Home Forums Reloading Big Game Rifles OK....Why is it reloaders don't want nickel plated brass ?

I quit using nickel plated brass because it scratched my dies. Dunno whether it was dirt carried in the slightly rougher nickel surface or flaked nickel, result was the same a ruined die.

Seems to work fine for me but I don't have enough of it to load in a separate batch and like to keep all loads as consistent as possible. No real proof but my gut tells me that case capacity will be slightly different in nickeled brass vs. regular brass, so I only use it when I have one or two stray projectiles to use up or some reason to have a designated different load than my usual reloads. I don't find much of it at the range so I don't think it is as common as regular brass.

Scratched my Lee Collet mandrel when I was uniforming new necks





course that is probably not the hardest steel. I suspect that up inside your die where the case mouth first hits the forcing cone on a FL die, the nickel is scratching up your die and you don't know it

Also

http://www.varmintal.net/arelo.htm#Nickel_Brass

+1

I bought a bunch of nickel Win 22-250 when I started loading for my 6-250 and its a pain to anneal and seems to need it faster than unplated cases.