Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters annealing brass

Deprime and clean

That's my normal routine.

Yup, though I use the torch method, so no need to deprime/clean beforehand.

Yep jus throw them away....
I shoot a lot of high volume loads...prarie dogs ....if I can get under 1/4 inch with military brass ...it's not for me...I have a hard time getting loaded up as is...
Sounds like a great deal for target shooters tho...and another thing to fiddle away time between seasons...I get plenty of reloads out of my brass.. Every gun has a min of 1000 reds loaded for it...the 222 sake has 3 k...so if I shoot all the brass 7-8 times holly cow I probably won't live that long.. Only troublesome one with splits is 22 hornet...222 223 204 20 tac all get great life hardly ever split necks..
How's things in skagit county...I used to work in Anacortes....

I have one. I have only used it for my .308 LR/Palma ammo so far, but it's nice to just load up the hopper w/ 300 cases and let it work.

That's what I did before using the salt bath. I still do it that way for small batches where I want to anneal 20-40 pieces maybe and it's not worth the time to let the salt bath heat up. Salt bath ends up way faster for large batches though, and is more consistent as far as I can tell.

Yup, my father taught me this way when I was about 5 years old, your fingers tell you when to set the case down on a cloth to cool.
case life seems just fine in any that I have annealed.
Cat

Honestly I don't think they're trying to intentionally mislead anybody. I think the whole thing looks odd and disjointed because they didn't have a properly set-up experiment to begin with. It looks to me like they were tinkering around and found some interesting stuff, then pieced it back together afterwards and called it "research". Unfortunately, without following the basic rules for a valid experiment that leaves the reader questioning the obvious holes in their conclusions but at least now they've added some more information to the article. I just look at it for what it is, they're a business not a university, it's not incumbent on them to publish detailed research on their competitor's products.

Regardless of what AMP or anybody else claims, in the competition realm it just comes down to results. If people are winning with AMP machines, others will shell out the money for one. If people win while never annealing a case or something in between, the herd will move that way too. Results rule. Competition is about optimizing a myriad of variables, annealing is just one. For everyone else, judging by what I see at the range most days, quibbling over annealing methods is the least of the average shooters' problems .

Regardless, AMP has a very obvious and strong motive to discredit lower cost annealing solutions, so it doesn't really matter our feelings about them as a company, we should remain very skeptical when they do that.

Is it possible/feasable to use an infra-red heat gun sensor to monitor case neck annealing temp, instead of using Tempilaq?

Example:. Less than $20

https://www.amazon.com/Etekcity-Lasergrip-1080-Non-Contact-Thermometer/dp/B00DMI632G/ref=sr_1_4?crid=XEHDPLIT8O9X&keywords=infrared+thermometer+gun&qid=1567427874&s=industrial&sprefix=Infra%2Cindustrial%2C354&sr=1-4

This is insane.

Well, for what it's worth, my personal unscientific study involved two lots of brass: about 200 rounds of 270 WSM cases that had been loaded 3X or 4X, of which several cases exhibited case neck cracks on the 4th or 5th loadings, and 300 rounds of 375 H&H brass, loaded 3X, which had also started to show case neck cracks.

I did some serious research (re-read JB's candle method in GG), bought some candles, and went to work. Annealed all the brass and reloaded a bunch, none of which cracked. Interestingly, group sizes for the 270 WSM brass were not appreciably different from the pre-annealing loads, but the annealed 375 H&H brass loads shot significantly smaller groups than the pre-annealed brass.

I guess that's good enough for me to say it's worth taking the time to candle-anneal my brass now. The amount of time it takes doesn't seem onerous, as I'm usually just listening to podcasts or music while I noodle around in my reloading shop anyways.

I may take a stab at the molten salts deal one of these days, as it seems pretty tidy, but that might involve actually pre- and post-annealing group measurements, and that would definitely smack of rifle looneyism if you ask me.

I don't believe that for a moment. I've met the owner and his son. Very decent straight up people who are absolute perfectionists. They can't keep up with the demand for their AMP machine as it is so there is no need to try and discredit anyone else's annealing ideas. They're just trying help people realize that what they think is great annealing is not necessarily so. They also say, "for those reloader's considering getting started on annealing, and who are on a budget, we would recommend a gas flame-based option".

They have also addressed many of the issues that have been raised on various forums regarding their original report on salt bath annealing in "Molten Salt Bath Annealing Report Addendum" at the end of the original report.

https://www.ampannealing.com/articles/52/salt-bath-annealing--does-it-work-/

Key words are “ semi dark “ and “ deep red “

I’m sure that Brass does probably begin to glow a faint orange at 950. That “ faint orange “ has long surpassed the temperature of a “deep red” in the dark. A deep red is the color you see when the brass first starts to give light in semi dark to dark conditions.The brass is not over annealed using this method imo. It hold compressed loads just fine.

Don’t believe me? Count how many “Mississippi ‘s” in the dark it takes to get a “ deep red “on the brass with a torch and then count the same number of Mississippi’s in a well lit room. You will find that there is no detectable glow. Brass is annealed very consistently with good scientific methods and practice.

I use Anneal Rite. https://cartridgeanneal.com/ Its as simple as it gets. Download a Metronome to your phone, have a 2 second tempo (2 seconds is the time it takes to heat a case, per several test with 750 tempilaq), and get in the groove. Total time of 4 seconds per round, two seconds to load plus 2 seconds to anneal. 100 rounds in 400 seconds (less than 7 minutes). No setup time, foolproof, as easy as it gets. I'll spend money on cool tools, can't load without the Girard case trimmer and have had one for well over 10 years, but the simple Anneal Rite is where its at for annealing.

I like that setup. Thanks for the lilnk.

JG,

I've had an Anneal-Rite for several years. For the price, it's one of the best solutions to annealing large amounts of brass. In the chapter on annealing in GUN GACK II provides some more suggestions on how to use it.

Thanks MD. Much appreciated.

I'm always open to learning something new. Have you ever used templac to test this theory or are you just guessing? Not trying to be smart with you I really want to know how accurate the method is

I use a lee lock stud in drill. Chuck the case up , spin the neck in the flame(In the dark) while counting Mississippi’s. Once you’ve established how many Mississippi’s a deep deep red is,( the first color you will see in the dark. Whatever you want to call that color) you can turn on the lights and just count Mississippi’s. I always quench the cases so I don’t get burnt taking them out of the lock stud. It speeds it up as well.

You will not see any kind of glow, with the same number of Mississippi’s, in the light btw. I’m not looking for a specific harness either so why would I use templac? I’m just looking to bring every case to the same hardness. That’s way more important than a few points on the Brinell scale either way.

The brass winds up hard enough to hold any compressed loads I have tried. More importantly it holds all the bullets in a consistent manner.

Not really a theory btw. Not sure the exact temp brass gives light in the dark but it’s less than 950!