Nickel Plating Your Brass

I don't know about nickel plating your own brass, but I am using a batch of nickel plated factory brass (Remington) in 30-06. I have used the cases several times already and have experienced no failures; and absolutely no flaking of the nickel plating.
I love those cases; I find that they feed noticeably smoother in my Ruger Mod 77 bolt action than do regular brass cases.
 
paintearthmike said:
I don't know about nickel plating your own brass, but I am using a batch of nickel plated factory brass (Remington) in 30-06. I have used the cases several times already and have experienced no failures; and absolutely no flaking of the nickel plating.
I love those cases; I find that they feed noticeably smoother in my Ruger Mod 77 bolt action than do regular brass cases.
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Give it time, they'll flake. Also, they generally fail sooner than unplated brass.
 
My last experiments with nickle plated brass ended many years ago, and I have no desire to try it again. They are very pretty, however, if that's one of the goals.
 
I can’t speak about nickel rifle cases but I have a bunch of nickel 38 special that have been reloaded just as many times as brass and have had no issues with flaking. Case mouths crack at the same as the brass ones.
 
Google the composition of Canadian coins. With all the handling coins get, do you think nickel (magnetic by the way) resists abrasion better than brass? Now consider that you will have this stuff running in and out of your chamber and dies. Yes I know the commbloc folks use steel cases. Hmmmm....
 
sixty9santa said:
Anyone ever tried nickel plating brass at home?

https://www.kommandoblog.com/2020/06/08/nickel-plating-cases-at-home/
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I haven't tried it, but I can't imagine it would work well. Electroplating is a very finicky business, and it generally takes a good-sized shop a lot of investment in equipment, process, training and quality control to get good repeatable results. Any variation in conditions or chemicals often causes things to go to pieces in a hurry. There are specific variations of bright nickel electroplating processes engineered specifically for cartridge cases, I doubt you are going to replicate that using the vinegar you bought at Safeway. Actually, given that no commercial plating process I ever heard of uses nickel acetate I am going to say you aren't going to get good results using vinegar bought anywhere.
 
I've loaded a lot of nickle brass in 338 WM and 280 Remington and never had an issue with it flaking off or damaging a die.
Maybe I've just been lucky in that regard.

Recently I ran Remington 280 Rem. nickle brass full power loads with Barnes 140 grain TTSX through a 280 AI and dreaded what was going to happen to the brass after fire forming.
The Remington brass showed no indication at all of cracking the nickle plate around the newly formed shoulder.
Once again maybe I'm just lucky but I fire formed 100 cases with zero failures.

That being said there is no way I would ever go out of my way to plate my own regular brass.
 
DOUGLAS D said:
I've loaded a lot of nickle brass in 338 WM and 280 Remington and never had an issue with it flaking off or damaging a die.
Maybe I've just been lucky in that regard.
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In all probability it was more than just luck. As I mentioned in my earlier post there are a lot of variables in plating, and no doubt some do it better than others. I don't doubt for a moment that the hate many people have for nickel plated brass is as much due to repetition of rumours and old wives' tales as it is real shooting results. It is probable that some brands do a very good job plating their brass, but tales arising from lower quality plating jobs have ruined the reputation of the product as a whole.

A very little bit of internet searching finds that cases are typically given bright electrolytic platings. If done properly this should yield a plating that is not harder than dies and shouldn't scratch, but if not controlled hardness could rise significantly. As for the claims about annealing, let's just say I would have to see some good data before I believed that one.
 
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