nickel vs brass

[diablo slim]

What makes nickel brass so brittle and prone to cracking more than regular brass any body understand it clue me in.

[BLACKFOOT SASS #11947]

My take on it is that the process of plating the brass makes it a little more brittle.

 

Lafitte

[Marauder SASS #13056]

I think Driftwood can answer best.

 

It has to do with the preparation needed for applying nickel. If it is not consistent and proper - which some never is, the brass is brittle. But when done correctly, the nickel will wear off before you will have a crack.

[Southpaw Gringo, SASS # 74217]

I hear of this all the time but what puzzles me it that I got a bunch of .45 Colt nickel brass thats been loaded sooo many times, theres very little nickel still on them. Yes some have split on me but its those pieces of brass that seem to be Bionic and wont give up....

[ShadowCatcher]

I hear of this all the time but what puzzles me it that I got a bunch of .45 Colt nickel brass thats been loaded sooo many times, theres very little nickel still on them. Yes some have split on me but its those pieces of brass that seem to be Bionic and wont give up....

I hear that all the time as well, but I have both nickel and brass and they all go easily 20 reloads without any splitting of other issues.

 

I use them both; I load Tite Group in Nickle and Trail Boss in Brass, only to easily tell them apart.

 

I prefer nickel for ease of retrieval - I always get that stuff back, brass gets lost as much as not some days . . . .

 

SC

[John Barleycorn, SASS #76982]

I use nickel for my BP loads. It really helps me from getting them mixed up with smokeless loads.

[Litl Red]

Just as Southpaw and Shadow have observed about their nickel brass...........

 

I use nickel for my rifle loads and brass for pistol. There really hasn't been a significant difference over the years. I will get a split case every so often. But not often enough to keep up with which totals more.

 

Using the nickel for rifle gets me more found.

 

The rifle loads differ, so it's good to be able to easily know where each cartridge should be loaded.

[Grizzly Dave]

When I started reloading, I didn't have a lot of brass, so I reloaded everything, including a couple hundred nickel cases I'd saved from years ago. I noticed a much higher rate of splits in the nickel. After I bought some new brass I set the nickel aside for plinking or whatever.

[Rio Brazos Kid]

I shoot range brass, (supposedly once fired), which is cheap. Buy it 1000 pieces at a time. So if you lose quite a bit, (and I do with the Marlin), it doesn't amount to much money. I use brass brass in the pistols, and Nickel in the Marlin for easy identification, as the loads are slightly different. Never a problem using it that way.

 

RBK

[Driftwood Johnson, SASS #38283]

I think Driftwood can answer best.

 

It has to do with the preparation needed for applying nickel. If it

is not consistent and proper - which some never is, the brass is

brittle. But when done correctly, the nickel will wear off before you

will have a crack.

Yup, that's pretty much it. When the baths that are used to plate nickel onto parts are properly maintained, nickel plating will not adversely affect the brass. Those of you who have nickel plated brass that has survived lots of loading have brass that was plated properly.

 

When the baths are not properly maintained, which costs money, the base metal becomes brittle and tends to split more easily.

 

I have a big bucket of 38 Special brass that I collected for years before I started reloading 38 Special. Every brand under the sun, both unplated brass and nickel plated. I can tell you categorically that the nickel plated stuff in that bucket has split more often than the unplated stuff. Without question. Clearly sub-par plating.

 

About 20 years ago before I started reloading I was buying inexpensive 45 Colt reloads that used nickel plated brass. When I started reloading I started using that nickel plated 45 Colt brass. That stuff split so often that I stopped using it. Poor plating job.

 

With unplated brass, none of this is a concern. There are no baths the brass goes through because it is not plated. Just straight brass, through and through. So the problems relating to a poor plating jobs do not come into play.

[Billy Boots, # 20282 LTG-Regulator]

I use nickel for my BP loads. It really helps me from getting them mixed up with smokeless loads.

+1.. I, too, use nickel for BP loads, however I check each loaded rifle round that I plan to use in rifle. I do not want a cracked piece to cause a 73 jam. I also run the crackless rifle ammo through chamber gauge. For revolvers, I am not near as concerned about the loaded nickel rounds, and have no problem even using those with small cracks discarded from rifle.

[Ventura Slim, SASS #35690]

Yea nickel may be pretty but it does not last as long as brass when reloading. I had a bunch of split cases reloading nickel the other day and just started tossing it away reloading brass.

