Nickel plated brass, nickel, and brass

[mattgreennra]

While looking through brass I noticed remington had nickel plated brass and some other companies had just nickel.
I know you can reload nickel and I've heard it reloads more times than brass.
Is this true?
What advantages/disadvantages does nickel have over brass?

[cheygriz]

There is no nickle brass. It's all nickle plated. Some folks don't like it. I love it!

[nass]

Cleans up a ton easier than regular brass in my experience.

Too bad I don't have a ton of it, otherwise it would be all I'd use.

[GLK]

A big "Yeah that" to what the others have already said. I prefer it personally and in my experience it shows defects and cracks or splits much easier than regular brass. I'll take nickel plated everytime if available.

[Smokey Joe]

My experience: Nickel does clean up easier and look nicer. I've heard that it also doesn't corrode when worn in leather cartridge loops on a belt. However (there is always that darn "however!") nickel is not a ductile ("bendy") as brass, so the cases tend to split at the mouth earlier in their reloading life than do pure brass cases.

That said, I use the ones I scrounge until they do split, and they work just fine for several reloadings. No difference in reloading nor accuracy to the pure brass, just shorter life.

And the split-mouthed cases make fine recycle brass--the scrap metal people don't care about the nickel nor the splits.

[Shoney]

Smokey Joe pretty well nailed it.

I like the nikel brass for rifle hunting loads. It does not tarnish under adverse weather conditions, and chambers with such wonderful smoothness. In revolvers, nickel not only chamber better than regular brass, the fired nickel cases extracts easier.

Many years ago, while hunting grizzly in rainforest like conditions, I carried a 338 and a stainless 44mag in a shoulder holster . On the first evening, we cleaned and oiled our unfired weapons. Working the bolt with a cartridge, was like it had been coated with heavy peanut butter, because of the brass. All the regular brass was discolored and tarnished, especially those in the chambers and magazines. The unfired regular brass cartridges in the 44mag cylinder were difficult to extract, while they normally came out with ease. One member of the party was using nikel brass. It was not tarnished and chambered and extracted with great ease. From that hunt forward, I used nikel brass for hunting.

[BillCA]

+1 on Smokey Joe's comments.

Besides the corrosion resistance of nickled brass, it chambers and extracts much easier than plain brass which is a big advantage for self-loading mechanisms.

In the past, I've sorted out my once-fired nickle cases from multi-use ones. In reloading, I use plain brass for practice loads. Multi-use nickle cases were used for higher powered practice loads and packed in paper boxes. Once-fired nickle brass was reserved for higher quality defensive ammo and boxed in plastic boxes.

[mattgreennra]

Thanks guys.
I would've never though of the field uses. Learning.

[cheygriz]

Thanks guys.
I would've never though of the field uses. Learning.

I've been loading since 1965, and did it commercially for 5 years, and I'm still learning!

If ya ever stop learning, stop reloading!