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Buckled case during expander mandrel 6.5cm
- Thread starter Allthewatts
- Start date
That is quite the crystal ball you have , too bad it's full of shit . Why do you constantly troll and mess up folk's threads ? You have proven many times you don't shit about anything , why not shut up and learn ?
Yeah, this annealing topic has been flogged to death & there are numerous threads on the subject.
All I will say about annealing is that it is a topic that is completely misunderstood by the majority of cartridge case annealers. Everything from the temperatures required to the time vs temp curves & the change in metallurgical properties of 70/30 brass.
I anneal all my brass at around 800 C for around 5 seconds which causes the brass to transition to 100% recrystallization which, is not as soft as the brass can become but, is softer than 450F to 650F until a very dull glow is seen.
After annealing & sizing many hundreds of cases to 100% recrystallization, I have never collapsed a case resizing the necks with a mandrel pin expander.
I don't believe any of these guys have actually annealed to the extent that I do but, they all seem to know what the results will be.
The OP set up his mandrel die with enough clearance so the case mouth did not touch the mandrel’s shoulder. So what collapsed the case shoulder was the down force via friction in the neck from the mandrel. It means the shoulder was too soft.
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Since the low temps used by most guys when annealing can't soften the brass, it's more likely that the brass was too hard & the neck would not yield.
In my experience, the softer brass reacts in the opposite way whereby the neck hoop tension is much lower than the shoulder tension during expander insertion. As previously stated, I've never collapsed a case & the expander is not hard to force into the necks either. I have to expand the necks by about 0.006" because I've removed the expander ball from the FL sizing die.
The softer brass works in favor of expander pin sizing, not against it.
I have had this issue happen before with Hornady brass. I have tested annealed and non-annealed as well as with lube and without. Annealed and lubed helps but it still happens. Generally you can tell right before it happens from how much force is needed.
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Point being I’m happy that an amp makes annealing perfect and I can’t F it up. Lord knows I probably would otherwise.
Not necessarily. Over annealed brass is brass that was annealed too much and is too soft to work well in cartridge cases.
What hardness do you consider hard enough? Because brass is either work hardened, fully crystallised, or melted. What degree of work hardening are you speculating is the correct amount to stop the annealing process at before a full anneal is achieved?
Whatever factory brass is annealed to. That hardness works well to produce excellent accuracy. If you anneal the brass softer than that then accuracy goes to shit.
So a full anneal. Contradictory to your previous posts.
The goal of annealing is to anneal. Not slightly reduce work hardening, or under anneal.
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Do you understand that brass be annealed softer from what you call “full anneal” to its melting point?
What I’m trying to ask is if you understand that factory brass is annealed to a certain hardness and that reloaders can anneal their fired brass to an even softer condition without being anywhere close to melting it.
Well, no. My point is you can anneal a case softer than optimal for accuracy. You’re suggesting that factory brass is annealed to just before the point of melting. That is just not true.
I'm telling you that annealed comes before melting.
What you're doing is regurgitating dogma with no factual based evidence to back it up.
I don't believe that a home annealer can over anneal.
I've had no issues with my brass other than the necks are much softer which means that I can't get much more than about 50 Lb of bullet seating force. Normally, I size the necks to give about 30 Lb of seating force which has been working with no issues but, I wouldn't recommend necks as soft as I have to a guy who was reloading for a sheep hunt or some such.
As for the accuracy claims made by some guys, I can't measure any difference between un-annealed & annealed.
The main reason I anneal is that it makes the cases so much easier & repeatable to size.
I disagree. If you heat the case till it glows then it’s too soft. I think the point right before it starts to glow is optimal.
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You walk each piece to your local Brinell tester and walk back to make a setting change on your AMP?
I'm quite sure the AMP unit gets the case necks to quite a bit more than a dull glow.
To make any real change in the brass over very short time frames, there's no choice but to get the temps higher than the temps we commonly see bandied about on the internet.
The guys at AMP could easily reprogram their machines to turn out softer cases but, I think they've settled on the best mix between malleability & manageability.
