How often do you anneal your AR brass?

what you forgot to put as a 5th option, AR brass is dang near free, I chunk it when it gets bad and better yet it gets lost before it ever gets fired that often, LOL option 5 would be my vote. The most knowledgeable reloader I know. says that annealing is BS invented by companies looking to sell yet another gadget.
 
All it costs me is a $3 bottle of propane to do thousands. I take a socket that my brass will properly fit into, spin it on my cordless drill placing the neck in the flame of my propane torch for 10 seconds, and drop it in a bucket of water. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve shot my annealed brass and no cracks. May be a gimmick to some but it doesn’t cost me anything but time ...and not alot of it. Just another part of the reloading process.
 
Last edited:
Originally Posted By: DultimatpredatorAll it costs me is a $3 bottle of propane to do thousands. I take a socket that my brass will properly fit into, spin it on my cordless drill placing the neck in the flame of my propane torch for 10 seconds, and drop it in a bucket of water. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve shot my annealed brass and no cracks. May be a gimmick to some but it doesn’t cost me anything but time ...and not alot of it. Just another part of the reloading process. way too much effort for an ar 15.
 
I don't keep my brass separate so I anneal when it needs to be trimmed. I figure it needs to be trimmed after 3 or 4 firing's and that works for me.
 
Originally Posted By: steve garrettOriginally Posted By: DultimatpredatorAll it costs me is a $3 bottle of propane to do thousands. I take a socket that my brass will properly fit into, spin it on my cordless drill placing the neck in the flame of my propane torch for 10 seconds, and drop it in a bucket of water. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve shot my annealed brass and no cracks. May be a gimmick to some but it doesn’t cost me anything but time ...and not alot of it. Just another part of the reloading process. way too much effort for an ar 15.


Should have specified, i do this for my AR10 chambered in 243. 243 brass is a lot more expensive imo than bulk 5.56 brass so I want to make it last. I think the last time I bought some 243 the best price I could find it was about fifty cents a case without shipping when I really shopped fro it VS about fourteen cents a case for bulk lake city virgin brass I just bought....a 1000 for $139 shipped.

Your right though, I don’t anneal for my 5.56 cartridges. I might with my 5.56 virgin lake city brass some day when the well runs dry again on them. My virgin lake city still has annealing marks from when it was manufactured.
 
Last edited:
Brass may be cheap, good brass is not.

Annealing will make your brass last longer, it also can increase accuracy. A scam to get you to buy more tools? I doubt it.
 
A scam I doubt it and brass is only cheap if your shooting the 5.56 or 223. Some of us are shooting other calipers. I can tell you this in my 6x6.8 if I don’t aneal every so often I won’t be able get them to chamber. If I anneal them it doesn’t happen so I don’t think it’s a scam. I can size them pieces that won’t chamber or eject easily, and size the ones I shot that did and measure how far the shoulders are getting pushed back and they aren’t getting pushed back the same amount. Then I annealed them resized them boom the shoulder are getting pushed back the same amount. Plus when seating the bullets I can feel the difference when they have all been annealed. I do it with the propane torch and a socket it too so I pretty much only have a few dollars invested.
 
Originally Posted By: steve garrettOriginally Posted By: DultimatpredatorAll it costs me is a $3 bottle of propane to do thousands. I take a socket that my brass will properly fit into, spin it on my cordless drill placing the neck in the flame of my propane torch for 10 seconds, and drop it in a bucket of water. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve shot my annealed brass and no cracks. May be a gimmick to some but it doesn’t cost me anything but time ...and not alot of it. Just another part of the reloading process. way too much effort for an ar 15.

which is how i felt until i plunked down for my Annealeeze automated machine.

at this point its still only $3 for a can of gas, and i can anneal well over 4k peices for hat $3.

i have enough brass that i only generally have to do brass prep about once a year.. so spending A day every 10-12 months running an annealing machine really is no big deal. when i fire it up all my brass that needs it goes thru.

batch processing makes life pretty simple, especailly when discussing something like 223/556 brass which is relatively affordable and plentiful. theres no excuse to not have enough brass on hand to get you through a season and process that kind of way.

and once you're setup too do so easily.. NOT annealing is silly.

just my $0.02 usd
 
here is what I do. I buy prepped lake city brass, The current stuff I have which is all loaded needed trimming and sizing. If I do it again, I am buying it ready to load. I don't give a rip if its 20 bucks more per 1000 cases. I think I can find 1000 ready to load cases for about $125 bucks. I keep and resuse the brass I can readily pickup, meaning if I pick up half of it I am pretty happy. If I am doing a jackrabbit walk in the sage, none is getting picked up. If I am shooting over a p dog down. 90% will probably get picked up.

6DTI, that is much more expensive brass. So I typically use that gun in situations that allow easy brass pickup, using a reb brass catcher I think I only lost about 10 cases out of the 250 cases I originally bought and loaded up in the last year. but in any event I recon after about 5-6 loadings all this brass is going to get lost by then.

with the shell schuking machine guns, IE AR's its not like I am running neck turned, neck sized brass loaded for a precision bolt gun. I would also say stressing about brass loss is kinda like showing up to a brothel and worrying something might go wrong. part of the fun is not giving a rip.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top