Read on another forum that nickel plated brass shouldn't be reloaded. The thought of the author was that Nickel is harder than brass & copper. The nickel in the neck damages bullets embeds in the bullet jacket wearing the barrel excessively. Don't know what to think. Would the military use nickel brass if that was the case (no pun intended.)Any thoughts.

Wife's tale. Now there may be isolated issues, but I use a lot of nickle plated brass (helps keep loads seperate for different rifles same caliber or different loads) and have yet to have any issues. Now if you don't properly lube you could have an issue with your sizing die, but you could have an issue with brass cases as well.

Option 2 is to just send it to me and I will "dispose" of it for you HeHe.

Ive read the same.

Varmint Al says- "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 http://www.imagineering-inc.co...troless_nickel.htm#5
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."



Ive never used nickel brass and dont plan to.

I have loaded nickel cases with no problems. The nickel is a plateing and the cases i loaded did not have plateing inside the necks, Only on the outside. They are still a brass case so as to nickel embedding in the jacket i'm gonna say thats bull. The nickel can start to flake off after several reloadings as it gets thin but thats about it. Police rounds have been nickel for years and have been reloaded about as long. Just my 2 cents.

Nickel plated brass reloads just fine. Its only advantage though is that if you keep it in a leather cartridge holder it doesn't tarnish and looks cool.

I don't use it very much though because I think Varmint Al has a point. In addition, it you have to trim the cases, the cutter heads become dull and unusable quickly (at least the Redding cutter heads do). For this reason, if I have nickel plated brass to trim, I buy a trim die and do it that way.

i reduce my loads a tad on them, otherwise, they tend to look great! ..i don't buy them, as case forming them makes lots of fun .. i like the look, just not in every case can i use them.

they WILL tarnish in leather cartidge holders ... btdt

7 MM Rem Mag .338 Win Mag I never noticed any differences what so ever and I've been using them for

probably as long as they've been available . I don't go out of my way to buy nickel cases but don't

pass on them if their available either . Never had any problems one way or the other while using them !.

Thanks for the input guys. Pretty much what I thought. I've got 300+ nickle cases that I will use for my H&R Ultra Varmint. Thanks again

I like nickel and load it as the preferred brass in a half-dozen rifle calibers. Most of what you read about it is wives tales.

I have come across a couple of batches (Remington) which had rough inside neck walls. I ran a little steel wool wrapped around a mandrel and chucked in an electric drill into them and cured that problem instantly.

I prefer to resize nickel (and all bottleneck cartridges for bolt rifles) with a Lee Collet die. They will last until you blow the primers out with overloads if you size them this way.

That's not to say that nickel can't be sized in conventional dies -- I reformed a batch of Federal Match .308 down to .243 with a single trip through a .243 FL sizer and didn't lose a single case out of three boxes.

Nickel plating the thin little .22 Hornet case helps that case A LOT. I'm amazed at how nice it is to work with compared to plain brass Hornet cases.

Sorry, but reloaders who diss nickel rifle cases just aren't very adept at what they're trying to do. It's a simple mechanical process that ain't rocket science.

I use it all the time for a 338WM in the BAR... never had any problem

I once found some old Peters nickel 45 long Colt cases and thought they would look nice in a display case with an old west rig. Well I put them in a tumbler with a fresh charge of tumbling media and promptly forgot them. I remberd them 2 days latter. I ended up with the shiniest brass cases with just a hint of nickel in the head stamps.
Serially I use nickel cases for many calibers from 22 hornet to 45-70 and 470 NE.
I don’t have any problems and I like the way they look as long as they don’t spend 2 days in the tumbler.
Bill

quote:

I remberd them 2 days latter. I ended up with the shiniest brass cases with just a hint of nickel in the head stamps

Thanks for sharing that story. I've often wondered how much tumbling it would take to remove the nickel plating. One thing about nickeled brass is that it cleans so easily that even when it accumulates enough gunk (mostly smoked necks) to merit tumbling, it only takes a half-hour or so to make them look like new.

Those old Peeters cses were mightey thinley plated. I don't know how the newer cases would stand up. I have some new 45-70 cases from Starline and they seam to have a prety good thickness of Nickel on them.I haven't forgot aney of the new cases.
Bill