Home Forums Reloading Reloading Software Annealing Questions for Ken

Unable to find a reference for a range of temperatures inside the chamber of a rifle as it's fired, I do find that a Red Ryder (BB) Carbine produces 620 degrees F when it's fired. As that approaches annealing temp for case brass and surely the internal chamber temperature in a center fire rifle is much higher, aren't we in fact annealing the brass case each time we fire a cartridge and re-hardening the case head each time it's forced back into the bolt, etc? Or does the rifle itself act as enough heat sink to dissapate the temperature before it can affect the brass case. BJ

Whence cometh the notion that that's a question for a forum about ballistics software?

I humbly apologize and will beg your indulgence to a new member - if you can move it to the appropriate forum I will pursue the thread there.

The heat of the burning powder doesn't last long enough to anneal the brass � but the working of the brass hardens it. Repeated hardening leads to the need to anneal. Go to the Campfire "Home" page and scroll down to my Smokelore article on annealing cases.

Now tell us how you use QL and QD, what you like about 'em, what you've learned from 'em, etc.

What a segue, Ken, and thanks for the answer. I read the article when I joined the Campfire and your book years ago - maybe not well enough. I do use your method to anneal the cases for my wildcats and it works quite cleanly. Without it, I would have lost a lot of investment in Rigby cases over the years.

As for the QL family, that's made my life a lot easier since the suite allows me to be more accurate in my designs. I actually bought QL and QD because LFAD will not let you experiment off their suggested powder choices. But I do run the QL numbers back into LFAD and compare the results (wishing there was a transfer program between them). There are some differences in the results between the two programs but with experience, I believe one can use this information to advantage.

Since I have been involved with computer systems since the 1960's, commercial ballistics software was never desirable for me as I just entered the ballistics formulae into a program to execute without calculation. I guess graduating from a slide rule directly to a mainframe helped in this; I never had to wear out my fingers on calculators. I remember when LFAD was sold in another format back in the 80s or so and I did not think it worth the money at the time. However, it has been vastly improved over the years, at least on the GUI side. As for accuracy, it is acceptable.

I find QL much more detailed and, of course, one can enter almost any aspect of case and cartridge design necessary. There are many variables available for any degree of granulation one might wish to pursue.