Anyone Anneal Nickel Cases?

c-fbmi

c-fbmi

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I have reworked a bunch of nickel 416 Rem to make cases for my 450 Ruger. There are a few steps and it moves the brass around a fair bit so I thought annealing might be good idea........but........I've never tried it with nickel coated cases........anybody ????
 
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I could be wrong. But when I was researching it for my own, what I found said nickel plating would harden as temp increases vs brass softening. That could lead to brittle plating and worse flaking. I left it at that then.
 
Purple shoulder said:
I've done it. Worked fine. Softened just like brass. Well it is brass. The plating is too thin to flake.
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Good to hear, they reformed very well and to be honest I was a little surprised, but no cracking of the nickel yet and they fireformed just fine as well. The nickel will in fact flake and peel off, I have seen it lots with 38 spl and 357 mag cases.
 
Purple shoulder said:
I've done it. Worked fine. Softened just like brass. Well it is brass. The plating is too thin to flake.
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This has not been my experience. I annealed some new nickel plated .30-06 cases to neck up to .35 Whelen and got some flaking. It scratched my dies (which everybody says cannot happen because the nickel is softer than the hardened steel of the dies) and was leaving scratches on my brass. I had to polish the interior of my dies to get rid of those scratches. YMMV.
 
Well.......... HHHMMMMMMM !!!!!!!! Now that is kinda conflicting info ain't it........

Steve, so you tried it with new never touched '06 brass and experienced this, or was it after you bumped them up to 35 cal you experienced it.
 
All my 8mm rem mag brass is nickel plated 300 weatherby brass and it has been annealed a couple times. I've never had a flake come off it just makes it a bit ugly because its purple/blue.
 
c-fbmi said:
Well.......... HHHMMMMMMM !!!!!!!! Now that is kinda conflicting info ain't it........

Steve, so you tried it with new never touched '06 brass and experienced this, or was it after you bumped them up to 35 cal you experienced it.
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New .30-06 brass purchased especially to bump up to .35 Whelen. They started flaking when I was bumping them up with my Hornady dies with the elliptical plug and scratched my dies. Once they started scratching my dies I threw them away and chucked it as a fail experiment.
 
i annealed and formed 50 Remington 30-06 to .35 Whelen. No problems after annealing. The few I tried without annealing showed several split necks. I'm still shooting that batch of nickel brass a few reloads loads later.
 
I have little use for Nickle plated Bottleneck cases, and avoid them except if there is no other type.
I have seen it flake off, and as mentioned, it can scratch dies. EE.
 
As with others, cracking, flacking will occur over time.

The two dissimilar metals will not anneal properly, brass will soften, nickel will harden.

Expect eradict start pressures and hivh ES.
 
Well..........there just doesn't seem to a consensus on this question at all........a lot of differing experiences and theories.
For the time being I think I'll just shoot them and if I get any cracked necks down the road, I'll give annealing a try. Won't have much to lose at that point as the brass will be all pretty much toast anyway, I suspect............Besides I have about 400 of these 416 cases and it's not like I need 200 rounds for my 450, nor am I likely to shoot 1000s of rounds. I suspect the 100 cases I made up will last the life of my shooting this rifle, even if I do get some cracked necks.
 
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