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Another possible symptom of factories failing to anneal brass is lousy accuracy.

Charlie Sisk once called me, saying he'd just built a 7mm Remington Magnum for a customer and it wouldn't shoot worth a darn when using his standard test load. Charlie had an indoor 100-yard range so wind wasn't a fact, yet he was getting groups up to 3" with brand-new brass in a brand he often used. This was during the Great Obama Component Shortage, when companies were really cranking out brass. After we talked it over for a while, I suggested annealing the case necks..

Charlie had never annealed any before, simply buying new brass and then after firing it once to save time, then selling the fired brass at local guns shows. I described a simple method, and he called back the next day, saying the rifle was now shooting groups WELL under an inch with the same load....

As time has progressed, I've taken to annealing more and more and my groups have gotten smaller and smaller. New brass? Anneal. Fresh once-fired? Anneal. I didn't do it for accuracy sake. It just seemed like a good starting place. Annealing does a lot to wipe out past sins.

It probably also goes a long way to making the brass more likely to take on the dimensions of the rifle in which it is shot. What I mean is this: I figured out a long time ago to keep the brass separated by lot and dedicate a lot of brass to one rifle. I'm not THAT big of a reloader, so for me that is quite workable and handy to do. When you anneal, you are softening the brass in several key dimensions that are crucial to the fit in the chamber. It also (please correct me if I'm wrong) reduces the springiness of the brass-- its desire to return to its original shape. As a result, if you fire it in a rifle after annealing, it is more likely to take on the dimensions of the rifle in which it is being fired and therefore will have an easier time conforming to those dimensions on the next loading.

This goes back to another thing I learned at the Solder Factory. I had the VP of manufacturing tell me one day, "If you fart favoring you left cheek when you run this stuff today, you better be ready to fart off your left cheek every time you run it from here on out." That was his KY Hillbilly way of saying consistency was the key to everything. We'd frequently cast a lot of some alloy, and then somewhere in the process something would be done differently. We'd end up with 20,000 lbs of finished product that wouldn't pass QC. I got sent in to ferret out the cause of one of these snafus. I traced it back to a guy who didn't know how to tell time. His work instruction called for so many hours of annealing, then 10 minutes in a water quench bath, 15 minutes in the acid, 10 minutes in the alkali, and 10 minutes in the water rinse. He was prone to going by feel and his times varied by 20-200%. I suggested a stopwatch be added. They decided to fire the schmuck instead. He'd been warned about this before. My old VP's words still stick with me in regards to reloading, although I haven't quite gotten to the point of marking "L, R, or C" in my loading notes (left cheek, right cheek, or center).

All good points shaman, and you're right on about reducing springiness of the brass by annealing. It definitely helps a lot with fireforming wildcat or AI cases. I've started annealing a lot more as well the past couple years, especially after getting an easy and quick process figured out.

You aren't going to get an amorphous structure (aka "glass") by annealing. You need to go directly from the liquid state to do it, with a very high cooling rate and a number of other factors in play to get there. This document sets out some of the science: http://simgroup.task.gda.pl/DYDAKTYKA/mudry/2-Amorphous-metallic-alloys.pdf

While interesting, and with some emerging industrial applications, this really isn't relevant to cartridge brass.

As has been said, the main purpose of dunking cases into water after annealing is to stop you from annealing the case heads. One other factor is that too much time at temperature tends to promote grain growth, which is not a good thing, but once you remove the heat the cases cool quickly enough in air that this really won't be a factor, unless you keep the heat on them for a protracted period, and/or take them to too high a temperature.

Sort of, and not quite.

Work hardening doesn't change the stiffness, and so neither does annealing. What work hardening does is increase the elastic limit, aka yield stress. In other words, it takes more stress before the brass starts to undergo plastic deformation. At the same time, it tends to reduce how much strain the brass can tolerate before failing.

If you start with annealed necks, they'll expand elastically until they reach their YS, and unless they are a fairly close fit in the chamber they'll then deform plastically to fit the chamber the first time they are fired. The elastic deformation will be recovered as the pressure drops after firing, so you always end up with a bit of clearance afterwards.

If you had a work hardened case it will also deform, and if there's enough room the sort of stress applied in firing will have it deform plastically as well - the stresses at play will well exceed the YS - though it might fail before expanding sufficiently if the brass is brittle and the clearance too great. It will have somewhat more elastic deformation recovered after firing too.

If you then only neck size, the rest of the case will not undergo further plastic deformation if you fire it in the same chamber. It will expand on firing to meet the chamber walls, but that expansion will be within the elastic limit and will be recovered as the pressure drops, so there'll always be some clearance. It will only be the neck that undergoes cold working, and will need annealing every so often, because of the fact that you are sizing it.

"Pooh, whatever are you doing?" I asked. I had found the bear sitting on a stump with a pile of stuffing about him. He had his paw stuck into an open seam, and when he withdrew it, a shower of the stuff fell about him like snow.

"I've run out of room for ideas," replied Pooh.

"Well, you don't go taking stuffing out of your head. That simply won't do."

"Where will I find the extra room?"

"You need the stuffing in there to act as sponge."

"Oh."

"It's okay." I sighed. "I don't think there is any harm done. Put what you can back and I'll fetch a needle and thread to close up the seam. Why caused you to do it?"

I just heard something I thought was quite unique, and I wanted to be sure there was plenty of room for it. But I haven't been remembering as well lately."

"That has more to do with the age of the fluff and not its volume," I replied.

"I'll try and remember that from now on."

"What were you trying to remember?"

"Er. . . I forgot."