Unwelcome surprise in my ammo purchase today.... Not Brass.

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I go to my local store in town to buy 9mm ammo. They get it from Custom Reloading Service in BC.

I know I could go direct for cheaper, but when I just want a box rather than a case, this works out. Plus CRS does a really great job.

I'm shooting as much as I can and saving all of my brass. I have all the reloading equipment I need from an old box dad had in his garage he hasn't used in 20 years. So I'm going to be reloading as much as I can. For the time being I'm just slowly amassing as much brass as I can taht I've shot myself, and I'll binge reload oen day and wind up with a nice bucket full of ammo.

Today I bought another box, and it isn't brass cased. I've heard of nickel cased ammo, and read a few threads on here, but I dont' know how to tell if I have nickel or steel. I'm assuming it isn't steel, as CRS sells reloaded ammo.

It's also stamped Win on the head stamp.. I didn't know that the major non-military suppliers would use anything other than just brass. It looks exactly the same as the other winchester reloaded brass I have, it's just shiny and silver.

I havent bought my dies yet, but I"m going go to with a carbide set. Having said that.. Can I safely and reliably reload these shells? Should I go back to the store tomorrow and ask to exchange the box for something with actual brass cases? Is that rude of me? I suppose I should have checked before I left the store, but I really didn't expect anything other than real brass... and why would I?

Thanks for the help!


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Absolutely you can reload those. And by the way they aren't solid nickel, they're nickel-plated brass cases. Steel cases are not reloadable, so you can be sure any rounds you buy from a commercial reloader won't be steel-cased.

Nickel-plated brass tends to stay cleaner for some reason, though some claim they can be harder on your dies, but I've never seen any evidence of that.

You'll recognize steel casings right away when you see'em. They're more like a dull grey than silver. I've only ever seen military cartridges loaded in steel cases.
 
Once-fired 9mm Luger brass has got to be the cheapest brass around, but people will pay a premium for the nickel plated. Keep them for loads that you want to distinguish from the rest, and buy 100 (or 1000) to top up your non-nickel.
 
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After a while the nickel starts wearing off. Have reloaded many of them without issues. Just be careful not to get them stuck in you full length sizing die. The old 'leave in in ammonia trick to dissolve' doesn't work as nicely on them... I make sure to lube these properly before sizing.
 
As others have said, yes you can reload them no problem.

And yes it would be rude to expect your store to exchange them.
 
The first time in 40 years that I've ever heard anything bad about nickel plated cases was when I joined CGN

Some folks are really really anal. Some folks love dramatics. Me? I've never had to throw out or replace a set of dies due to wear or damage.

The only thing bad about em is that they tend to hide amongst all of the aluminum cases in the grass on cloudy days.

The good thing is that when shooting 9mm you can fire 10 and pick up 20. ;)
 
I've ran a few thousand nickel plated pistol cases through my dies. There's no need to lube them, if anything, they size more easily than plain brass cases due to nickel being a bit slicker, not that that is saying much since neither require much effort. Heck, some people pay extra for nickel cases. They won't harm your guns either.
 
I have never experienced any issues with Nickle plated pistol brass.

However, with nickel plated bottlenecked rifle brass, I have scratched a die when it started to peel off. 2 acquaintances had similar experiences.

So, while I avoid using the rifle brass that is nickel plated, the pistol brass seems Ok.

Regards, Dave.
 
Carbide dies would be the prudent purchase for reloading nickel plated cases: I reloaded some 357mag case that were nickel plated, and the dies were scratched to the point that any brass case that was subsequently re-sized was scratched up. I was able to restore the scratched die, but have since upgraded to a carbide set from RCBS.
 
Read the OP and all I could think of was this:

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Oh no the dreaded Solid Nickel Brass... with pictures even!

Throw it in the load pile, load it, shoot it... repeat!
 
I found that I had to increase my crimp when loading nickel plated, which I found to be a pain since it was mixed with normal brass, hence I don't load nickel anymore. Just my .02$
 
I have a couple hundred of those in 10mm auto, they size fine and they load fine. I sort them and load them separately from brass but only because they are easy to separate and I like to sort by headstamp where possible.

Just clean them and load them like the rest.
 
My only issue with nickel brass is from my experience I have split more nickel cases than full brass cases but even then I am only talking a few a year. Nothing substantial or anything like that.

Kinda an aside, you learn something every day. I was reading the FAQ knowledge base on Lee Precision, they don't recommend cleaning used brass before resizing...they want to you run the brass dirty as the soot acts as a lube and somewhat prevents scratching the brass when run through the sizer. Interesting...I always tumbled brass beforehand. I will try to see what happens.
 
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