Case annealing not that duanting

[supercorndogs]

This always seem to to be one of the most divisive subjects, where everyone thinks they have a secret trick but nobody can prove why their method is any better.

Having watched the era of the homereloader annealing cases begin and reloaded my first seveal thousand cases in an era before it started. I always wonder when people talk about annealing and what it does for them. How many rounds they reloaded before they started annealing. How many firings they were accustom to getting out of a case. How often they were splitting necks. As compared to the present.

I routinely made it to 15 without loosing more than a couple to split necks before I started annealing. I rouitey had acceptable verticals out to 1k without annealing.

I would guesstimate I split less necks now by a little. I split a couple necks in some 7-8x 6 arc brass recently. I went ahead and annealed the brass and haven't split another they are at 11 now.

Could the temperature range to get acceptable results is much wider than people think? As evidenced by the fact that everyone says their process works. Is it much easier to do than people make it out to be?

In my opnion the most important part of the process is dealing with oxidation inside the neck afterward. After that most of us aren't shooting the diffrence anyway. I know half of sniperhides brass isn't making it past 4 or 5x before the pockets give out.

Thoughts, rants, dissertations, adhominem, poems, shit slinging, monkey sounds and slap fighting, all welcome here. I don't judge.

 

[R_A_W]

I know half of sniperhides brass isn't making it past 4 or 5x before the pockets give out

Just had a LRP fall out of annealed Norma during media tumbling after the 3rd firing

 

[RegionRat]

Having watched the era of the homereloader annealing cases begin and reloaded my first seveal thousand cases in an era before it started.

What year would you say this "era" was that you watched home reloaders start annealing?

 

[supercorndogs]

It was not discussed at all around here in the late 90s and early 2000s. I would say the era of "annealing started with the era of the internet being constantly at most people finger tips.

What year did you start reloading and what year did you start annealing?

 

[918v]

In what format would you like my reloading poem? Haiku or Iambic Pantameter?

 

[R_A_W]

Reloading 1999
Annealing 2023

I absolutely punted that can down the road. Stored away somewhere, I have what is likely the hardest Federal and Remington Peters brass ever to exist

 

[RegionRat]

It was not discussed at all around here in the late 90s and early 2000s. I would say the era of "annealing started with the era of the internet being constantly at most people finger tips.

What year did you start reloading and what year did you start annealing?

It sounds odd to talk about being around at the beginning of home case annealing.

Folks didn't spring to life with the gun forums or the internet.

Reloaders were home annealing bottleneck cases since the late 1800's, so you missed "watching the era" of annealing start by over 120 years.

I saw my first garage-made home annealer around 1968 when the old timer across the alley had me hand sorting and de-capping surplus 30-06 from a 55 gallon drum of machine-gun brass and feeding it into his automatic feed annealer.

 

[memilanuk]

I'd argue that the era of annealing being more 'common' probably started somewhere around the time of the Ken Light machines, maybe a little after that. Before, sure, the occasional weirdo did that sort of thing in the garage/shop, but relatively few reloaders had even heard of it, much less considered doing it themselves.

I think it started to pick up steam about 15-20 years ago, and really started taking off 10-15 years ago.

 

[6.5SH]

In the early 90's it was more of a fringe benchrest/wildcat thing for anyone doing it at home. But for those doing volume reloading there were processors such as RVO who would sell 3500 pieces of LC 5.56 for $99 shipped. It was cleaned, annealed, sized, de-capped, pockets swaged and trimmed.

 

[supercorndogs]

In what format would you like my reloading poem? Haiku or Iambic Pantameter?

You sir are limited to hyperbole and animal noises.

You're one the guys that's been doing this for a long time. Did you start or were you part of the annealing craze of the 1890s?

 

[ma smith]

Maybe its just a byproduct of using inline dies on an arbor press, but IMHO if you are paying attention to your brass, you will understand the pro/cons of annealing without having to have anyone explain it to you. IMHO Absolutely it can be a workflow bottle neck, and some choose to skip it by throwing away their brass at 4-5x firings. Otherwise, geta set of pin gauges and find a way to anneal that isn't a time-suck and its NBD.

 

[Tokay444]

Is it much easier to do than people make it out to be?

Yes. Drop it in. Push the button. How much easier could that possibly be?

 

[918v]

You sir are limited to hyperbole and animal noises.

You're one the guys that's been doing this for a long time. Did you start or were you part of the annealing craze of the 1890s?

