Home Forums Reloading Varmint Rifles Case annealing questions

I have been annealing using the fingers and candle or a burner flame. I want to upgrade to a machine and the ones I'm considering are:

AMP, results are great and reviews are great but the price is steep.

Annie Induction Annealer Looks interesting with modest cost for induction, but has anyone used one? Manual feed unless you spend bucks to automate.

Annealeeze Attractive price and self feeding. Self feeding

MRB Self feeding using a flame

Giraud. Self feeding using a flame

Bench-Source. Uses flame and a heat sink base. Manual feed


Comments and advise would be much appreciated.

I use a pair of needle nose pliers, a 7 gallon propane tank with a plumbers torch on top of a tank extension..

last filled the tanks like 5 years ago, when propane was $1.25 per gallon..

the tank was given to me, the needle nose pliers have to be 40 plus years old, so who know how they showed up..

the only other purchase was the plumbers torch.. that cost me $6 at Grovers...

223 case I hold upside down in the flame, on the neck.. count to five and drop it in a small metal decorator bucket to cool..

low cost, low tech, more than does the job...

How much do you want to spend?
The AMP machine gets great reviews but you pay for it. I think a lot of bench rest shooters purchase this one looking for the ultimate edge in group size. You can replace a hell of a lot of brass and still have cash left over for the price of this one.
The flame machines are all based on the same idea and are a bit more down to earth price wise. Still not as cheap as a burnz-o-matic but for a more reasonable sum you get the benefit of automation and repeatability.
I own Mike's unit and have been satisfied with it. His comes with all the pieces needed to load about any case out there and the price was fair.
All that being said, I'm not sure my groups tightened up (i wasn't looking for that either) but I've said goodbye to case neck splits and can definitely feel the difference in seating bullets.
Good luck with whichever direction you go.
Cheers

This!! but dont hold upside down, use a socket to hold, count to 6 while rotating, place in metal pan to cool, been doing this for 30+ years, learned that from a bench rest shooter

i just use the candle/wet towel method ,its cheaper and works just fine. Mule Deer has in the past has posted this method ,i also believe its in one of his books he has published ?

Either way works but a torch leaves the case clean as a candle blacken it

Very true on the candle leaving soot on the case, but an alcohol candle burns just as hot and no soot.

I've had the Annealeez and did not like it. A buddy bought a Mikes Reloading Bench machine that was kind of the same concept but very well executed where as the Annealeez ran like a bunch of monkeys had built it. It did anneal brass though and had I the patience to fiddle with it every single time I switched cartridges, I might have kept it.

Sold the Annealeez and bought a Benchsource. Changing between cartridges meant adjusting two torches, adjusting the spinny wheel thing and a dial setting that really kinda meant nothing once the torches had been changed around. Setting this up the same way every single time is an art form plain and simple and I didn't want another hobby.

The Amp is awesome. Push a couple buttons and screw in a die and things are exactly the same as the last time you did it.

If you're looking to up your game trying to save necks from splitting, the Annealeez will be just fine but required fine tuning in my case.

Benchsource would be great if doing volume reloading of a single cartridge (or cartridge family) on a regular basis.

Trying to improve the consistency of shoulder bump and neck tension on expensive brass in several different cartridges? Amp.

Or just skip annealing entirely.

Well Gemby, appreciate your response.. but at the same time I've got plenty of batches of brass, particular of 223 brass
that are on the 40 to 50 plus reloads....most I've ever had were 100 reloads.. but that was an experiment with a lot of 10 range picked up Rem 223 brass.. courtesy of Oregon State Police, who hadn't picked up their brass...

gemby,

One of the reasons for dropping a candle-annealed case on a wet towel, and wipe it clean, is not JUST to clean off the soot, but to stop the heat on the front end as soon as it reaches the annealing point--which keeps the head of the case harder.

A method not yet mentioned is Salt Bath, I switched to it a couple years ago and prefer it to flame annealing because you can anneal every case to exactly the same temperature. only downside is that you must rotary tumble your cases first to not contaminate the salt.
This method does have some bad reviews all by AMP, they would rather you give them $1500 than spend $100 or less