Question about reloading nickel plated brass

T

tpcollins

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I have the Fiocchi nickel plated ammo for .380, 9mm, and 40 S&W. Awhile back I bought .380 nickel plated brass which I think was new, and loaded them.

I recently bought some "once fired range brass" in 9mm nickel plated. I sorted them by brand, and put them in my Thumbler with stainless steel media along with some Lemishine and tumbled them for about 2 hours. After they dried, I noticed they weren't as shiny as I thought they should be.

So I tumbled them again for about 2 hours this morning with smaller quantities to hopefully get them "shinier". However, they came out duller and the water in the tumbler looked gray (instead of powder black) so I believe I polished off the nickel plating.

I assume these are still ok to use? Thanks.
 
Question about reloading nickel plated brass

I have nickel plated brass, some of the cases have been tumbled to the point there is brass showing though. When it comes to shiny? If my brass bothers someone because it does not shine it bothers them more than it brothers me. I do have brass that is most impressive when it comes to shine, on occasions I spin clean my cases with a home made spinner. For me it is faster to spin 20 cases than it takes to tumble.

And then there is the rare moment at the range when a shooter wants me to notice how meticulous his ammo looks before shooting. When that happens I will take out a box my spun shined cases.

Then there is that occasion when tumbling does not remove years of patina. I use vinegar and nothing special, just vinegar. For the worst of cases I use vinegar for 15 minutes maximum for the life of the case. Before that the maximum time was 2 minutes and 30 seconds followed by soaking in bowling water ‘twice’ for rinsing. That method/technique turned the cases black.

F. Guffey
 
Neither plated or plain brass needs to be shiney. Just clean.
'Duller' might be a reaction to the dish soap. Just a WHAG though.
You really can't polish off the nickel in a few hours, but you can tell when the plating wears off because there's brass under it.
 
Yes, I believe that you scraped the nickel off. Your brass will still be fine. I understand wanting nickel, you can get more, and only clean with cob or other light media.

Here's a suggestion. Take your dirty range brass, tie it in a heavy drawstring bag, and run it through the laundry with your jeans and ordinary detergent. You may decide not to tumble.
 
For my 9mm nickel plate brass I load it with JHP. Years ago I found with 45ACP the nickel tends to be a bit more brittle and doesn't last as long as it's brass counterpart. It is probably due to me over belling/and crimping or pushing to +P pressures back when I shot ACP or the fact I shared resources with my father and didn't know how many times some of that brass was loaded.

I have been sorting out the nickel brass for 20+ years and when I get a couple of 100 I will load them up with JHP. I rarely shot any of it so I have a good supply of JHP ammo in the cabinet.The Nickel shells make the JHP bullets look a bit better than brass.
 
Nickel brass is more brittle, it is probably damaged during the plating process. Chemicals used in that actually dissolve metal and bind it to another while swimming in a caustic solution. I use a lot of .38, and I'm still using a l b watch of brass that I bought many years ago. The nickel will split, but not the plated.

Honestly, I've never split a plated nine. I guess that I've not used enough.
 
UPDATE . . .

My brother-in-law has a huge Lyman Turbo 2200 with corn cob media so I borrowed it to see if it would clean the nickel case any better. After a little over 2 hours in the unit, they came out just as shiny as brand new! Evidently the nickel plated cases didn't like the cleaning detergents I was using with the stainless steel media.
 
That's good to know! I'm not at the wet tumbling point yet, but it's good to know about the nickle plated brass.
 
Stainless steel is really hard, I would expect a little scratching. It didn't surprise me to read that had been dulled a bit. The fact that cob shined it back up poses a question. Cleaning up lightly scratched with cob seems odd using walnut, or rouge would have easily done it.

Just a bit of a riddle.

Btw, I believe that the very best way to get BRILLIANT brass is walnut with either powdered rouge or Tripoli.
 
Stainless steel wet tumbling is more aggressive and on nickle plated brass it will remove minute amounts of the nickle, leaving a matt finish. I have a bunch of nickel cases and just toss them in my tumbler with cob media for a few minutes, it doesn't take long...
 
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