The beauty of a virgin case has no bounds
Except when oily fingers steal its shine.
And extreme pressures force conformity
To a familiar bloated state and a dark soul. (Grunt, grunt, grunt, soooweee!)

Burn! Burn in the flame of dinosaur and fern
Refined by the earth and unleashed by man
Until thy neck glows the faintest of orange
And you are hard no more. (Sooooweee! Grunt, grunt, grunt.)









I started annealing about 15 years after I started reloading. I wanted better es, lower runout, get rid of fliers, etc. A hard case is no fun.

 

[supercorndogs]

Maybe its just a byproduct of using inline dies on an arbor press, but IMHO if you are paying attention to your brass, you will understand the pro/cons of annealing without having to have anyone explain it to you. IMHO Absolutely it can be a workflow bottle neck, and some choose to skip it by throwing away their brass at 4-5x firings. Otherwise, geta set of pin gauges and find a way to anneal that isn't a time-suck and its NBD.

So you needed specialized equipment to realize tou were making a diffrence vs before you started annealing.

 

[supercorndogs]

The beauty of a virgin case has no bounds
Except when oily fingers steal its shine.
And extreme pressures force conformity
To a familiar bloated state and a dark soul. (Grunt, grunt, grunt, soooweee!)

Burn! Burn in the flame of dinosaur and fern
Refined by the earth and unleashed by man
Until thy neck glows the faintest of orange
And you are hard no more. (Sooooweee! Grunt, grunt, grunt.)









I started annealing about 15 years after I started reloading. I wanted better es, lower runout, get rid of fliers, etc. A hard case is no fun.

Would you say that you get better run out better ES and less fliers? How often do you need to anneal to realize the benefits. What methods have you used with success?

 

[ma smith]

So you needed specialized equipment to realize tou were making a diffrence vs before you started annealing.

That's not specialized equipment, its the absolute most basic for of equipment there is. There cannot be any simpler form of press, nor any simpler form of die, nor any simpler form of ID guage. Then again, perhaps that's part of the joke...

 

[supercorndogs]

That's not specialized equipment, its the absolute most basic for of equipment there is. There cannot be any simpler form of press, nor any simpler form of die, nor any simpler form of ID guage. Then again, perhaps that's part of the joke...

I would disagree, standard presses and standard dies are basic equipment. Pin gauges and arbor presses I would consider fringe as the majority of reloaders dont use them. Honestly I would bet the majority of reloaders still don't anneal either though. So it could be almost as niche.

Neither here nor there I guess, you were the one who attributed their use to noticing some sort of tangible advantage.

 

[Cascade Hemi]

Annealing was openly discussed on the original SH forum. Back then it was pans of water and spinning drills.

All of the inexpensive annealers available today really makes annealing affordable and super easy.

 

[supercorndogs]

Annealing was openly discussed on the original SH forum. Back then it was pans of water and spinning drills.

All of the inexpensive annealers available today really makes annealing affordable and super easy.

To be clear when I said "around here" I was referring to locally pre-everyone being on a forum. Forums were even niche back then. Dudes with some foresight brought us this kind of information exchange we have today.

 

[918v]

Would you say that you get better run out better ES and less fliers? How often do you need to anneal to realize the benefits. What methods have you used with success?

Back in the day I started with a micro torch (for soldering) from Radio Shack and I spun the case in a Sinclair case prep station. The micro torch used an odd cartridge of gas but concentrated the flame in such a way that I was able to heat up only the neck. And not the body. I thought that was the best approach. But it was slow and expensive.

Then I got an AMP and then another AMP with the Aztec mode. Quick and consistent but it was overheating the case and you can feel it when seating the bullets. Also, accuracy was shit. So I was lowering the settings and using a 650 deg tempilstik crayon. That way I got more seating pressure. That seems to work ok.

But I could never get the accuracy that rivals a properly prepped new or 1x case. So after 3x the case starts to throw fliers. And velocity goes up and then it all goes to shit. I’m talking small groups. If all you need is moa then none of this applies.

Also, a soft case conforms better to sizing and bullet seating. A hard case will spring to whatever shape it wants and produce unacceptable runout, for me it’s more than .003” tir. When I size a 1x case with a Redding body die and a Lee collet neck die I get .001” to .002” runout.

 

[supercorndogs]

Nah.

An arbor press literally the simplest mechanical press you can design/buy, much simpler than a co-axial press for example. Same thing with an in-line die, its much simpler than a floating-sleeve standard die. And a pin-gauge is much simpler than an inside micrometer...

