I have a stupid question - why isn't nickel jacketing used large bore bullets anymore?

Seems to me I see a lot of references to nickel in older literature, and not now. What gives?

E-X-P-E-N-S-I-V-E and doesn't really perform any better than most copper alloy jackets. 715 CuNi weighs the same as traditional copper jacketing. Anything with a lead core's gonna be gone in a few years.

The nickel alloy used by Norma for their Alaska and Silverblixt was att least illeagal due to some toxic stuff in the alloy.

What toxic stuff ?? Where those Normas nickel jackets or the old Norma Tri-Clad ?

quote:

Originally posted by mete:
What toxic stuff ?? Where those Normas nickel jackets or the old Norma Tri-Clad ?

CuproNickel is the alloy. It has just enough nickel in it to make it look silver. It is essentially the same alloy as "German silver".

From Corbins book:

Cupro-nickel alloys can be drawn into a bullet jacket but it is more difficult to draw than copper or steel. Jackets made with this alloy fouled the barrel excessively, leaving lumps and streaks of the jacket material down the barrel. The fouling was very difficult to remove. Cupronickel jackets look like steel jackets but a simple magnet test will tell if the jacket is steel or not. However some steel jacketed bullets also had a cupro-nickel coating so the magnet test is not always definitive.
Bullets made with cupro-nickel jackets were suspected of causing a number of rifles to blow up. The thinking was that the jacket material would bond to the cartridge case; on firing the case neck would be torn off, and a blown up barrel and/or rifle would result. But many of the cupro-nickel jackets were coated with tin. Tin has a strong affinity for brass. It is more likely that tin coating the bullets caused the bullets to bond to the cartridge case and that was the real cause of the problem.
Eventually the cupro-nickel era came to an end and shooters worldwide breathed a sigh of relief.
Steel was used and is used today for bullet jackets. It has the advantage of being low in cost, it can be drawn into a jacket without a great deal of effort, and when made properly makes a good hunting bullet. Steel jackets have found plenty of use in military bullets. But steel jackets do rust, which is not desirable, so they are usually plated or clad with gilding metal or nickel. At one time steel jackets were coated with cupro-nickel. Steel jacketed bullets are common in Europe where they are used without any problems. Steel jacketed bullets are said to cause more barrel wear but tests don’t bear this out. Barrel wear with steel jacketed bullets seems to be about the same as with other materials.
Perhaps this belief came about because of the use of reclaimed surplus military bullets that could be contaminated with grit or because some military bullets have much thicker, harder jackets than a hunting bullet would. Another possible reason is that barrel steels of the 1930 to late 1940 years were softer and would wear faster than modern barrels. There seems to be little reason not to use a well made steel jacketed bullet today but a bias against steel will not easily go away.


For more:http://rceco.com/img/RSBook6.PDF

quote:

Jackets made with this alloy fouled the barrel excessively, leaving lumps and streaks of the jacket material down the barrel.

This same thing was believed to have caused the explosive demise of a few of the"low-numbered" Springfield 1903's. Earlier .30-06 ammo was loaded with cupro-nickel jaketed bullets. I still have a few of them headstamped 1916.

You guys are mixing bullets. CN bullets were used in service all through the Spanish-American War and WW I where many millions were fired. Most other countries also used CN bullets. The US did not switch to GM (Gilding Metal) jackets until the early 1920s. Even then, there were still over 2 billion CN cartridges on hand and they continued to be used for non-combat purposes into the 1930s. CN did produce it's own brand of fouling but it was not that big a deal to clean it out.

There are no known blow ups of rifles from using CN bullets. The well-known blowups were mostly with the old hard and brittle receivers and had nothing to do with the bullets. Except - some accidents were traced to shooters coating the bullets with grease.

The 1921 "tin can" bullets were also blamed for some blow-ups but Gen Hatcher later found that they were not the cause. Besides, the tinned bulleted ammunition was withdrawn from service very soon after being issued and very few of them were ever fired. It was strictly a loading for the National Matches and was never intended for regular service.

Ray

quote:

Originally posted by Cheechako:
You guys are mixing bullets. CN bullets were used in service all through the Spanish-American War and WW I where many millions were fired. Most other countries also used CN bullets. The US did not switch to GM (Gilding Metal) jackets until the early 1920s. Even then, there were still over 2 billion CN cartridges on hand and they continued to be used for non-combat purposes into the 1930s. CN did produce it's own brand of fouling but it was not that big a deal to clean it out.

There are no known blow ups of rifles from using CN bullets. The well-known blowups were mostly with the old hard and brittle receivers and had nothing to do with the bullets. Except - some accidents were traced to shooters coating the bullets with grease.

The 1921 "tin can" bullets were also blamed for some blow-ups but Gen Hatcher later found that they were not the cause. Besides, the tinned bulleted ammunition was withdrawn from service very soon after being issued and very few of them were ever fired. It was strictly a loading for the National Matches and was never intended for regular service.

Ray

Good post, Ray. It is amazing how confused history can get when it passes through numerous ears and mouths, isn't it.

The only part of your post I can even partly disagree slightly with is how easy it is to remove nickel fouling. It is a real pain in the but, once it gets fairly estalished in your bore. Hence the "ammonia dope" treatments that used to be common on the line at the Nationals while nickel jackets were still common.

Has it warmed up yet in your area?

AC

Yes, I probably down-played the cleaning aspect of shooting CN bullets. It can be a real PITA. I've found that some of the newer cleaning solutions work wonders compared with the old ammonia dope, especially the abrasives like JBs. I bought an old Krag that barely had a hole down the barrel and a few hours with JBs, Butches, Montana Extreme, and others got it all out and I was able to shoot a bunch of the old CN bullets that I had saved, with little fouling if I cleaned regularly.

We never really had a summer here. Much like other parts of the US. My wife has yet to get a single ripened tomato from her plants. Without Global Warming we would have froze to death.

Phoenix OTOH, is sweltering.

Ray

quote:

Originally posted by Cheechako:
Phoenix OTOH, is sweltering.

Ray

I will vouch for that. I guess it wasn't warm enough last week so we are being punished for the next two days with 114 (about 45C) for a high. It will be much cooler later in the week however, you know, 109 or 110 (43C) .

Ken....

I see them every now and then for sail. They do last longer. But I can live without them.

I recall reading Elmer Keith writing of using the CN bullets when he went to Africa. I cannot recall now which year that was, maybe 58 or so.
I believe he thought poorly of them.
If someone has the gun notes his writing of them is there.
Frank

Frank:

As I recall, Elmer wrote that the problem was with the rifling in his .476 Westley on his 1957 Safari. He said the gun was virtually new, the rifling unusually deep and sharp, and that the jackets would sometimes rupture on the land cuts. That wasn't normal for CN bullets. The .476 Westley was obsolete by then, and the ammunition probably was pre-war production with cupro-nickel jackets.

Kynoch used cupro-nickel jackets for their large bore ammunition until WWII. That wasn't economically feasible after the war, so they switched to gilding metal for a short time, which wasn't successful. Hence the gilding metal covered steel jacket that followed in the early '50s.
-----------------------------------------
"Serious rifles have two barrels, everything else just burns gunpowder."

Thanks Mark. My memory just isn't worth much these days.
Isn't it amazing that someone as experienced as Elmer would take a new rifle and bullets which must not have been totally effective with him on a hunting trip as big as Africa.
Frank