I read that you said fully prepared brass and I know that means different things to different people, but yes, all the numbers are for sure more consistent when annealing every reloading. I usually anneal my match brass every other loading though. I haven’t found it makes a big practical difference and my time is already so limited that I have at the loading bench.
I should have listed all my initial (batch one) brass prep steps but yes until a month or so ago, i did (almost) everything, and it took copious amounts of time that i would love to get back!
Edit: Have neck turned new brass before fire forming for 6 years via the K&M cutter and expander mandrel. Recently decided to run the experiment to see if premium brass will work well without neck turning.
Only bought premium brass (Lapua and Alpha), check for bent necks (FL sized these, remainder was loaded as it came out of the box), measure the length of all the cases, cull any exceptionally short cases (rare), then cut them all to the same length (often 5 thou shorter than trim length, because my batch of Lapua brass had many short ones, undesirable as it leaves more room for the carbon ring to form), then debur and chamfer the necks, brush out the necks (to remove debris), then weight sorted them into batches of typically 1.0 grains (of course, after trimming to the same length), checked the neck thickness with a ball micrometer and then culled any brass that had neck thickness variation of more than 0.001” (1 thou), sorted them in descending weight order, serialized the cases (small number engraved on the side close to the web so i can keep track of repeat offenders, prevent brass batches from getting mixed up), neck turned the brass that made the grade, cut the primer pockets to the same dept, inspected 10 or so samples looking for a bur inside the case where the flash hole was drilled or punched (via bore scope with 45 degree mirror removed), if there were any i would debur the inside flash hole for all of them (never happened yet with Lapua or Alpha, fairly common for Hornady and Winchester, still have to try Peterson), and then fire form them with a soft lead core bullet seated to a very hard jam with max neck tension and a medium to low powder charge (trying to avoid stretching close to the web, want the case head against the bolt face).
Only bought premium brass (Lapua and Alpha), check for bent necks (FL sized these, remainder was loaded as it came out of the box), measure the length of all the cases, cull any exceptionally short cases (rare), then cut them all to the same length (often 5 thou shorter than trim length, because my batch of Lapua brass had many short ones, undesirable as it leaves more room for the carbon ring to form), then debur and chamfer the necks, brush out the necks (to remove debris), then weight sorted them into batches of typically 1.0 grains (of course, after trimming to the same length), checked the neck thickness with a ball micrometer and then culled any brass that had neck thickness variation of more than 0.001” (1 thou), sorted them in descending weight order, serialized the cases (small number engraved on the side close to the web so i can keep track of repeat offenders, prevent brass batches from getting mixed up), neck turned the brass that made the grade, cut the primer pockets to the same dept, inspected 10 or so samples looking for a bur inside the case where the flash hole was drilled or punched (via bore scope with 45 degree mirror removed), if there were any i would debur the inside flash hole for all of them (never happened yet with Lapua or Alpha, fairly common for Hornady and Winchester, still have to try Peterson), and then fire form them with a soft lead core bullet seated to a very hard jam with max neck tension and a medium to low powder charge (trying to avoid stretching close to the web, want the case head against the bolt face).
Subsequent reloads:
Deprime (on a dedicated depriming die), tumble for 2 hours with solvent and Nushine car wax (to avoid bullet weld, saw an improvement as there are less sticky cases when i reseat, but still present, now trying fresh corn cob with no additives), measure and trim to length only if the case needs it, chamfer and debur, cut primer hole again to correct dept, which mostly removes carbon but occasionally cuts brass a tiny amount (brass that migrated into the primer hole making it shallower than before), clean remaining carbon out if anything is left over with a wire brush, brush inside of case with a mn oversize nylon brush to remove debris and loose carbon flakes via Lyman case prep center, use Imperial sizing wax and FL size via Redding Type S die with the button left in (possibly controversial), aim dor 1.5 to 2 thiy shoulder bump, measure to confirm (but have now switched to Whidden non-bushing die - pick a sizing button that gives me high neck tension 2.5 - 3 thou, enough for seating force to be high at 100-120 lbs), tumble again to remove Imperial sizing wax, either gas flame anneal (or use AMP machine, which makes the surface finish on the outside neck feeling more “scratchy”, it gets a higher coefficient of friction, and it burns off the Nushine car wax, so sometimes tumbled a third time to remove the rough surface finish and put the wax back on!), seat the primer until it bottoms out and put the same amount of force on it (by feel), weigh powder to 0.04 gn accuracy (plus or minus two kernels of powder), seat vis inline Wilson seater and an arbor press. Measure base to ogive with the Hornady insert, on an accurate vernier. Reseat with more violence if needed by tapping the handle hard multiple times (often the case, a disadvantage of an inline die), put on the ammo case in order (based on serial number), so groups of 5 cases have a weight range of 0.15 gn or less (yes i know, total overkill). Fire ammo into groups of 5, record SD and ES per group of 5 and group size (vis Ballstic-X app) when doing load develipment (looking for a node), also record ES and SD and aggregate group size for the entire batch of 50 if they are all loaded the same.
Yeah i know, total OCD mode, and not sure i have seen an adequate return on this investment in time and kit. Now working on reducing steps to speed up the loading process by 2x or more....
