Nickel Brass

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Akulrich

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Hello,

I have a friend helping me reload some .270. He’s done a fair bit of it, but this is my first time. So far we have sized and trimmed the casings and will “wash” the casings next. I currently have a mix of both brass and nickel. I’ve read online that having both types in the tumbler at the same time could cause the nickel casings to discolour. Does anyone here have experience with this? I’d really like to keep the nickel casings silver in colour. Any wisdom would sure be appreciated!

Adam
 
What kind of tumbler? I've never had nickel change color in a vibratory tumbler with corn cob media when mixed with brass

best thing to do with nickel plated brass is fire it in the garbage can
 
I’m not sure what kind of tumbler he has. I’ll likely find out tonight.

What is the problem with nickel casings?
 
I tumbled a bunch of mixed brass and nickel plated brass a couple weeks ago in my wet tumbler with the SS pins and didn't have any discolouration.

The only discolouration I get is from trimming the neck back to proper length and revealing the brass underneath.
 
todbartell said:
best thing to do with nickel plated brass is fire it in the garbage can
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While I think that is a bit "over the top", I too stopped all my experimenting with nickel plated brass quite a few years ago. The nickel plating is very pretty, but it will eventually give you problems.
 
I like nickel too. Never had a major issue but the necks do seem to split a lot sooner. Using too much lemishine in a SS tumbler will also turn them a weird black tarnished color.
 
Google this.

"brass vs nickel ammo"

Clean them the same way as you would brass.

Load them until they split. Which as post #7 pointed out will be sooner.
 
I have found that running nickel through a wet ss pin tumbler tends to start to take the nickel off if you leave them in for too long. I usually leave nickel in for about 30 minutes, whereas brass cases get 90 minutes or so.
 
calibrecarstairs said:
Google this.

"brass vs nickel ammo"

Clean them the same way as you would brass.

Load them until they split. Which as post #7 pointed out will be sooner.
Click to expand...

I didn't realize they had issues with splitting necks earlier. I typically use the nickel cases for my hunting rounds to help distinguish them amongst all the others at a glance.

All of my load dev and target stuff is brass cased, sees many more times fired than the nickel stuff. Thanks for the tip.
 
Nickel brass works, but I consider it "high maintenance" brass that has no advantage over lower maintenance plain brass. So I don't use it any more.
 
chuck nelson said:
It has nothing to do with inspecting your brass and everything to do with destroying the tools that touch the stuff.
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Only if you didn't bother inspecting it first. If it is flaking and you run it through your dies that's your own dumb mistake. In thousand upon thousands of nickel plated rifle cases I have yet to scratch or otherwise damage anything.
 
Trimming plated brass with my Forster dulled the cutters to such an extent that both had to be sent to Forster to be resharpened.
Now when that brass requires trimming . . . it is recycled!
 
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