annealing brass

[Jason F]

Anybody ever dip case necks in melted lead then drop in water to anneal brass.

[blpenn66502]

Once.  Won't do it again.

[gary0529]

Jason,
Depending on how many cases you have to anneal there are numerous ways to do it but dipping into a lead pot is not one of them-just a word of warning-a miniscule amount of water in the case WILL vaporize and blow back molten lead-been there and done that-thankfully wearing goggles and long sleeved shirt.

If you have a small number to do, get some Tempilaque (spelling?) from any welding shop or online from Midway.
Pick the temp range you feel you need, paint the neck area and after it is dry you can either chuck it in a battery op drill or just slowly move the propane torch around the neck until the temp sensitive paint changes colors.
This will prevent you from overheating the body that can lead to catastrophic case failure.

Most of the things you will read like do it in a darkened room and get a dull red glow will usually over anneal the neck to dead soft or not anneal at all.
It is too cheap and easy to do it right if you feel it is needed in the first place.

Gary

[tacklebury]

Only annealing I've seen done was to put your oven on 400 deg F and put a pan with water up 2/3's the case height into the water and then into the hot oven.  Takes about 12 minutes  and once they come out of the broiler, you knock them over into the water quickly to quench.  Careful though, because it's easy to get too soft also and then your bullets won't stay in place well.

[Buckskin]

Only annealing I've seen done was to put your oven on 400 deg F and put a pan with water up 2/3's the case height into the water and then into the hot oven.  Takes about 12 minutes  and once they come out of the broiler, you knock them over into the water quickly to quench.  Careful though, because it's easy to get too soft also and then your bullets won't stay in place well.

400 degrees will not anneal brass, nothing even starts changing in brass until about 480. It will take 15 minutes at about 660 degrees to anneal or a couple seconds at 750 degrees.  Unless it is expensive brass it's not worth the effort as there is a fine line to walk to do it correctly.

[anweis]

there is a fine line to walk to do it correctly.

Or uniformly. I have made 6 different very careful and serious attempts to anneal brass. It does not work, unless you have a carousel to turn the brass around, you know and control the temperature, etc.
If you heat one piece more than another, you will loose accuracy. You need perfect consistency of annealing in the entire lot of brass. That is not possible with hand tools and hand annealing. Or, it really takes some skill and learning.
Either way, i use Lapua brass as much as possible. I get more than 20 firings out of it. It is is high quality and i don't bother annealing. When i think of quality vs. price, it is cheap.
I have ruined several pounds of brass trying to anneal. No more.

[tacklebury]

You may be right on the temperature.  I didn't actually do it, but just watched.  He may have had it at 500, but whatever it was it was on broiler mode and he put the rack at the highest point so the brass was just below it.  May have to do it sometime, but I keep most of my loads light and haven't had many brass failures.  Typically, you don't need maximum velocity to do the job and lighter loads are usually more accurate.  As long as you have enough to expand your bullet. 

[anweis]

lighter loads are usually more accurate.   

With lighter loads your brass will last a very very long time.
I have 7x57, 6mm Rem, and .338 Fed brass (made from .308)which was fired with starting loads more than 15 times and is still going fine.
I see no reason to fool around with ovens and annealing. If you heat the body of the case too much or too far down, you will also notice that the primer pockets will start to expand unusually soon. 


Unless for making a very rare caliber from some more common brass, i believe that it's not worth the risk of ruining brass by too much heat and unevenly applied heat.

[LaOtto222]

