243 reloading case,s

[stevenb]

right lads i,m looking for a little info on case,s for my mate
he,s just bought a tikka t3lite in 243 and for his first lot off round he bought some winchester supreme ballistic silvertips the case,s are silver in coilour and he was asking if he can reload with these and are they any good for it . cheers for looking lads

 

[375 mag]

Yes you can can reload these cases with no problems at all if anything i find i get more loadings out of them

 

[Ranger22]

I resized some of these cases last weekend, on a couple of the cases some of the nickel flaked off the neck. Never had it happen before, just something to watch for. I binned the ones that did this.


​Al

 

[see it shoot it]

right lads i,m looking for a little info on case,s for my mate
he,s just bought a tikka t3lite in 243 and for his first lot off round he bought some winchester supreme ballistic silvertips the case,s are silver in coilour and he was asking if he can reload with these and are they any good for it . cheers for looking lads

binn them and use a good quality brass case.

FORGET NICKEL-PLATED BRASS.... I liked the looks and feel of nickel-plated cases, but I don't load them anymore and here is why. The cases are strong and it is easy enough to outside neck turn them. That is not the problem. The nickel-plating on the case neck ID is like sandpaper. The only way you might be able to remove this grit is with a case neck ID reamer if you have a "tight neck" chamber and enough neck wall thickness to work with. If you have a loaded nickel-plated round laying around and don't believe me, just pull the bullet. It will look like you pulled it out of a tube of 180 grit wet/dry sandpaper. If you pull the bullet out of a brass case mouth that has been carefully chamfered and polished with the steel wool process above, it will be essentially like out of the bullet box. Want copper in the barrel? Start by sanding the surface of those nice polished precision bullets. Try it with a Moly Coated bullet and it is even worse; the nickel-plated cases scrape off the Moly. The nickel-plated case neck IDs don't get any better after you reload them a few times. They are still like sandpaper. Think about a few of those nickel pieces of grit imbedding into the copper of the bullet and what they do to your rifle barrel! I have heard that the nickel is hard enough to score some reloading dies and also wear down the expander ball. Any metal that hard, should be kept away from your precision barrel. I have heard that some people have had success in removing the nickel plate from the neck IDs with a stainless steel brush and a drill motor. I haven't tried it.
MORE ABOUT NICKEL PLATING.... This is interesting about the mechanical properties of the nickel plating:
Electrolysis nickel plating is a process for chemically applying nickel-alloy deposits onto metallic substrates using an auto catalytic immersion process without the use of electrical current. ...snip....
Hardness and Wear Resistance
One of the most important properties for many applications is hardness. As deposited, the micro-hardness of electrolysis nickel coatings is about 500 to 700 HK100. That is approximately equal to 45 to 58 HRC and equivalent to many hardened alloy steels. Heat treatment causes these alloys to precipitation harden and can produce hardness values as high as 1100 HK100, equal to most commercial hard chromium coatings. ...snip...

Note that if you anneal your nickel plated necks, you are hardening the nickel plating. It can be harder than many alloyed steels before you anneal and can increase is hardness as much as 2 fold by precipitation hardening. I sure wouldn't want those tiny little hard pieces inside the neck getting embedded in the bullet's copper surface and then fire lapping my nice shiny barrel.

 

[Brithunter]

How very odd. I have used many thousands on Nickel plated cases in the old revolvers and never .................................. ever noticed this problem. One would have thought a pulled cast lead bullet would show this damage more easily than a jacketed rifle bullet.

I also have some nickel plated rifle cases and have never had any problems with those either. I have them in 270 Win from some "Speer Nitrex" ammunition and some R.P in 8x57. But then I don't turn case necks and have only ever neck reamed a couple of cases when playing with the Lee Loader target model which comes with a neck reamer. I have also not needed to anneal cases for many years and the last ones I recall doing were turned brass ones from NFDS in 577/450 ..................... Oh yes whoops I did anneal some 303 British that I was re-forming to 6.5x53R but that was about 15 years ago now.

I did worry about trimming the nickel 8x57 cases at first but careful trimming and a nice chamfer applied inside and out the the case neck mouth was fine and showed that my fears were uncalled for..

 

[stevenb]

cheers lads i,ll pass this info onto my budy i,m sure he will make his own mind up
with this info . cheers again

 

[blunderbust]

I resized some of these cases last weekend, on a couple of the cases some of the nickel flaked off the neck. Never had it happen before, just something to watch for. I binned the ones that did this.


​Al

Yes I have noticed this too with some of the Winchester cases and because of this would never put any of them through my Die.