Nickel plated 22 mag jackets??

[midnight]

I have been derimming a bunch of 22 mag cases for 6mm jackets. I sorted them by manufacturer. About a quarter of the CCI cases are nickel plated or at least I assume that because they are silver in color. Are these useable as jackets? I am not going to use them unless someone can show me that they are OK. They come out of the derim die at 0.2415 so that makes me happy. Out of a couple hundred, I had two come out a little bit short. They were easily spotted. You can see about an eighth of an inch on the end where the rim was ironed out. The 2 short ones were about half that. Something else to watch for.

Bob

[cwlongshot]

I have never attempted this. Seems to me brass would be best.

But if your gut says they could be a issue, I would listen.

CW

[ReloaderFred]

Nickel is a hard metal, and I won't use nickel plated brass casings for swaging any of my handgun bullets. Barrels are made of mild steel so they won't shatter under pressure, so increased barrel wear would be my concern.

There have been reports of nickel plated cases scratching sizing dies, and the dies are hardened, which is another reason not to use them for swaging.

Hope this helps.

Fred

[EMC45]

Also older cupro nickel jackets leave a nasty coating/deposit in bores. I would think the same or similar may happen.

[nun2kute]

In my nech of the woods, brass in plentiful enough that trying to use nickel cases isn't worth the effort. And like was already stated, I paid too much for my dies to try scratching them with a harder metal when the soft is so prevalent. My scrap yard considers all my brass as "Dirty" anyway so I just add them to the recycle bucket.

[PHyrbird]

A note on nickel plated. I think it was a Ken Waters article, for sure in Handloader mag there was a discussion that nickel will flake off the brass eventually & stick to the die. From the article this may take 3-5 sizings. The symptoms were scratched cases sized in a tungsten carbide die. I immediately got rid of all my nickel cases, so I cannot corroborate this. As we probably use brass that is past it's useful life for jacket candidates flakey (pun intent) plating is a hazard in expensive swaging dies. It does make sense from a materials science perspective. Nickel is ductile but very different properties than brass. In the case of once fired 22mag cases it could be more forgiving. For my part I prefer to err on the side of caution. Another factor to consider is when annealed the cases will have even more differing properties, nickel does not anneal at temps used for brass. Hope this helps.

[midnight]

I don't intend to use the nickel plated 22 WMR cases for jackets but since I already derimmed them, I annealed them along with all the others. The nickel plated cases turned a very pretty blue before I put them in the scrap brass bin.

Bob

[deltaenterprizes]

A note on nickel plated. I think it was a Ken Waters article, for sure in Handloader mag there was a discussion that nickel will flake off the brass eventually & stick to the die. From the article this may take 3-5 sizings. The symptoms were scratched cases sized in a tungsten carbide die. I immediately got rid of all my nickel cases, so I cannot corroborate this. As we probably use brass that is past it's useful life for jacket candidates flakey (pun intent) plating is a hazard in expensive swaging dies. It does make sense from a materials science perspective. Nickel is ductile but very different properties than brass. In the case of once fired 22mag cases it could be more forgiving. For my part I prefer to err on the side of caution. Another factor to consider is when annealed the cases will have even more differing properties, nickel does not anneal at temps used for brass. Hope this helps.

A friend ruined a match 223 barrel by using nickel plated brass. A piece from the neck fused in the barrel ruining the chamber!

[BT Sniper]

What PHyrbird Said!

BT