Nickel plated brass, worth reloading?

**dkf** · August 31st, 2014, 05:54 PM

Guys on other forums have reloaded aluminum cases and even steel. They loaded mouse fart loads though. The aluminum ends up splitting early and the steel is harder on dies. Best to stick with brass unless you have no other choice.

The nickel plating is smoother than bare brass. It cycles better in semi-auto fire arms in my experience. A feature I gladly welcome for my self defense rounds.

That is most notable to me with nickel. Nickel is harder than brass and tends no to bite into each other as much. I never saw any real advantage to nickel brass as far as visibility goes. Nickel is more resistant to corrosion but when it does corrode it can be impossible to clean up nice. Anyone who gets any amount of range pickup that sits outside for a while knows what I talking about.

**wanneroo** · August 31st, 2014, 06:12 PM

There was a guy on youtube that had some interesting videos on reloading the russian steel cases for AK's in the event of total societal chaos scenarios. It can be done but not something that should be recommended based on all I know.

There are a lot of people that like to push the limits with reloading. I've only done it a year and already have seen and heard some really dodgy stuff and I think people forget that you've got a little explosion going on when you pull the trigger and that explosion is probably somewhere near your face. Best not to take any chances. I throw any cases that look suspect as I'm not taking a chance.

One of the worst things I have seen in the past year is someone who loaded some rusty steel cases for pistol. I don't know if they were berdan primed or not but I wasn't hanging around to find out.

**dkf** · August 31st, 2014, 08:18 PM

There are kits to reload .22lr too. With enough effort and some know how you can reload pretty much any cartridge.

**tbmatthews82** · September 24th, 2014, 08:59 AM

Originally Posted by biggs88

The nickel plating is smoother than bare brass. It cycles better in semi-auto fire arms in my experience. A feature I gladly welcome for my self defense rounds.

Definitely... I'm on a run of 1000 9mm right now with only Speer nickel cases. They look awesome too.