Annealing

I anneal every reloading. When I started doing this my Es went down, resizing got easier, and so did trimming, my brass now all grows the same each loading instead of some faster than others, concentricity improved. I noticed such an improvement that I will continue to aneal every reloading! Has worked well for me and my practices. Your results may vary.
 
The first time I annealled I had no choice. 17 ackley hornet. To this day I regret selling it. Several steps to forming brass, including annealling. Some may look at all that as a pita but I enjoy it. I don’t remember who makes it, but my first annealling tool was a copper tube bent in a circle with torch holes on the inside. Connected to a 1 lb propane bottle. It works great. Not nearly as fast as my automated gizmo, and nowhere near as expensive. Chris
 
Anealing brass. When and how often?

When I first learned to aneal I would do it once every 4 loadings. It worked well and my brass lasted a very long time. I don't run high preasure so my primer pockets rarely open up. As my skills improved I started chancing the acuracey rabbit. Picked up a concentricity gage. First lot I checked was a freshly anealed lot and my worst ones where a .0015" out. I thought well that was a waste of money! But I continued to check them after sizing. 2nd loading I averaged .002-.003 still good but I wondered what I did differently. 3rd loading .002-.005 Hmmm. Fourth loading .003-.007". Now I was resizing some brass twice to straighten the bad ones. Then I check case length. Hmmm all different ranging .01". I anealed resized and trimmed and checked again. .0015" extreme spred on concentricity. I kept up this cycle for few weeks trying to figure out what I was doing wrong. It finially dawned on me after reading an article about brass work hardening and spring back. I decided to do like some of the nut jobs online that preached about anealing every loading :yikes:

What happened? Well my brass stayed in the .001-.002 area for concentric, all my brass grew at the same rate with in .002". Resizing was easier, seating was easier, trimming was easier. Grouping improved at distance, Es/sd went down and most importantly confidence went up.
Now I'm one of those whack jobs online preaching about annealing every loading!

I used to anneal with a drill going super slow and a bit I made to hold the cases and then drop them in water to stop the heat from going down too far on the case. Now I anneal by hand. Holding the brass by the head and turning it by hand. Then I set it on a tin plate to cool. No water mess or waiting for brass to dry, heat dosent go past the shoulders but maybe .1-.15" still getting the same results but faster and less fuss. Typically when I finish the last peace I'm able to just start picking them up and place them in my loading block. They cool quickly.

Jmo based off my exp.
 
I get superb concentricity, very consistently. For the life of the brass. Without annealing at all.

If you were seeing as bad as .003 - .007, which, .007 is really pretty terrible (you can see it's crooked with the naked eye at .007), I think there is something ugly going on in your setup somewhere. Sounds like annealing is treating the symptom well for you. But it should be pretty easy to identify and correct the cause, so you never see .007 in the first place.

Not trying to talk you our of annealing, either. Separate subject, really. Just saying that if you are getting worse and worse concentricity as you reload your brass "something" is out of whack with your dies or something and it would probably be pretty easy to figure it out and fix it.

I have never seen anything like that, personally. Loading practices vary a great deal though and there are all kinds of things that happen that I never see.

- DAA
 
It was the combo of poor brass and dies causing the issue and possibly was me not resizing constantly. This was 7-8 years ago now I believe. it did fix the issue and helped with many other issues. By the way that lot of Hornady 243 brass from otc ammo went just over 100 loadings before it got too thin in the necks and got tossed. Currently I'm using a lot of Norma brass of 46 peaces that are on its 18th loading.
 
lots of creative ways to do this. I'm seeing all sorts of things people have come up with, from simple setups using a bit of pipe to hold a case (or even fingers) to DIY rigs to automate it that can be built for about $100 to commercial tools costing almost $500 and that require conversion parts for different sized cases.

