Nickel Plated Rifle Brass

[Fire4Effect]

I have a case of new Remington 308 Win unprimed cases I purchased about 25 years ago. Back then I loaded 100 cases and never shot them until recently. They fired fine and I decided to reload them. They resized fine on my Forester Coax press with Redding dies, but then I read somewhere that nickel cases can shed flakes in the reloading process and embed in the walls of the dies and damage brass that is being resized.

So far I have no issues and I like the way the reloaded nickel cases look. Am I asking for trouble by reloading nickel plated cases?

[boattail]

I have 6000 .223 cases I cycle through on my pdog guns and half are nickel.....never had any trouble to date. Your lube process should be enough to insure no issues.

[Fire4Effect]

I have 6000 .223 cases I cycle through on my pdog guns and half are nickel.....never had any trouble to date. Your lube process should be enough to insure no issues.

Good to know. Thank you.

[pacrat]

I have 6000 .223 cases I cycle through on my pdog guns and half are nickel.....never had any trouble to date. Your lube process should be enough to insure no issues.

Referring to the bolded..........................^^^THAT^^^

The issue with nickle transfer onto dies. Is caused by direct high pressure friction between the dissimilar metals. I've in 50+ yrs of reloading Never seen it on rifle cases/dies. Because of lubing every case.

Where it IS an issue, is straight walled pistol cases, run through carbide dies with NO LUBE.

Even though those dies are advertised as not needing lube. I always lightly lube approx every 5th case or so. Because I've had the issue in the past.

[Spyder]

I load a lot of nickel plated 308 brass. The inside neck lube is important, and it's a little harder to resize, but it works fine and I have had no issues yet.

[croue]

[Fire4Effect]

I use Imperial Sizing Die Wax on the bodies and Imperial Dry Neck Lube on the inside and outside of the necks. Sounds like I have nothing to worry about.

[fguffey]

I use Imperial Sizing Die Wax

I have trouble making Imperial Sizing Was look good.

I have tumbled pistol cases so long and too many times the nickel got so thin the brass became visible.

And then there was the problem; I wanted to make my cases look good so I necked nickel plated 30/06 and 280 Remington cases up to 338 Winchester and 35 Whelen. 50% if the cases developed neck splits as soon as I necked the cases up.

When necking brass 30/06 and 280 Remington cases up to 338 and 35 Whelen none of the necks developed splits.

F. Guffey

[smoothy8500]

As long as you are not making 35 Whelen, you are good to go.

[croue]

[NoHeavyHitter]

Never had any problems with the nickle flaking, but they do not last as many loadings as plain brass. Just keep an eye on them when you trim. If you have a bolt-gun to shoot them from and then using a neck-size only die will get the most life out of them.

[sargenv]

Sort of off topic but still on topic since this is reloading nickel rifle brass. I've been processing a lot of Nickel 223 once fired stuff (Speer Gold Dot) and found that it does not need be trimmed like most other Brass .223 rem. I run the same process on Brass or Nickel. The case lube I run is 2/3 Anhydrous Lanolin and 1/3 castor oil.. so it acts like imperial sizing wax. I do not lube the inside of the case necks and do not seem to need to as it does not seem to stretch. I go to trim to 1.750" in a gireaud trimmer and it does not need any. I was sort of surprised.

[boattail]

Sort of off topic but still on topic since this is reloading nickel rifle brass. I've been processing a lot of Nickel 223 once fired stuff (Speer Gold Dot) and found that it does not need be trimmed like most other Brass .223 rem. I run the same process on Brass or Nickel. The case lube I run is 2/3 Anhydrous Lanolin and 1/3 castor oil.. so it acts like imperial sizing wax. I do not lube the inside of the case necks and do not seem to need to as it does not seem to stretch. I go to trim to 1.750" in a gireaud trimmer and it does not need any. I was sort of surprised.

I have access to a bunch of Speer nickel cases and yes, they are short and take a few firings to need trimming. Worst part about them is the primers are crimped so it's more work prepping them.

[sargenv]

Most 223/5.56 brass has crimped primer pockets I'm finding.. That's okay, I have a system to use to de-crimp them.. The Hornady Pro-Jector has a decrimp process/toolhead for .223/5.56 and 308/7.62x51.. it's pretty slick and faster than any other process I've seen save a Dillon 1050.