Necking down nickel brass?

Varminterror

New member
I do a lot of my reloading in nickel plated brass, but I've never done any 'neck down' resizing, hoping someone can help me out a bit.

Does nickel plated brass take necking down well? Does it work harden, spring back, crack, flake, etc? Or does it resize just fine? Does necking down then reaming affect the case negatively?

EDIT: I suppose while I'm asking - if I DON'T use nickel brass, is there any advantage/disadvantage to neck reaming vs. neck turning, or vice versa? (and is that redundant?
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44mag brass down to 357 bullet. Not asking a lot compared to some other cartridge conversions, but I've never necked down nickel brass, so I figured I'd better kick it to the experts.

Then again, I tend to get a heck of a lot more life out of nickel brass than most folks online would say is possible, so maybe my expectation might be higher than it should be. I whole heartedly agree about annealing extending the life of nickel brass. I've always figured it would help the plating stay put and help reduce the hardening (since nickel is harder and more brittle in general), so I anneal my nickel brass more often than I do yellow brass.
 
I have necked down some nickel .308 brass to use in a 7mm-08. Not much of a neck down I will admit but I had no issues that I can recall.
 
I have formed some nickel Starline 45/70 to 40/65 with no problems I did have to lean on the old Rockchucker a little harder, but it shoots just fine
 
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Originally Posted By: Varminterror...is there any advantage/disadvantage to neck reaming vs. neck turning, or vice versa? (and is that redundant?
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I necked down some nickel .243 cases to .224 once a million years ago, then neck turned it, so the nickel was gone from the necks anyway. Looked like azz but otherwise seemed serviceable enough.

Reaming vs. turning - yes, there's advantage/disadvantage. Reaming won't do anything to improve neck thickness uniformity and might even make it worse. Basically, the reamer just follows the hole. Turning results in nicely uniform necks for good concentricity and uniformity of neck tension.

I only ream when there's a lot of material to be removed, so much that I'll still be able to turn them after reaming. When I used to make .22-250's out of .308's I'd do it that way.

- DAA
 
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