[loco gringo]

i too use nickel brass in my '73 for BP loads . Easy to get back . If they crack , no big deal--- cut them down to 38 LC , and use them on the revolvers .

[Garrison Joe, SASS #60708]

Nickel plating onto brass is not really complicated, but sometimes the ammo companies just don't get it right.

 

Usually there are three steps that can affect the plating process and how tightly the nickel sticks to the underlying brass.

 

1) Cleaning - ALL the oils, solvents, greases and other organics have to come off the brass cases. Most of the case drawing operations involved in making a case put some amount of lubricants on the case, and then some solvents may be left from cleaning the lube off.

 

2) Pickling - the brass will hold the plate better with slightly rough surface, which is normally obtained by pickling (etching) with a weak hydrochloric acid solution. Letting the acid content drop means pickling is not as effective.

 

3) Plating - plating solutions have to be carefully monitored because they lose (use up) several components as they deposit the nickel plate. Plus, additives which make the nickel plate more shiny usually make the plate more brittle and thus more likely to flake off. So, a balancing act has to be continually done by the operator to keep everything running well. And, most purchasers of cartridges want to see really shiny cases, rather than really tough nickel plating. What we (obsessive reloaders trying to load a case 20 or more times) want kind of flies in the face of what most of the market thinks is cool.

 

Good luck, GJ

[Noz]

Just for my information. do any of you 44-40 shooter, black or smokeless, see any split cases.

As long as I have been shooting 44-40 I have had one case split and it was a mashed case I had tried to salvage.

I don't have any nickel.

[Garrison Joe, SASS #60708]

Just for my information. do any of you 44-40 shooter, black or smokeless, see any split cases.

As long as I have been shooting 44-40 I have had one case split and it was a mashed case I had tried to salvage.

I don't have any nickel.

Splitting a .44-40 case is pretty rare. I've split a few in the last 5 years, mostly on cases that had been smashed and reshaped. And I shoot ONLY BP in those cases.

 

Losses GREATLY exceed splits on them.

 

And I don't have any plated cases, either.

 

Good luck, GJ

[Litl Red]

Funny thing about the cost difference...........

 

I figured nickel would cost me more to use. It cost more to buy, and the warnings about it splitting more suggested additional lost money. Turns out.........

 

Years ago I bought a bunch of each. Took 600 each and put 'em into trays with 200 each. Stacked the trays. A shiny stack and a brassy stack. Started loading from the top tray in each stack. Shot the brass in pistols, the shiny in rifles. Figured the shiny would be easier for brass pickers to find. When the shot cases got cleaned they wound up in the tray at the bottom of their stack. (empty one to begin with. when it looked to have about 200, or when the top tray was empty etc etc) That way cases were reloaded and shot at the same frequency. It is a scheme that insures the cases at the bottom of a pile won't lay there and never get shot while the ones on the top of the pile get used.

 

I figured I'd never lose any brass cases. There would be a lot less loss of rifle cases but they'd still be some lost. And they'd be splitting more often. So the guess was that the nickel ones would be gone a lot sooner. Right now the original stack of trays for the brass cases is about as full as they were day one. The original stack of nickel is just about as tall. How so?

 

Only thing I can figure is based on something I noticed early on. I'm often the only shooter throwing shiny cases. I seldom come home with less cases than I took. It's not strange to have someone bring me a shiny case long after I left the unloading table.

 

Is that an important deal? Nope. But it's fun to tell about that somewhat insignificant detail. And it has to do with nickel:brass. When you can't be out shooting a match, it's pleasant to jaw about it, nonetheless, ain't it?

[Flint 976]

I have had factory loaded R-P 357 brass split on the first shot.....

[Driftwood Johnson, SASS #38283]

Just for my information. do any of you 44-40 shooter, black or smokeless, see any split cases.

As long as I have been shooting 44-40 I have had one case split and it was a mashed case I had tried to salvage.

I don't have any nickel.

Howdy

 

I don't recall ever seeing one of my 44-40 brass cases split down the middle like 45 Colt or 38 Special usually does. What does happen is tiny splits start to happen at the neck. I assume this is because the brass is so thin at the neck. I will keep loading them until the split gets to be about 1/16" long, then I will discard them. But as GJ said, I seldom, if ever, have had a 44-40 case split down the middle like most others will. Yes, these are unplated brass cases I am talking about.