Annealing methods

Metal god

New member
I've been trying to tell folks that the low light glow red idea is a bad one for more reasons then what you linked which seems good enough for me . Glowing any shade of color is a terrible metric of measurement because it's not one , it's purely subjective that is based on a minimum of 3 or 4 variables . Like ones ability to see colors accurately , at what low light ? heat of the flame etc etc . If you want to wing it like that , wing it with timing not sight . You will end up with a much more consistent annealing job . You will need a set up that allows you to place and remove the brass at consistent timing intervals .

I've been avoiding these annealing threads as of late because everyone knows better . All I can say to that is everyone has likely read something that makes them believe they know better . I've done my own testing over the years and have come to "my own" conclusions . There is no one way , one timing , one temp , no one anything . It is all about what you are trying to accomplish with your cartridge brass . I break that down to two aspects which are 1) stress relieving and 2) consistent bullet hold/release . These can be the same thing but are not always accomplished annealing in the same way respectively .
 
One other item I'd forgotten that I ran into rereading part of Hatcher's Notebook is that military annealing is what he referred to as soft annealing, designed to make it as easy as possible for the brass to flow into generous machine gun chambers without cracking. The 1921 National Match ammo was made with less annealing, since match rifle chambers were tight, and it was deemed more useful to have brass that would spring back more in those chambers for easy extraction during rapid fire with the bolt gun.
 

Benchguy

New member
I’ve been watching annealing videos and reading articles and posts. I have acquired some components to make an annealer that should control the flame exposure pretty consistently. My hope and future plan is to anneal every firing but not practicing that currently. My firing isn’t much, currently, so what brass is being used without being annealed is being closely monitored for signs of stress. With 5 firings on the 15 round's I am testing with, no signs of problems are visible or recognized. Until the machine is built I will attempt to use the drill method while closely timing the exposure time. I’ll post results when I get them. I’ve mentioned this before it there’s a $#it load of information about reloading and listening, watching, and reloading takes time, sometimes repeating to absorb what I can. This reloading is addictive! Haha!
 

MarkCO

New member
Benchguy, there is an addictive, and an OCD component to it.

The hard part is sorting the folks who beleive in voodoo from just good things to be consistent from those things that don't matter a lot.

If you have not read a summary of "Lessons from the Houston Warehouse" it is something I strongly recommend. Those guys, like Unclenick, it's a good thing to at least consider their perspectives.
 

Benchguy

New member
Sorry to just get back on this. I feel a little bit of both! ?????? I think it’s a good thing to be meticulous, as long as it doesn’t drive you crazy and away from enjoying it. Haven’t looked into your suggestion but will. I forgot when I had a chance. I have a new question though. I’ll ask it here but maybe I should also make a new thread? How do you guys de-prime live primed brass. I have several cases I primed many years ago but after doing some measurements I found they aren’t full resized. It’s for my REM 700 22-250 bolt gun. Thanks for any and all advice! ;-)
 
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