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Dan,

Yep!


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Quote
and quite a few major manufacturers make brass for each other


Yes. Several years back with my first 45-70 workup I picked up several bags of unprimed Win brass. About every 10th round was a primed 45-70 Hornady cartridge. Seemed the Hornady was a tad (scientific term) shorter than the Win's, so took those back to the seller and exchanged. Still don't know if the source was actually Winchester or Hornady.


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Originally Posted by Mule Deer
Dan,

Even the AMP (Annealing Made Perfect) electric annealing machine, can overdo it. When I tested one, they had a list of cartridges/manufacturers with the digital settings. I had some .30-06 cases from a manufacturer they listed, and it over-annealed those, which required a couple firings before they returned to normal. The problem is 2-fold, because even brass from specific manufacturers varies from lot-to-lot; and quite a few major manufacturers make brass for each other. This may seem odd, but it happens far more often than many handloaders suspect.

It was no big deal, but even with the AMP (which retails for over $1000) there can be some tweaking involved in specific brass.



The AMP's have gone up in price, the machine is $1395 plus pilots and extras you will need, an easy $1500

I have been using the salt bath method for 2 years now and prefer it over torch methods, The only down side to salt bath that I have found is that your cases must be very clean to keep from contaminating the salt. vibratory tumbling does very little to clean inside the case so cases must be rotary tumbled and dried prior to annealing then rinsed and dried again after annealing

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Originally Posted by 1OntarioJim
For years my annealing has been done with the use of a propane tank and holding the cases in my bare hands. I hold the cases with a count from 1-thousand up to 7-thousand and then drop it into a bowl of water for quenching. Crude but seems to have worked for quite a few years for me.

Jim

THIS^^^^^^^^^^^^

Except I don't count. 3/4" blue cone, twirl and drop into bucket of water as base starts warming up. Most accuracy on second reload, presumably evening out any aberration of heat on the first. Accuracy starts dropping off on 3 and 4 reloads, then anneal again.


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Originally Posted by Bob338
Originally Posted by 1OntarioJim
For years my annealing has been done with the use of a propane tank and holding the cases in my bare hands. I hold the cases with a count from 1-thousand up to 7-thousand and then drop it into a bowl of water for quenching. Crude but seems to have worked for quite a few years for me.

Jim

THIS^^^^^^^^^^^^

Except I don't count. 3/4" blue cone, twirl and drop into bucket of water as base starts warming up. Most accuracy on second reload, presumably evening out any aberration of heat on the first. Accuracy starts dropping off on 3 and 4 reloads, then anneal again.


Exactly why I switched to salt bath, first shot accuracy!!!

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How about a how-to reference for this salt bath annealing? Sounds similar to "niter bluing" of small steel parts.
Thanks,
Rex
EDIT - never mind...
Salt Bath Annealing
Second edit: Which led me to:
AMP's response
Interesting stuff. Makes me wonder if my candle method execution is doing it right. Anybody know if such rigorous testing as AMP did has been done on candle annealed cases? I thrust MD's lessons so I'm not worried about it, just curious.

Last edited by TRexF16; 03/30/20.
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Bob338,

Your method would be result in better first-shot accuracy if you tested it with Tempilaq in each round.


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TRex,

All I know about "rigorous" testing with the candle method was that Fred used Tempilaq to develop the method, and I tried it with some as well when I started fooling with it. The results were good enough that I eventually quit using Tempilaq, and have candle-annealed a bunch of cases or various sizes, and got excellent accuracy from the first groups. The last done, as I recall, were a batch of .257 Weatherbys for my New Ultra Light Arms rifle in that chambering, which normally shoots into less than an inch at 200 yards with its favorite load. It shot even better than that with the 20 candle-annealed cases.

As noted, I have tried a number of annealing techniques, but still use the candle method on occasion when only a few cases need to be done, because "set up" time is so quick.