I have both side by side on my bench...and can run them in comparable calibers.

My first pin-gauge was free...since it was the center post on a $17 lee collet die...

its a perfect -1.8 thou under (or whatever)...and its incredibly sensitive to work hardening simply by feel.

That die is as old as time as well, so you aboslutely do not need "modern" kit to test this stuff at caveman levels of simplicity.

The fact that this stuff isn't ovbious to the vast majority of shooters really is bizzarre. I mean Lee literally talks about testing for work hardening in their instructions for the collet die, since its a remedy for loss of neck tension using the system.

So that method? its probably like 50 years old or whatever....

I didn't say it was new. I didn't say it was expensive. I said it wasn't common.

 

[Cascade Hemi]

I didn't say it was new. I didn't say it was expensive. I said it wasn't common.

It still isn't common

 

[supercorndogs]

Back in the day I started with a micro torch (for soldering) from Radio Shack and I spun the case in a Sinclair case prep station. The micro torch used an odd cartridge of gas but concentrated the flame in such a way that I was able to heat up only the neck. And not the body. I thought that was the best approach. But it was slow and expensive.

Then I got an AMP and then another AMP with the Aztec mode. Quick and consistent but it was overheating the case and you can feel it when seating the bullets. Also, accuracy was shit. So I was lowering the settings and using a 650 deg tempilstik crayon. That way I got more seating pressure. That seems to work ok.

But I could never get the accuracy that rivals a properly prepped new or 1x case. So after 3x the case starts to throw fliers. And velocity goes up and then it all goes to shit. I’m talking small groups. If all you need is moa then none of this applies.

Also, a soft case conforms better to sizing and bullet seating. A hard case will spring to whatever shape it wants and produce unacceptable runout, for me it’s more than .003” tir. When I size a 1x case with a Redding body die and a Lee collet neck die I get .001” to .002” runout.

I understand. Important qualification on group sizes/ammo qualifications.

A recovery anneal doesn't need the temp actual annealing does.

Most of my pre annealing reloading was done for remington 700 22-250 and 308 I promptly shot out and sent to LRI to be fitted with Kreiger barrels in 308 and 243AI. 308 probably wasn't honestly shot out but I got tired of dealing with factory barrels opening up as they got hot. My 300wm was bad about it too. Not anymore. Most of the shooting I did was from feild positions. When I did shoot paper I expected the 308 to be sub 3/4 for 10 then it would opem up to 1-1.5 MOA. I was battling fliers in my 300wm but I had about 1500 rounds through the used rifle so i rebarreled it the same time I started annealing also. They were like 1.5-2 moa out of the group on some 8x winchester.

I recently took some 6 arc brass to 7 or 8 without annealing. I started splitting necks so I started annealing it. I quit splitting necks from then till now 11x annealing every couple.

 

[Cascade Hemi]

Holy cow you people are stuck in a loop.

Basically the three modern elements of precision reloading ammo are using bushing dies, mandrels (in lieu of expander balls) and good seating dies. Good seating dies either have a floating sleeve, or use in-line chamber alignment.

Or maybe I just lander here from outer space?

Mandrel and pin-gauges are the same thing, and bushings (in part) solve for the problems associated with delayed annealing. ie use a smaller bushing to get the extra neck tension you lose due to work hardening. The way you test that is with a pin/guage which are the same thing.

In the lee collet instructions you are meant to swap out the mandrel to a -3.0 or whatever when the 1.8 stops working.

Or...just anneal the cases...

What are you talking about?

This is a reloading enthusiast forum. Everything commonly discussed here is still uncommon among most reloaders.

 

[RegionRat]

Honestly I would bet the majority of reloaders still don't anneal either though.

You would win that bet by a wide margin.

You would also win if you bet that the majority of gun owners in this country do not reload at all.

If you watch a hunter sight-in anywhere in the Rockies during elk/deer season, you would anecdotally see that the vast majority of hunters there are using factory ammo.

When I look back at the folks I have guided, my guess would be that less than 1/5th of them reloaded, and less than 1/5 of the reloaders annealed their brass. Some of that was driven by the common use of belted magnums where brass didn't last more than three cycles, but to your point, annealers in general were and are still very rare unless you are looking inside competition circles that run volume.

This kind of statistic is irrelevant unless you are thinking about taking investment risks in this market and trying to guess at the market size.

The view of who anneals and who doesn't, narrows down as we discuss your question with respect to rifle shooters who compete or shoot in certain niche categories where it benefits folks to use annealing to stay in their game.

