Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Question RE: Annealing and Number of Times Fired

Using Tempilaq Liquid, 350 @ the shoulder/body junction. With this little 'fire ring' tool, about 10 seconds per case does it. I do stand them up in a pan with 1/2" of water and just tip them over with the ring as it comes off. The water acts as a heat sink and lets you spend a bit more time over the neck/shoulder junction....rather than just a 'flash' heat.

This temp isn't as aggressive as most will advise. Hornady's kit includes 475 degree Tempilaq, for example.

The goal (at least mine) is to simply stress relieve (draw back) the neck and shoulder enough to keep the neck tension consistent, eliminate any die changes (shoulder 'bump' as the case work hardens), while not changing the 'first shot' accuracy.

Good shootin'. -Al

Should also add that there's no absolute temperature for annealing brass. It can be annealed as low as 480 degrees--but it takes a LONG time. Even at 600 degrees it takes an hour.

The temperature that generally works best is around 750 degrees--which is a LOT cooler than heating brass until it glows. Which is why 750-degree Tempilaq is pretty popular--but it also doesn't have to go inside every neck. You can count how long it takes heat one case, then just heat the others to the same count. This is how I use my Anneal-Rite tool, used when annealing larger bunches of brass.

When Hornady offered their simple annealing tool, basically a socket-type for use with a drill motor, they included 475-degree Tempilaq, which they suggested applying just BELOW the shoulder of the case. This was to avoid over-heating the case below the neck-shoulder area.

There are all sorts of ways to accomplish the job without over-annealing--the reason there's an entire chapter on the subject in THE BIG BOOK OF GUN GACK II.

Al, I use the same set up. It should be pointed out that 10 seconds is not a "golden rule". Using a temp stick, the difference in time required between a 223 Rem case and a 223 WSSM case is (much) more than 10 seconds, for example.

Alvaro,

New brass should be good for at least four firings before annealing--or used brass for four firings after each annealing.

Digital temp gun may not work as expected. Mine needs a target that is quite a bit larger than the neck of a cartridge. Yours may be better.

The dyno unit has a focused beam of .025 @ 2' for round tubing (headers).

You want to stay as far away from the stainless headers as possible...you can get a burn w/o even touching them.

Might try it this weekend. -Al

I think its time for a tutorial on candle annealing, to keep it simple.

I have annealed exactly 0 cases. If I get a cracked neck, I throw the brass away. I doubt I have thrown away more than 200 cases, if that, in 50 years of reloading and 10’s of thousands of rounds fired...

I anneal after every firing.

the discoloration from annealing is caused by the zinc oxidizing, so I don’t go nuts with annealing, but given I work my brass a bit so I anneal every 2nd loading…

Lol

I'm jumping into the annealing game. I've kept my brass separated by whether it was fired 2x, 3x 4x, etc.

Once I anneal, does the counter reset to zero? That is, can I mix brass that was fired 3x before annealing with brass that was fired 5x before annealing and not have problems? Or do I still need to track the number of firings?

thanks,


Okie John

Some folks would rather shoot bullets than load bullets. I would think the only way to see repeatable accuracy from annealing is to anneal every time before you reload.

Do I need to anneal my K-Hornet brass more often, as it is thinner?

TrueGrit,

As I noted in a shortly before yours, once as an experiment tried not annealing the brass for my 6mm PPC benchrest rifle for four firings--and as long as the cases had all been fired the same number of times since being annealed, they grouped so similarly there was no way to tell the difference. But I did not try mixing cases that had been fired a different number of times.

As for shrapnel's comment, he is well-known among some of his friends for sighting-in rifles on rocks. He may have fired an actual group on paper sometimes, but if so he's kept it a secret....