I too was afraid of annealing, but over came my fear. I did a lot of research and thinking before I stepped through that door. When you buy quality brass, it has discoloration in the neck/shoulder area. This is from the annealing process. Properly home annealed brass will look the same way when done correctly. There will be a colored area down just past the shoulder. I have thought about setting up a machine (rotating table) to anneal brass with. I just do not do enough to justify the cost. What I have found is the Hornady kit to anneal brass with. It comes with 3 "spinners" for different size brass and a bottle of temperature sensitive paste and instructions. I also bought a cordless screw driver that turns at 200 RPM (recommended 180 RPM, but close enough) that the spinners will snap right into. I had a bottled gas torch and I cut a plastic milk jug down (left the handle) to hold water. I followed the instructions and painted the paste on the shoulder of the case. I put case in an appropriate spinner and then put the cases into the flame so that the end of the blue tip (the hottest part of the flame) was right at the junction of the neck and the shoulder. As soon as the paste turned color, I tipped the screw driver down into the jug full of water to drop the case into the water. After doing many cases I could tell what color the case should be when the paste turns color.  Now I do not use the paste any more. I have $45 for the Hornady kit and $30 for the powered screw driver. About the cost of 100 Lapua cases or less. I get consistent results and the cases last for a long time. Now that brass is hard to get, it makes even more sense to anneal the necks. There are other ways to make your brass last for a longer  time, that have been mentioned above and annealing will not help case stretching. But even if you load down, eventually the necks and shoulders will need to be annealed to maximize the life of your brass. There is no need to be afraid, just do it correctly and consistently. The Hornady kit really works, is easy to use and relatively cheap. The spinners act as a heat sink to protect the body and head of the case from the heat. If I do a large number of cases, the spinner will get pretty warm over time, I just put it into the water for a short time to cool it off and then start annealing again. I am sure the kit is sold all over, but I got mine through Mid-Way USA.

Good Shooting and Good Luck

[41 mag]

I have only annealed cases for two calibers I load, one is the 7x30 Waters for my Contender, and the other is my 25-06 AI. With either of these cases are easily acquired so playing with the Tempilaq and setting up a small jig of sorts was fairly easy to do, with not much expense involved.

I tried it a couple of times using a clock setting out behind the set up to monitor about how many seconds it took to turn colors. Once it did I, I jotted down the times form just starting to turn to completely turned. I did a batch of 10 for around 3-4 different times all within a 5-6 second spread. After this I headed up to the farm with them bagged up in separate baggies and gave them a go to see how they fared against non annealed cases.

As to the initial fireforming, all of the annealed cases formed perfectly with the first firing. The same couldn't be said with the once fired stuff I was using with it. All were loaded with identical charge weights and so forth, only differences were the annealing. With the untreated cases, I experienced both unformed shoulders as well as a coupe of split necks.

In continuing on, I found the treated cases would go about three to five loads longer before I started to see any sign of the sizer getting sticky, or a difference in seating pressure that I could notably feel while seating the bullets. As well the groups were all more consistent with the treated cases.

While it might not matter with plenty of calibers or even with most reloading and the groups gotten by such, there are a few cases in which it DOES make a substantial difference in performance if done properly, even with the most basic of tools. I do however agree, you have to set everything up so that you get as close to the same results from one case to the next. I used my cordless drill set to the lowest speed it would turn. I used a bracket I had from building fishing rods to support it in the exact same manner each time, and it held every case in, or extremely close to, the exact same position in the flame. I used the Tempilaq for the lowest recommended temp so I didn't get carried away with things. The water I used was a 5 gal bucket 3/4 full and never even warmed up in doing 50'ish cases of each in an hour or so period. This was only MY proceedure and it works for what I need. It may or may not work with my .270 or my .243, but I would wager if needed, I could easily adapt to what would.

IF you have something that may benefit from it, and do it properly, it is a very effective means to increase the longevity of your case life, especially if your not wanting to waste barrel life or components forming cases or mess with cleaning the cornmeal out of your action or a custom barrel.     

[jedman]

  The methood that I have used many times ( and it works for me ) Is to use a propane torch , a darkened room, a shiskabob stick ( bamboo ) and a can of water.
Take your unprimed brass , stick the pointed end of your skewer into the flash hole to hold your case and heating just the neck area of the case while turning with the skewer. When you get the color to a dull red, you just flick the case off the stick into a coffee can of water and so on.  When you get the hang of it you prolly have 45-60 seconds per case of time to do them this way.
  I make alot of different wildcat cases and have done my annealing this way for years and it has always worked well.  Do not heat your brass to full red hot or bright orange as I have seen on youtube videos, at that point your brass is ruined. 
   jedman