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Annealing cases
grandman
Member Posts: 183 ✭✭✭
Can anyone give me any pros and cons of this process? Does anyone here practice this process? im fairly new to reloading and am very interested in shooting as far away as i can accurately. will this process help with accuracy? any and all info will be appreciated
Comments
I like to anneal it does help.
http://www.6mmbr.com/annealing.html
I don't have the right equipment and I have not perfected the method to get it right every time, but I would like to. My 22BR brass has a very short life without annealing.
On one hand- IF You have some sort of rig to ensure case to case uniformity in the annealing process (there's a nice one on 6mmbr.com) then I'm all for it. Even if you do it one at a time, good results can be had- again, uniformity is the key. I would chuck the case in a drill and spin it to permit uniform heat around the case, and time it- say 5 seconds or whatever- then quench the case.
HOWEVER- if you just blast the case from one side or 2 sides with a torch, you'll end up with inconsistent results from case to case, and that's not good. Neck tension will be all over, and while your annealed cases will have a new lease on life from brittle cracks in the neck forming, they will likely shoot looser groups than they did before annealing.
Sort of depends, then. For pricey rare oddball cases I do anneal, for 30-06 or other common ones, I just shoot them until they crack, then scrap. Doing it well is time consuming and exact, but with proper due diligence it CAN help.
Hmmmm. I have mixed feelings on this.
On one hand- IF You have some sort of rig to ensure case to case uniformity in the annealing process (there's a nice one on 6mmbr.com) then I'm all for it. Even if you do it one at a time, good results can be had- again, uniformity is the key. I would chuck the case in a drill and spin it to permit uniform heat around the case, and time it- say 5 seconds or whatever- then quench the case.
HOWEVER- if you just blast the case from one side or 2 sides with a torch, you'll end up with inconsistent results from case to case, and that's not good. Neck tension will be all over, and while your annealed cases will have a new lease on life from brittle cracks in the neck forming, they will likely shoot looser groups than they did before annealing.
Sort of depends, then. For pricey rare oddball cases I do anneal, for 30-06 or other common ones, I just shoot them until they crack, then scrap. Doing it well is time consuming and exact, but with proper due diligence it CAN help.
I'm confused. I thought annealing was removing temper from metal. The way I was told to do this was NOT to quench them, as doing so makes metal brittle.
Personally I find the risk of annealing the head area to be over stated, bad if it happens, but over stated. it takes over 400 degrees to start changing brass structure. Unless you have the case mouth heated to the melting point I don't see how you can get that much heat down into the head. Of course quenching takes that remote possibility out of the equation.
I did add a third torch coming in from the center axle.
It will do a 50 BMG case in 7 seconds
308 takes 3 seconds.
CP
Cases annealed correctly have the potential of increasing case life. That's what I had been told and read.
Annealing the brass also jives with the information from metallurgical sources.
We had jerry-rigged a means of doing this, it was a slow and tedious process, and not an exact science the way we did it.
We'd been more concerned with case life rather than case to case perfection nor the shot to shot consistancy of competiton.
Most always, had to replace my brass when lost or "leant-out' or some unique reload glitch, that would take one or two out of action now and again. So I jerry-rig and don't look back, it's better than not.
Hmmmm. I have mixed feelings on this.
On one hand- IF You have some sort of rig to ensure case to case uniformity in the annealing process (there's a nice one on 6mmbr.com) then I'm all for it. Even if you do it one at a time, good results can be had- again, uniformity is the key. I would chuck the case in a drill and spin it to permit uniform heat around the case, and time it- say 5 seconds or whatever- then quench the case.
HOWEVER- if you just blast the case from one side or 2 sides with a torch, you'll end up with inconsistent results from case to case, and that's not good. Neck tension will be all over, and while your annealed cases will have a new lease on life from brittle cracks in the neck forming, they will likely shoot looser groups than they did before annealing.
Sort of depends, then. For pricey rare oddball cases I do anneal, for 30-06 or other common ones, I just shoot them until they crack, then scrap. Doing it well is time consuming and exact, but with proper due diligence it CAN help.
same here,
been making 8mm out of 30-06
some times they crack most times they don't. [^]
and i don't shoot the 8mm as much as i need to [:(]
After I got it built I tried it out with a box of .357 magnum cases I converted to .256 Winchester Magnum in a sizing die. In the past I had to carefully select which .357 brass to use because a lot of it would crinkle and crack when squeezed down in the .256 die.
Annealing fixed that issue completely.