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I did the torch method on some nickle cases and you can't see too much color change on the nickle until you have over done it. Blew the shoulders off of two cases when fire forming to 280 AI the rest were OK. But I tried sizing/resizing a couple of cases four times and they seemed to get work hardened some. I also left the rest of the batch in the garage for a couple of years and they seemed to have age hardened or they were not over heated to begin with. Not very scientific but might be worth looking into. I would have tossed them but I went out of my way to get 500 cases from the same lot.


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Originally Posted by Mule Deer
Bob338,

Your method would be result in better first-shot accuracy if you tested it with Tempilaq in each round.

Tried the Tempilac for a short while. Didn't see any difference and it made things far more complicated than I think they need to be. Differences in accuracy weren't that much but did get consistently better on second reloads regardless of method. I think I still have that Tempilac somewhere, mostly unused.


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What temperature did you use?


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Originally Posted by Mule Deer
As noted, I have tried a number of annealing techniques, but still use the candle method on occasion when only a few cases need to be done, because "set up" time is so quick.

What do you use when you have more than a few? Anneal-Rite that you've written about, or something else? Thanks.

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Yep, the Anneal-Rite.


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Originally Posted by Mule Deer
What temperature did you use?

Would have to dig through tons of stuff to verify but as I recall it was 700F.

Verified. 700 degrees.

Last edited by Bob338; 03/31/20.

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Originally Posted by TRexF16
How about a how-to reference for this salt bath annealing? Sounds similar to "niter bluing" of small steel parts.
Thanks,
Rex
EDIT - never mind...
Salt Bath Annealing
Second edit: Which led me to:
AMP's response
Interesting stuff. Makes me wonder if my candle method execution is doing it right. Anybody know if such rigorous testing as AMP did has been done on candle annealed cases? I thrust MD's lessons so I'm not worried about it, just curious.


The AMP machine is awesome and for the most part works as advertised, that said their response to salt bath is total bull schitt propaganda. They were threatened by a $100 device that worked as well as their $1500 device. They would have you believe that your brass could never be annealed unless you buy from them.

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Originally Posted by boatanchor
Originally Posted by TRexF16
How about a how-to reference for this salt bath annealing? Sounds similar to "niter bluing" of small steel parts.
Thanks,
Rex
EDIT - never mind...
Salt Bath Annealing
Second edit: Which led me to:
AMP's response
Interesting stuff. Makes me wonder if my candle method execution is doing it right. Anybody know if such rigorous testing as AMP did has been done on candle annealed cases? I thrust MD's lessons so I'm not worried about it, just curious.


The AMP machine is awesome and for the most part works as advertised, that said their response to salt bath is total bull schitt propaganda. They were threatened by a $100 device that worked as well as their $1500 device. They would have you believe that your brass could never be annealed unless you buy from them.

That's an interesting response, but for it to be true the AMP folks would have to actually be falsifying their independent lab analysis of the actual softening that occurred in the subject brass. Is that what you are saying they did - published falsified results? Just curious, as a sort of a scientific type I can't see any other way to take that.
Thanks,
Rex

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It's pretty easy to interpret data in many different ways...

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Originally Posted by Mule Deer
Dan,

Even the AMP (Annealing Made Perfect) electric annealing machine, can overdo it. When I tested one, they had a list of cartridges/manufacturers with the digital settings. I had some .30-06 cases from a manufacturer they listed, and it over-annealed those, which required a couple firings before they returned to normal. The problem is 2-fold, because even brass from specific manufacturers varies from lot-to-lot; and quite a few major manufacturers make brass for each other. This may seem odd, but it happens far more often than many handloaders suspect.

It was no big deal, but even with the AMP (which retails for over $1000) there can be some tweaking involved in specific brass.



John, the AMP Mk II version, which has been available for about two years, uses software called Aztec which will analyze a donor case for perfect annealing and generate a code for that particular batch of brass. You then use that code for future annealing with that batch. The donor case is completely destroyed. It prevents the issue you encountered of over annealing and under annealing too.


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zeissman,

Thanks for that info.


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