die, scratch the brass, which popped right back out after being shot.. and cleaning the grit out of the die with a bore brush and some cleaner took care of the problem...

as far as damage to a bullet, that has been pulled and then reloaded again, I have never seen an issue arise that lead to damage on anything or inaccuracy.. if it was that bad, the cause was going to be something else..

as far as problems when annealing the brass?
well I neck size brass, bump the shoulder back with a body die, and anneal every 4th firing..

I varmint calibers...223, 22.250 and 243, I have had batches of nickel brass go 40 plus reloads.. and that number is pretty common if one takes care of the brass, and doesn't get overzealous on the powder scale....like trying to make a 280 into a 7 STW for instance..

as far as 'hurting a barrel'... many gunsmith friends have told me they see more wear and tear on many barrels, (from guys who freak out over little details such as this)from them scrubbing the hell out of the barrels constantly cleaning them...and not being real good at it..

I'm not a bench rest shooter... I am a varmint shooter... and my main quarry are sage rats, from the size in height of a small soda can to a 20 ounce sized soda bottle...

I've got several 223s, with over 10,000 rounds down the barrel that will still nail them at 250 yds all day long...90% are taken within 200 yds and under...

22.250s that have over 5,000 rounds down the barrel and will do the same thing and even further being a little flatter shooting at those longer ranges..

and several 243s also with well over 4,000 rounds down the barrels, that will still hit pretty much what I aim them at at 300 yds or more..

I have reloaded over 100,000s of rounds, and have shot those are varmints... and my experience in anything you are concerned about does not mirror what you quoted above...

It might matter to the Benchrest world, but if you are not shooting in those circles, you can hunt a lifetime with ONE 280 and not have to worry about those concerns...

I use a LOT of nickel brass.. in fact, I buy the Win 280 nickel brass and use it to neck down and reform to make it into 7 x 57 and 6.5 x 57, and even 6mm Rem nickel brass for those calibers..

I don't shoot a 280... so the headstamp means nothing to me..

I keep all my brass in lot numbers of 10 to 25 rounds.. 10 for larger calibers, 25 for 223..
they spend their operational life cycle in a zip lock bag, and their reload history is kept on 3 x 5 cards.. so I pretty much know the life of the brass...whether it was bought new, or I acquired it as range brass...

I record powder charge, bullet used, primer used, whether it was necked sized or Full lenght sized, the date it was loaded...and on the back of the 3 x 5 card, I record its annealing history and any casualties, and how many reloads were on the casualty before it went south...and why..

and while I also usually prefer Win Brass, truth be known, in the real world, I don't see where one is better than the other in the long run.. for brass life, or accuracy potential...

those are accomplished at the reload bench in my opinion..

so as far as your concerns and even not rapping the source you linked up... you are worrying a lot about nothing here....

I can tell you since picking up reloading in the late 1990s, the most common thing I have found.. is that all of these words of the so called 'experts' is pretty much Chicken Little Syndrome BS...

and speaking with most of the gunsmiths I personally know say most of it is BS also.....

and this from guys who are busy fixing hundreds of people's barrels annually...

even simple questions about break in procedures.. if they are asked "what do you personally do with a new barrel?" their answer is.. "I just go out and shoot it..."...

"if you're worried that much about any grit etc inside a new barrel, then just clean it real good with a bore brush and solvent instead of doing it by trying to break it in"...

many of the gunsmiths I know locally, if they are going to put a barrel on something they are going to use, they take a barrel that some customer has taken off, rethread and rechamber it...

I gave a 223 barrel to a gunsmith friend, that had 8000 plus rounds down the barrel..he was happy as if finding $50 laying on the ground..

when I asked him about didn't he think that 8,000 rounds down the barrel was too much.. his response was " are you kidding me?? do you have any idea how much handlapping it would take to get a barrel that clean??"

He cut and rechambered it to a 222...and that is one of his personal varmint rifles...

in the world of practicality, a gunsmith knows a heck of a lot more, than many of these so called "experts"... its the difference in theory or hands on...

when their barrels don't shoot real well, it is a gunsmith they bring them to...

so I tend to listen to my gunsmith buddies a lot more than ANYTHING I read on line...

quote:

Originally posted by seafire/B17G:
Doc,

What you have posted above, may be totally true..and the finer points of it can be argued all day long...

Agreed. I choose not to risk it, however, regardless if the source is from online, in person, or from a gunsmith. One thing I learned a long time ago is that folks who shoot a lot, even in competition may do very well, but that doesn't make them a gunsmith, and the best gunsmiths may not be experts on shooting or components. That said, occasionally you find those who are experts in both.

From what I gathered in my research on the annealing part, the consensus is that annealing the nickel does make it harder, thus, this negates the purpose of annealing and is of no use.

Electrolysis nickel ??
There are two types of nickel plating :
Electrolytic - electrical current is used to deposit usually pure nickel .This is soft and connot be precipitation hardened .
Electroless - this deposit is done without elecricity and deposits nickel+phosphorous which can be hardened to about HRc60.