Annealing brass?

[securitysix]

I have a .22 K-Hornet barrel for my T/C Contender.  The first group of brass I got was from firing factory .22 Hornet ammo.  After the brass was fireformed, I just loaded it up and went to town.  A couple of reloads later, I'm finding that most of it is split in the neck/shoulder area.  I bought some new .22 Hornet brass today and started wondering a few things.

1)  Would annealing my brass help extend its life a little bit for this cartridge?
2)  If so, would it be best to anneal before or after fireforming?
3)  Once I've annealed it, do I just load and shoot it till it splits, or should I be annealing it several times over the life of the brass?
4)  If I'm annealing several times over the life of the brass, how often do I need to anneal the brass?

I understand the annealing process, but I've never done it.  Any help would be appreciated.

[lee1954]

If you over annealing - the case won't hold the bullet   ...  it's tuff to get the brass that soft... I shoot mosty cast bullets so don't get close to max loads, but annealing  about every 5 loads.   I have a reg. 22 hornet  and they  are thin cases....
I'm thinking maybe a 22 jet would have a better case life...
 I'm not a wildcater -- but enjoy  the form        dan

[Dave in WV]

I would aneal after fire forming. You can fire form using a candle and a container of water. Hold the base of the case in your hand and slowly roll the case neck in the flame. When it gets too hot to hold drop it in the water. You can't over aneal brass done like this. Dave

[Catfish]

Let me guess, winchester ammo. Personally I have found anneling to be of not much uses to me. In your case it might help, but with Hornet brass it is very easy to get to soft, at least in my experance. You should not have to annel, but if you do, do it before you fire form and never again. Also I would recomand tipping over the brass as soon as you can see any red in the cases.

[securitysix]

Remington, actually.

And I always read that to anneal, you stood the cases up in a pan of water.  The reason for the water, as I understand it, is to keep the head and web area of the case from heating up and getting soft.

[Steve P]

My first thought is over sizing.  Hornet brass is thin.  I only size enough of the brass to keep the bullet in the case.  I leave the rest of it to chamber dimension.  I lost a lot of Hornet brass when working up loads for my 270 REN.  Higher pressure and thin case split about half way down.  After fire forming your brass, I would only be sizing enough of that neck to hold the bullet.  Leave the shoulder alone until brass grows to where action is getting too hard to close.  Then full length size again.

Steve

[DannoBoone]

securitysix,

See PM

[Darrell Davis]

Check out the new issue of Handloader mag.

Keep em coming!

CDOC

[briannmilewis]

If you would have got a regular 22 Hornet chambering, you could use an RCBS X-Die.

Trim all cases to 1.393 ", fire once, adjust die, X-Die resize, shoot, X-Die resize, shoot...etc. to give maximum case life of a lot, especially if you don't use full power loads.

Sell the K and get a regular 22 Hornet barrel and make your reloading life easy and cheap.

[locust]

it is a interesting thing to do ,to do  annealing . yes it will make brass softer the brass will not have the same grip onto the bullet . my self i have a 21 centry hydra arbor press that tells me how much pressure there is to make the bullet move into a case . a newly annealed brass may only take 30psi to be pushed into the case .yet a non- annealed brass may take 150 psi to get the same seating .
how much is perfect ? i have checked new brass right out of the bag and was surprised how much pressure it took to push a bullet into a case . so much so that i replaced the gage to a higher reading gage. the one that comes with the press is 100psi  . i have seen 150psi before the bullet went in

[Lloyd Smale]

ive never anealed a piece of brass. the process is to hard to control in your shop. Its to easy to have brass to soft. Short brass life with a bolt gun. I either neck size or just get different brass.

[O-mega]

ive never anealed a piece of brass. the process is to hard to control in your shop. Its to easy to have brass to soft. Short brass life with a bolt gun. I either neck size or just get different brass.

It really isn't that hard, in the past I've used both the pan and socket method to anneal and it's pretty easy.  Of the two, I prefer the socket method because sometimes I knock the brass over with the propane torch.  The end of last year I went on a brass prep kick and cleaned every piece of brass I owned and decided I wanted to anneal all the rifle brass to start them even.  So I purchased an Annealeez and just last week began processing my brass.  I started with the 6.5 CM, and I must say it speeds up the process considerably, and is more consistent IMO, but it's really a new toy to play with really, as I could do a few hundred cases using the socket method easily enough.

[locust]

i found this to be a good read   https://bisonballistics.com/articles/case-neck-tension-a-stress-analysis

[Ranger99]

Never needed to anneal myself
I did some years ago when I first started
reloading because someone told me I
needed to. All I did was ruin a batch of
good cases. IMO it's only needed for
some of the high pressure rounds, or
for those that are reformed from other
configurations and wildcats. The standard
old fashioned rounds I deal with don't
really require it.
If I were doing annealing, I'd buy one of
the annealing machines for consistency.
It's one of those things you have to decide
for yourself whether or not you need to.

[locust]

today i used a salt annealing method .had it hot around 900F with a 15 count i then resized and used a mandrel 283 and it took about 150 psi to seat bullets . may seem a tad high but thats what the new brass was taking . i sized a brass with out annealing ,took a good deal more psi to seat that bullet