Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Candle annealing with short cases

When I anneal cases (not very often), it is usually longer cases such as 06 and X57 length. I hold them mid case until uncomfortable and then wipe with a damp cloth. I get a good 'sizzle' when the cloth hits it. I guess it is working well but I have no tempilaq to test it.

Just got a 6.5 Grendel upper and, since there is no brass available, decided I'd reform some 7.62X39 and use it until I can get Grendel stuff. I found a bag of X39 small rifle primed cases that I had segregated out from the LR primed stuff, so tried to anneal them before running them
into the Grendel die. I found that my fingers got hot PDQ while holding the X39 cases over the candle and I got no sizzle when wiping with the wet cloth. I'm curious whether I got the X39 cases hot enough to anneal them? If not, how do y'all do the candle trick with short cases?

BTW, in this case I just stuck a few of the X39 cases (without annealing) in the Grendel dies and they reformed beautifully. The first batch of 10 were test fired successfully. The rest of the bag, about 50 or so, were reformed with no obvious faults and are now in the vibratory cleaner. They should hopefully keep me having fun with this upper until proper cases can be located. In case anyone else is interested in this conversion, be aware that the reformed cases weigh about 15 more grains that the four Grendel cases I had laying around. This means less case capacity.

I had loaded and fired the 4 Grendel cases with 26.5 gr of H4895 and 129 gr ABLRs after zeroing the scope with some steel cased Wolf ammo. The first three shots went into 0.63" but the fourth opened the group up to a tad over an inch. I dropped the powder charge in the reformed cases by two grains because of the reduced capacity of the cases. Will be interesting to see what the different in velocities are between the two. I guess those four grendel cases are going to be a little tired by the time I'm through with them.

But I digress, how do y'all anneal short cases? John?

Socket in a drill, and a handheld torch works good. Without templiq you really have no idea. Could be too hot, maybe not hot enough. You don’t want it glowing hot.

Instead of holding .223, Hornet, etc, in the middle of the case, hold them down on the rim.

P.S. I'm not a gunwriter, but I learned that from one.

Yep, have torch-annealed a bunch of Hornet brass with the finger-held method--but holding them just in front of the rim. It's FAR quicker than putting them in a socket.

Thanks for the input. I was just concerned that the neck and shoulder were not getting hot enough before having to let go of the case. As I said, I wasn't getting any sizzle when wiping with the damp cloth.

^^This^^ ..... I go faint dull red and dump them in a foil meatloaf pan to cool.

I've used Templiaq and can absolutely confirm for short cases it will burn your fingers before you're done. Longer cases maybe not

"Faint dull red" is far hotter than required for case annealing--and may even result in worse accuracy on the first firing.