I have a nickel plating question I wanted to run by you guys.

From my understanding, nickel brass is brass that has been nickel plated. The manufacture churns out brass that is undersized, then from nickel plating the cases then come into spec.

My question to ya'll is this. If you were to take brass and nickel plate it, then resize it, will it work or will it be out of spec due to being oversized?

MTIA,


Juker008

The nickel is extremely thin....less than .0002" thick and is well within the normal tolerances for the brass case. One would have to plate 15 to 20 times that thickness to equal the thickness of a human hair.

If you wanted to plate your own cases ask the plater to give them a "flash" thickness.....they will look nice and have about .00005 thickness of nickel.....and you'll have no problem with thicknesses or fits.

vapodog,

Many thanks on the positive insight. Although my readings are leaving me somewhat skeptical. I am planning on doing the plating myself. From my readings on Caswell's site, it states:

http://www.caswellplating.com/kits/electroless.htm :

quote:

Electroless nickel plates at an approx. rate of 1 mil (1/1000") per hour. Indoor decorative applications will need approx. 0.25 mil or 15 min. of plating. General outdoor items (hand tools, hand guns) should receive 0.5 mils or 30 min. Items requiring high corrosion resistance should receive 1 mils or 60 min.

With that said, I would assume that the minimum amount that I can put on is .25 mil, or 0.0098 of an inch. Being able to put twice that amount would be ideal, but I don't believe that I have 0.0196 of clearance to do so.

If you could clarify this it would be very helpful. Any more insight would be much appreciated.


Juker008

You DO NOT WANT TO PLATE ELECTROLESS NICKEL in this application.....find a way to do standard nickel plating

I believe it's called electroplating.

Why?


Juker008

Electroless is the tumbling of minute flakes of nickel with the brass creating a "peening" of the nickel against the brass and causing a mechanical adhesion. It's neither shiny nor terribly controllable and leaves a thicker layer that can come off in resizing or in firing.

Electroplating actually removes molecules of nickel from an electrode and attaches it to the brass chemically. The layer is molecular.....very shiny and the nickel is like the same piece as the brass. You can get millionths of an inch control over the thickness.

I'd be extremely concerned about the finish and adhesion and thickness control with the electroless method.

Nickel cases will reload the same as regular brass cases, I reload them all the time. I have heard that the nickel cases will split at the case mouth faster than brass but I haven't loaded them enough times to find this out yet.
Rusty