Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Tempilaq and annealing

Not necessarily--of you hold the case in the middle of the body with the tips of your fingers.

Which is how Fred Barker, contributor to the late lamented Precision Shooting magazine, developed the candle method--using Tempilaq.

It has always seemed to me that the level of precision in most annealing is akin to the level of precision in weather forecasting.

Absolutely true. Most don't bother to see there's easy enough ways to achieve a level of precision.

This from the "precision shooter" who believes ANY compression of the powder charge detracts from precision....

That's on the ragged edge of putting words in my mouth, but whatever "gun writer".

~ Possibly bending a seating stem.
~ Inducing more runout.
~ Bullets creeping forward and changing seating depth.
~ Crunching the size, shape, or coating integrity of powder kernels and changing the engineered burn rate.

All good good GOOD stuff, just hold three inches left!!!

I have $70 in my DIY annealer and zero cooked fingers there Wax Candle Man.

i only do 100 cases at a time.

100 cases of the 30 Herrett
100 cases of the 22 Hornet
100 cases of the 7x57
100 cases of the 9.3x57
100 cases of the 30-40 Krag
100 cases of the 7.65x53
100 cases of the...

i don't do 500 - 1000 or more cases any longer.

anymore when I anneal I will do several hundred cases at a time ...
first had an Anealezz then switched to the Ugly annealer.
the ugly fixed all the short coming of the Anealezz

Okay, then I WILL put your own words here, from the H414 thread on the rifle reloading forum:

"Compressed loads. I never advocate for them. Mainly because I don't like crunching kernels and potentially (and unpredictably) changing the burn characteristics of the powder. There are plenty enough powder choices out there to achieve an 85% to 100% load density without compressing a load. If that's something that doesn't bother you then who am I to argue. I won't do it though, and that's all there is to it."

And here's my response there:

"In reality some powder compression tends to improve consistent burning, and also improves temperature-resistance--even in powders designed to be temperature-resistant. I know this partly by experimentation, but also plenty of information gleaned from powder manufacturers, distributors, and bullet/ammo companies, all of which had electronic pressure labs which I visited.

"One of the most informative guys in the business was Rob Reiber, who was in charge the pressure testing at Hodgdon for decades before retiring a few years ago. He was a wealth of information on powder, including info on how to load to make it burn more consistently.

"But there have been many others as well--including the owner of one powder distributing company (since purchased by Hodgdon) who helped me run tests in their piezo lab for article information. (As an example, one session involved seeing how accurate various "pressure signs" were in estimating safe pressures. Turned out most weren't of much use.) After several such sessions he even offered me a job in the lab, but I was already making more writing than he could offer."

I will add (which I pointed out elsewhere) that it's my job to report to readers on various aspects of handloading. Which is why I tried the candle method after Fred Barker's article appeared in Precision Shooting.

It's not the only method I've used, by far. At the other extreme I also had an AMP machine for a while, back when I was averaging shooting around 8000 rounds a year.

Here's an example of how candle-annealing can work, when shooting my 6mm PPC benchrest rifle:



And that load is also slightly compressed. I have never encountered any of the stuff you list as side-effects from moderately compressed loads--but have from "crunched" power charges. There's a lot of room between compressed and crunched.

Don't now if you're a hunter or not, but some of the most widely-used hunting handloads use compressed powder charges with no problems. Probably the best known is one developed by a gun writer named Jack O'Connor: 60-62 grains of H4831 with a 130-grain bullet. This is still a very good one, 3/4 of a century later, whether using the original military-surplus H4831 or the present "long cut" version made in Australia.

The unit from Giraud has served me well. I use the 750 degree Tempilaq. If Doug can find a suitable induction unit to replace the torch I will upgrade.

It’s very easy to make one that seems to work well.

Right now am planning to test the salt-bath method Charlie Sisk has been using for a while.

Might also mention that some years ago Charlie called me, saying he'd built a 7mm Remington Magnum for a customer, and it wouldn't shoot worth a darn--as in 2+" groups at 100 yards, with his standard test load, which usually went around 1/2" in his rifles. This was when he lived in Texas, and had his indoor shooting range, so wind didn't have anything to do with it.

He was using new brass, of a brand that usually worked very well. We batted it around for a while, and eventually I called him back and asked if he'd annealed the brass. He never had to before, but I explained the candle method. He tried it on the new brass, and the rifle shot 1/2" groups. (Evidently the factory hadn't done the final annealing.)

I shoot highpower rifle competition. We shoot quite a few matches on E-Targets, this gives us feedback on velocity, SD, etc.

My SD has dropped since I started annealing every reload. My scores at 600 yards have improved also.

The brass in the picture above was used to shoot this target. SD is 13.6. I shot another match the next day the SD was 13.5 and average velocity over 20 shots was within 6 FPS from the 22 shots fired the day before.

These loads were compressed. 24.7 grains of Varget in a 5.56 does not leave much room for a bullet.

600 yards, prone with a sling, no rest, AR-15 Service rifle with a 4.5 power scope.

Been doing it this way since reading the method in the old Shooters' Bible in 1958, as recommended by NRA. Heat on the twirling fingers is about as accurate as it can get. You drop the case into the bucket of water right under the torch and you're done. I found that the second firing after the anneal is the most accurate. Accuracy drops off after 4 firings so you just anneal again. Fast and accurate, and a helluva lot cheaper than the fancy machines. Faster than the candle method as well.

I'm taking a new approach to everything you post.

It goes something like this:

Meh......Yawn.......Ignore.

You are MORE than welcome to equally and wholeheartedly reciprocate likewise.

Another case of "I do it this way, if you do it any other way you are wrong". You're not related to Big Stick are you?

Join the club. It only took most of us less than 50 posts coming from you to realize you're a stupidasss.

I've tried and used most of the 'annealers' out there.

My hand held 'ring of fire' gives me the best results, for lots of reasons.

Good shootin' -Al

I like what Al is doing. I don't have a ring of fire device. I put a case in a drill and rotate the brass as I hold a torch on the neck. Drop the case into water when "done". I used to used a melting pot - molten lead and that worked. The accuracy improvement has been significant with some 222 loads.

I've been using the redneck drill/ratchet die/torch method too, but I sure like Al's rig. Is there a trick to getting those components to make one like that Al?

The annealer is cheap and simple, you should see my powder measure/scale.