I don't know why I'm getting such pushback; all I'm saying is annealing your brass is a good thing.
I thought it was pretty clear from both MD and myself - the pushback is against your claim that slow cooling results in hardened or brittle brass - it doesn't. With cartridge brass it doesn't make any difference whether you air cool or water quench the brass after annealing.
OK. I see now. You're right. I was working with other alloys. I fast-quench my brass mostly so the heating stops, and I relied on an article extent at the time (2006 or so) that said you should. However, let me just say that with copper /tin/antimony alloys it was important to freeze those materials in an amorphous state before it could form crystalline structures. We didn't have zinc, lead, or cadmium in any of our processes, because they were too poisonous.
Unnecessary? I honestly don't know. However, I trust you and MD. A fast quench also probably doesn't hurt. My apologies for the misunderstanding.
While we're on the subject: What do you all think about the annealing of virgin brass?
My thoughts on it are, again, from an industrial perspective. When I see clean brass now with no discoloration at the neck, my first thought is: "I should anneal these." My reasoning is that on an industrial scale, annealing is a costly procedure. You've got to put the material in an oven, heat it over time, cool it, and then get it back into the line. On a continuous assembly line, it would be running the brass through gas jets to heat it just enough. Either way, that's an expensive thing. If you're building the cartridge with a mind for one firing, that's just not going to be a cost-effective option. It's much better to just add an inspection for neck splits before packaging. So what a consumer has, when he opens the bag of brass is a bunch of material that's about as work-hardened as it is ever going to be. Once-fired factory ammo? Even worse-- it's been formed and then loaded and insulted once more by firing.