I'm both lazy, so I want to make it as quick, easy & fool proof as possible, and don't have much to spend if I decide to try it out, so that limits my choices LOL

in commercial rigs, this is the best value / least expensive one I've found so far. they're $275 and do 223 - 30-06 sized cases out of the box (and have parts available for smaller and bigger sizes):



I really like these, no open flame, but they do cost $200 more and do not automate the case feeding:



but if you want to spend the money you can combine it with one of these to automate the process with no flames, but it does require extra parts for different sized cases:

 
I have a buddy with a pressure gauge on his arbor press. Just out of interest, I seated a 4x fired Dasher which had not been annealed and a new hydroformed case, right along side an annealed hydroformed case, and an annealed 4x case. Definitively, the seating pressures were NOT the same for the old vs. new non-annealed. The pressures for the annealed cases were. Same load in each case, the ES’s and SD’s weren’t terribly different for each set, but if I lumped my new brass and old brass together, my velocities, ES’s, and SD’s stayed the same. For the mixed non-annealed brass, the ES and SD of the new & old mixed lot was greater than either new or old. Simple so see, if a person knows how to look.

I’ve known a lot of guys who have never annealed and swear they could not benefit from doing so. Usually these are guys who never end up mixing new and old lots of brass, which helps them stay consistent. I had a guy try to convince me chasing a low ES was a waste of time because he had 1/4” groups at 100yrds with an SD of 40... I took him to my 600yrd range (not fair to take him to 1,000)... guess what happened? Lots of guys will also say their accuracy can not be improved by neck turning. I’ve met lots of guys who swear by full length barrel bedding, others who swear by “pressure pads”...

I anneal on any precision loaded cartridges. Don’t care two shakes if someone else doesn’t.
 
Originally Posted By: thegoodlifeOriginally Posted By: Stu FarishI take it that those who do anneal, do it before resizing?

That is my procedure same
 
Originally Posted By: Stu Farishlots of creative ways to do this. I'm seeing all sorts of things people have come up with, from simple setups using a bit of pipe to hold a case (or even fingers) to DIY rigs to automate it that can be built for about $100 to commercial tools costing almost $500 and that require conversion parts for different sized cases.

I'm both lazy, so I want to make it as quick, easy & fool proof as possible, and don't have much to spend if I decide to try it out, so that limits my choices LOL

in commercial rigs, this is the best value / least expensive one I've found so far. they're $275 and do 223 - 30-06 sized cases out of the box (and have parts available for smaller and bigger sizes):



I really like these, no open flame, but they do cost $200 more and do not automate the case feeding:



but if you want to spend the money you can combine it with one of these to automate the process with no flames, but it does require extra parts for different sized cases:




I checked on the no flame annealer a couple years ago as it seemed like a great option, Doug strongly recommended against it. I believe he was having dependability issues with the electrical annealing unit at that time, I would expect that is why he no longer sells that unit along with his annealing attachment. Personally I would not purchase the electrical annealer if Giraud Tool is not willing ot sell the unit after a markup direct there is a reason. $.02
 
Ya, that AMP induction annealer is top shelf and that attachment gizmo makes it basically a commercial annealers dream. If I were 30 yoa I would have one
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i own one of the annealeeze machines.

very good value for the $, good way to get into automated annealing at a budget price.


1 lb canister of gas will anneal >4000 peices of brass with the torch they have.




i for one am a very happy customer! Just because this product is budget priced doesnt mean its a cheap POS! Buy with confidence!
 
I tend to make a lot of stuff myself. There's a DIY plan for a similar rig that can be built for about $100 if one wants to take the time to do it. Have to admit I'm considering that.

on the other hand, sometimes convenience wins out and $275 isn't that bad
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Originally Posted By: Stu FarishI tend to make a lot of stuff myself. There's a DIY plan for a similar rig that can be built for about $100 if one wants to take the time to do it. Have to admit I'm considering that.

on the other hand, sometimes convenience wins out and $275 isn't that bad
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I tend to make a lot of stuff myself to, that DIY project was easy to do.. but most of that Electronics came from China and took 4 weeks to get or so. There's some other modifications you can make do that project that makes it even better
 
The necks that I have annealed have been non turn neck brass, or 22 or 6 ppc brass that had been formed from 7.62x39 brass and fired 50+ times.
 
Originally Posted By: Stu FarishI tend to make a lot of stuff myself. There's a DIY plan for a similar rig that can be built for about $100 if one wants to take the time to do it. Have to admit I'm considering that.

on the other hand, sometimes convenience wins out and $275 isn't that bad
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thats kinda where i was at when i decided to pull the trigger and order one..... for the extra $175 to have someone assemble a product and work out all the bugs as well as making the body from a good solid gauge of steel instead of particle board was worth it to me
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