Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Tempilaq and annealing

The only thing quenching brass does is make it wet.

Al,

Would you mind explaining why a manual method would give better results than something automated. Not being argumentative, just curious.

Pretty cool looking setup btw.

Annealing brass for longevity is certainly gotten important recently.

I found with the candle method, in my case with an alcohol burner, and 750 Templaq, I found I didn't get a colour change before my fingers got too hot.

I suppose it would depend on the length of the case and how hot your heat source is. With 30-06 length cases and a propane torch it has not been a problem IME. In fact IIRC 308 length cases have also not been a problem.

I built my own version of the Skip's annealer. Using 750° Tempilaq I paint the inside of the case neck, use a flashlight to make it easier to see the paint melt. The case will drop out of the rotating drum aprox 1 second after the the paint melts, there isn't a color change using propane or map gas. My .308W Lapua brass will have a slight haze to it that you can only see if the light is right, .300RUM brass is only slightly different.

Water is a great heat sink when stress relieving cases at lower temp (than normally used for 'annealing') and for a longer period of time. People would be surprised at how warm the water gets after doing just 30-40 cases.

Since they're already standing in 1/2" of water, I just tip them over with the 'ring' when the time is up. Blow 'em dry with air, rinse in acetone and they are ready to f.l. size.

On new cases that have been neck turned, after stress relieving they go in hot water with Dawn and I scrub the inside of the cases with as big a synthetic bore brush as I can shove through the necks. Then rinse in hot water followed by a dunk in acetone before sizing.

Done this way, the accuracy stays the same from cases fired 7-8 times and newly prepped cases that have been stress relieved prior to the first firing. The shoulder 'bump' will stay within .0005 until that same number of firings when a few will start not staying where they're put. Then it's time touch them up again. Neck tension remains constant with no noticeable changes in seating force, accuracy or runout during sizing or seating.

For a hunting rig with say.....50 cases.....it's unusual that I ever have to go back and retreat the cases using this method. The exception being on chambers that have a lot of neck clearance where the brass work hardens pretty quickly.

There's a reason that using the high temp/short duration type of 'annealing' shows best results when done after each firing. People see this and incorrectly proclaim that any type of 'annealing' needs to be done after each firing.

Understanding the reason for what we're trying to accomplish is the first step in figuring out a process that will accomplish that. Like always, home work pays off.

Good shootin' -Al

👌
It would be interesting to see how hot the base of your case got if water wasn't utilized. Would it reach normalizing temperature...
Approximately how long is the neck of your brass in the flame?

when I first started annealing and learning about it and trying different methods and machines I took I believe it was $400 or 450° Tempilaq and made a stripe on the outside of the case down low by the head. that let me know if that case got anyways close to that hot none of my ever did

now you can sure anneal at 450° but it does take a period of time you can look up a chart on the big interweb you find all this information out..
some believe this includes me you can do a lot of good without actually annealing but heating long enough for stress relief... and that's what I would consider the candle method more of a stress relief than actual annealing

The tip of a candle flame can easily be 1500 degrees--which is why Fred Barker decided to experiment with them.

The information on how long it takes to anneal brass at different temperatures is also in Chapter 15 of my Big Book of Gun Gack II, "Annealing Brass," which describes the various methods I've experimented with over the years, from candles to the Annealing Made Perfect (AMP) machine.

John, that's an excellent example of how people make assumptions rather than checking things out for themselves. Fred was a pretty savvy guy.

After being hounded relentlessly by a 'fire poster, I reluctantly agreed to make a a copy of the setup I use...complete with detailed instructions and pictures. A couple weeks later he contacted me and was unhappy because the times I told him to expect didn't correlate to the time it took before the Tempilaq (which I had also supplied him with) would flow. I'll spare all the gorey details but after waaaay to much time trying to diagnose what was wrong, I mentioned that I preferred the small propane bottles...which I specified in writing that he use and included pictures of...to the larger ones.

His reply was: "Oh, I'm not using propane. I bought MAP gas instead."

The only good thing out of the whole situation was that I sent it all to him gratis just to help him out.

There really should be some sort of test....................

Your weather is blowing our way....stay warm. -Al

For the .223 based cases, it takes right at 8 seconds to reach 350 at the shoulder/body junction. For the 308-ish size cases, right at 10 seconds. For the WM size cases, it's right at 12 seconds.

With the 1/2" in the pan, an interesting phenomenon is that regardless of the size of case.....a small line of almost microscopic bubbles forms around the case at the water line right before the 350 Tempilaq goes liquid.

Good shootin' -Al

In laymans terms reloaders are differentiating them by calling stress relieving and annealing which is fine as it goes but technically they're both annealing. One is "Recovery (or Process) Annealing", the other is "Full Annealing". Basically they're differentiated by what happens to the microstructure.

Al,

Now that's a funny story!

I have another am going to post on our website, about a local friend who was wondering why the Forbes Rifle .270 Winchester he'd purchased wouldn't group very well at all. After going back and forth on it, he eventually brought the rifle and ammo to me. The rifle checked out fine, but the ammo (a combination of both handloads and factory) had bullet run-out up to .009". It also turned out that he had an alignment gauge, but was using it wrong....

The weather might be interesting for you! It was over 70 say before yesterday, but a north wind brought it down to the 30s before sunset, and it started to snow soon thereafter. We live in a semi-desert valley between two mountain ranges that catch most of the snow, and in a typical winter don't even have snow in the yard about 80% of the time. At dawn I had to shovel a path in the back yard so the dogs could go outside and perform their morning duties. Right now it isn't snowing, but is supposed to some more tonight....

John

It's been forty years since I've had classes in metallurgy, but IIRC we're looking at normalizing (stress releaving, increasing ductility and equalizing grain size) to full scale annealing which reduces hardness.

Thanks Al! I don't recall you giving the temprature of tempilaq you use in past post. 👍

I usually leave it out because people don't believe it anyway... while never taking the time to understand that temp is only one slice of the pie.

Good shootin' -Al

Recovery annealing, stress relieving if you want to call it that, is just as the name suggests, limits annealing to the recovery phase. There's no change to the grain structure. Full annealing, normalizing, etc, involve changes (recrystalization and grain growth) to the grain structure. That's why you see larger changes to the material properties with those processes than with recovery annealing.

you say our website, educate me on the what website you're talking about it might be something I want to check out.

It's www.riflesandrecipes.com, which is primarily for selling the books my wife Eileen and I write. Oh, and also our quarterly on-line "magazine," Rifle Loony News.

But there's also a blog section, where we each post short articles on various aspects of game cooking (Eileen's specialty) and hunting firearms, usually 3-4 times a month. Though lately, with hunting season starting, we haven't been keeping up quite that well!

Stress relieving (my term) is really more accurately termed as drawing back. Al