Anealing nickle plated brass?

[charlesasmith]

Bought a lot Federal Nickle plated brass back in the 90s. Turned the necks to 0.010 for a tight neck 222. So have brass necks and nickle plated bodies and shoulders. What is your take on annealing them? Also what issues do I have RE: full length sizing? Will the nickle cause harm to my dies? BTW the load using this brass shoots accurately.

Thanks,

Chuck

 

[msinc]

Not sure what to say about the annealing...never tried and in point of fact, nickle plated brass is something I have steered clear of because of annealing. I guess try one and if it looks bad you have only lost one case???
The nickle absolutely will not hurt your dies at all. I may not have annealed any, but I have probably sized about 10 million nickle cases. Mostly for pistols, but some for rifle too. Zero issues on the reloading dies at all.

 

[watercam]

I'm curious how turned nickel necks went. I assumed that the nickel was somewhat harder than brass but you did it so it must be doable! I gave up on nickel brass when I had necks splitting after3-4 reloads but I was not annealing then, would be interested in your experiences now.

 

[CaptainMal]

A northern friend shoots groundhogs with a 270. He is not a reloader and sends me his nickel plated brass. He has done that for years. I anneal that stuff all the time and have hundreds in reserve.

No issues doing a timed anneal. Never had split necks BUT ... the nickel sometimes splits and flakes off. At the first sigh of that, usually small cracks in the nickel, I pitch the cases out. If it would flake off and stick in the die I would think there might be problems.

Have only trimmed them for length and never thought of cutting the nickel off turning the necks.

 

[riflewoman]

nickel, being harder and work hardening at a different rate than brass, can cause premature cracking. Bullseye pistol shooters went away from Nickel plated brass because of this. They will pick it up if it's laying around but their target ammo is not currently loaded in nickel cases,

 

[Dusty Stevens]

Ive found no more than one reload then toss it. You cant anneal the nickel

 

[P72]

Good question - nickel might react differently than brass to heat and the primary consideration be would heat instead of making it softer as in brass (enlarge crystalline structure) make the nickel harder?

In any event the nickel is probably electro plated and the coating might be so thin this might be of no consequence. My neck turner blade, tool steel, peels off the nickel easily exposing brass under and this is at .001 depth.

 

[pdog2225]

Bought a lot Federal Nickle plated brass back in the 90s. Turned the necks to 0.010 for a tight neck 222. So have brass necks and nickle plated bodies and shoulders. What is your take on annealing them? Also what issues do I have RE: full length sizing? Will the nickle cause harm to my dies? BTW the load using this brass shoots accurately.

Thanks,

Chuck

If you are already annealing brass. All you have to do is watch the inside of the neck and when you see the first signs of dull red show up you are there. Then just keep annealing. I do this a lot and have had no issues.

 

[charlesasmith]

Thanks for the responses. Will go ahead and anneal. Will check for any flaking of the nickle before and after sizing. Interesting about the difference between what is marketed and reality. I was taken in by the marketing of the time Re: accuracy of this brass. Was also not very bright about turning the necks without knowing the actual chamber neck dimension at the time. Learning involves mistakes, time, and, money. Used to read PRECISION SHOOTING magazines during the 90's but did not learn enough. Recently returned to reloading and have learned a lot from using the info on this site.

Chuck

 

[smoooth]

The plating is pretty thin on smaller calibers, I left some .223 tumbling for a few days in treated corn cob media and it removed about 75% of the nickel plating on the cases. The extended tumbling was not an intended experiment on plated brass but the result was informative. I would tend to believe that using stainless pins would do a much better and faster job of removing plating.