Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Annealing with a candle - thanks JB

I've been shooting a bunch of 223 lately using supposedly once fired R-P. If I go straight to FL sizing it, there's very little neck tension. Pulling the expander out gives good neck tension but split necks after a few firings.

Using the annealing method JB described with a candle, the neck tension goes up to 0.002" and I haven't seen any split necks yet. I know it works, and it takes a lot of myth and mystery out of annealing.

I know this topic comes up now and then, but I wanted to thank JB for this very useful tip. And thanks to his metallurgist buddy who came up with it.

Jason

Thanks--and if I run into Fred Barker I'll thank him too.

Best tip I've received on reloading in 20 years. I like to form and hunt w/the same 40 rounds as long as I can. Have two rifles I've been loading w/the same 40 cases for over 10 years now. W/o the annealing it never would have been possible. powdr

Any tricks, or just using a candle?

Soak a paper or cloth towel in water. Light a candle and hold a case halfway up the body, with your fingertips. Hold the neck of the case in the tip of the candle-flame, turning it back and forth, until the case becomes too hot to hold. Drop the case on the wet towel and wipe the soot from the candle flame off the neck. Annealing done.

Every time I see this explanation I am reminded of the comment my wife made a few years ago. She was passing thru the "reloading room" and seeing me holding a piece of brass over a candle she said: are you sure you should be doing that in the house?
She understands the process now.

Have annealed by candle for many years on small cases. Works fine.

Does anyone have a favorite ointment for their fingers?

Hoppe's #9.

Does this simple method work for larger cases also (300 wsm)?

Yeah. Have used it on .375 H&H.

Interesting info, one of the great things about this site.

On a side note my wife caught me trying the exact same thing but on our gas stove. She looked at me as if I had completely lost my mind, after explaining what I was trying to do and reassuring her that it wasn't using a loaded round and the house wouldn't blow up she felt more at ease. She never thought she was signing up for such weirdness when we got married but at the same time she does equally strange girl things too......

I do that for the first case and count the number of seconds, by the clock, it takes for the case to be too hot to hold.

I use a glove for the rest of the cases.

That's a good idea. Have used a torch like this and burnt my fingers..... 100 times

Here's a question about the candle technique that arises from my ignorance of the dynamics of heat transfer:

With the candle technique, will the temperature obtained on the neck of long cases be the same as that on short cases?

For example, at the point when the middle of the case reaches the "drop it now" temperature, will the neck of a 375 H&H case be hotter than the neck of a 218 Bee case? If so, the the technique may require modifications specific to case length and perhaps to brass wall thickness?

--Bob

Hold the first two or three cases halfway up until they are too hot to hold - "too hot" is not a test of pain tolerance. Count how many seconds it takes until the cases reach the "too hot" point, it should be about the same time within one second.

Thereafter, hold the rest of the cases down by the head and hold the neck in the flame for the same number of seconds.

BTDT, learned the hard way myself.

+1 on the good advice. I had never annealed until early this year. Decided to try it because brass was getting so hard to find and wanted to get more loadings out of the brass on hand.

It is easy; the timing technique explained by Jim in Idaho is what I do. Have done 223, 7X57, 06 sized and belted magnum cases. The number of seconds in the flame differs by the case size but once learned using Jim's explanation you can move right along.

Bob,

When Fred worked out the method, one of the reasons for using a candle is that while the flame temperature is sufficient for annealing brass, it isn't so hot that a little extra time will start to melt the zinc, the flaw in heating brass until it glows.

Fred tested the technique with heat-sensitive paint (as I recall Tempilac) and found it was close enough for a wide variety of case.

There are many misconceptions about brass annealing. First, the hot brass doesn't need to be quenched in water, unlike most other metals. Instead air-cooling works fine. Second, brass will anneal at widely varying temperatures, but the amount of time required also varies considerably. At 600 degrees annealing takes an hour, obviously too long for our purposes, but at close to 800 degrees the zinc melts, also not good. Around 725-750 degrees anneals quickly without melting the zinc, which is the level Fred's method reaches.

I've suggested to other people with the same question to buy some Tempilac of the correct temperature range and do some experimenting themselves, but so far I haven't heard back from any of them.

Jim,

That's pretty much the method I use, except I keep my fingers in the middle of the cases and drop them one count before they usually get too hot to hold. For example, if a 10-count starts to burn, I drop the case at 9. Seems to work too.

Coming into this discussion late but do you do the initial anneal after a few firings, and any more annealing required after the initial annealing? Might try this to help increase the lifespan of brass given the prices we are paying and how hard it is to find in many cartridges now.