At one SHOT show talk I attended long ago, the fraction of folks who compete or reload was described as irrelevant. The attendance at National Matches in the US was never large and has declined even as they added F-Class and scopes in XTC.

However, like auto racing, the industry still pays attention to the competition because of the downstream influence on their market. Topics like Higpower, Benchrest, F-Class, PRS, etc., are the tail that wags the dog, even if they are a tiny fraction of the total market.

Some of the best survey articles are in the Precision Rifle Blog's section called "What the Pros Use". You can also learn a lot from surveys of well attended matches where the shooters are asked to fill out questionnaires and then someone does in-depth interviews with some of the top competitors.

I was often shocked to learn how minimalist certain World Record holders run their loading, while others were very meticulous. Many of them skip annealing and many other popular steps too. YMMV

 

[supercorndogs]

Holy cow you people are stuck in a loop.

Basically the three modern elements of precision reloading ammo are using bushing dies, mandrels (in lieu of expander balls) and good seating dies. Good seating dies either have a floating sleeve, or use in-line chamber alignment.

Or maybe I just lander here from outer space?

Mandrel and pin-gauges are the same thing, and bushings (in part) solve for the problems associated with delayed annealing. ie use a smaller bushing to get the extra neck tension you lose due to work hardening. The way you test that is with a pin/guage which are the same thing.

In the lee collet instructions you are meant to swap out the mandrel to a -3.0 or whatever when the 1.8 stops working.

Or...just anneal the cases...

I feel like you are trying to have an argument with people having a conversation you can't follow. And yes this is the reloading forum. Hence why it is labeled "reloading."

 

[supercorndogs]

You would win that bet by a wide margin.

You would also win if you bet that the majority of gun owners in this country do not reload at all.

If you watch a hunter sight-in anywhere in the Rockies during elk/deer season, you would anecdotally see that the vast majority of hunters there are using factory ammo.

When I look back at the folks I have guided, my guess would be that less than 1/5th of them reloaded, and less than 1/5 of the reloaders annealed their brass. Some of that was driven by the common use of belted magnums where brass didn't last more than three cycles, but to your point, annealers in general were and are still very rare unless you are looking inside competition circles that run volume.

This kind of statistic is irrelevant unless you are thinking about taking investment risks in this market and trying to guess at the market size.

The view of who anneals and who doesn't, narrows down as we discuss your question with respect to rifle shooters who compete or shoot in certain niche categories where it benefits folks to use annealing to stay in their game.

At one SHOT show talk I attended long ago, the fraction of folks who compete or reload was described as irrelevant. The attendance at National Matches in the US was never large and has declined even as they added F-Class and scopes in XTC.

However, like auto racing, the industry still pays attention to the competition because of the downstream influence on their market. Topics like Higpower, Benchrest, F-Class, PRS, etc., are the tail that wags the dog, even if they are a tiny fraction of the total market.

Some of the best survey articles are in the Precision Rifle Blog's section called "What the Pros Use". You can also learn a lot from surveys of well attended matches where the shooters are asked to fill out questionnaires and then someone does in-depth interviews with some of the top competitors.

I was often shocked to learn how minimalist certain World Record holders run their loading, while others were very meticulous. Many of them skip annealing and many other popular steps too. YMMV

Some of that has been the subject of conversation in a handful of old threads i can remeber, with old timers I don't think grace our pages anymore. Voodoo is real if you beleive in it. You can find its influence everywhere. Lol.

As with any good conversation sometimes I feel like it needs to be heared down path. One of the things I brought up, that only one poster has touched on. Had to do with success, and failure and the methods that succeeded and failed. And what drove them.to start annealing.

 

[Tokay444]

Annealing is the least labour intensive, least time consuming step in my reloading process, and I can do it anywhere I have a power source.

 

[supercorndogs]

I am pretty sure I prime faster then I anneal. I think dry tumbling is the least labor intensive part of my process. I actually have to arrange the brass in the annealer hopper vs just dumping it in the tumbler.

 

[Tokay444]

I am pretty sure I prime faster then I anneal. I think dry tumbling is the least labor intensive part of my process. I actually have to arrange the brass in the annealer hopper vs just dumping it in the tumbler.

I thought about tumbling, but then I thought about having to dump media and check flash holes which comes part and parcel with tumbling, and annealing is definitely less labour intensive. Pick it up out of my ammo box or bag, put it in the machine, push the button, take it out, put it down. I can do it on the couch.