Never annealed brass before

[Slamfire]

This is once fired 30-06 brass that I then expanded to 35 Whelen. It has been resized three times and I continued to lose cases due to case neck cracks. Tonight I decided to try case neck annealing. I used a blowtorch in the inky shadows of the garage. I held the cases in the fingers of my left hand and heated the case neck until it glowed orange. By then it was too hot to hold, and I dropped it into a pan of water.

The case heads did not get hot enough to burn me, so I am hopeful that the case head were not annealed. I hope I did not overheat the case necks, or ruin the brass, but the colors came out OK. The colors and depth appear identical to the neck annealing you see on military brass. .



So, what do you think, will I have problems? Did I ruin my cases?

 

[Decoy80]

Those look OK to me. I have used a socket just deep enough to hold the brass with a short extension I cut off. ( a cheap Chinese tool ) chucked in a drill and clamped the torch in a vice. About 7 seconds of spinning the neck in the flame seemed to be long enough. A bucket of water to drop them in below the vice and it works. There are better ways and it takes a while to do a thousand but I have time and never enough money for guns,powder,primers,bullets and brass. Happy loading

 

[MCMXI]

In theory you don't want the necks to be orange since that usually means that the correct temperature has been exceeded. A bad anneal will hurt precision and accuracy.

 

[Orcon]

Good to see you around, Slamfire. It's hard to evaluate the effect of annealing just by looking at the case but if you dropped it in water when it became too hot to hold then the case head is fine. I know that it's popular to use MAP or other propane blends to anneal but you can actually get your brass too hot and cook of some off your metals. You can use a candle to the same end and not worry about ruining brass.

MAP burns at about 5300 °F, propane at 5072 °F and a candle at ~1500°F. It takes just a few seconds for brass to anneal at about 800-900°F. If you wait for the case to glow orange, it's exceeded 950°F and you're doing damage to your brass. Though it's probably going to be worked pretty hard in the resizing to 35 cal.

 

[Walkalong]

I used to set the cases in a pan of water, heat up the neck shoulder and tip them over. Guaranteed not to anneal the lower part of the case.

If you watch the automated annealers, they don't keep the flame on the case very long.

 

[ArchAngelCD]

Slamfire, I know there are all different ways to anneal brass but to be sure I highly recommend you use a temperature sensitive paste. You will achieve the perfect temperature without error.
https://www.midwayusa.com/s?targetL...&Ns=p_metric_sales_velocity%7C1&Ntpc=1&Ntpr=1
I agree annealing was the correct decision considering necking up to 35 Cal work hardened the brass a lot. You would probably lose them all soon without annealing.

 

[Slamfire]

Thanks for the replies. If I dorked up my cases, than I have dorked them all up. I will reload some soon and see what happens.

 

[redbullitt]

I have had good luck holding them with my hands and then quenching them. If you can hold it in your fingers until quenching then you should be fine!

You dont necessarily need to fully anneal the neck; you just want to relax the brass. Personally I think most people anneal them a bit too much with all the cherry red glowing and color stuff, but ymmv. Once it is too hot to hold I quench it and have had no issues for a long time. 223 rem, 300 blk, 308, 45 70, 338 laupa and many others.

When seating bullets the pressure needed seems to be very uniform using this method, and my split case necks on 243 pretty much went away. Accuracy and consistency are great as well. I think you will experience similar!

All that said, I would like one of those fancy machines to cut time, but I dont think I could ask for better results honestly.

 

[Orcon]

Thanks for the replies. If I dorked up my cases, than I have dorked them all up. I will reload some soon and see what happens.

I doubt they're dorked up, probably just right for what you're doing but just a bit soft if you wanted good neck tension on a 30 cal.

 

[RussellC]

I've been interested in trying something like this, glad to see this is doable without a machine.

How do you make sure the whole case neck is annealed all the way around, or is this not important?

Russellc

 

[RussellC]

Those look OK to me. I have used a socket just deep enough to hold the brass with a short extension I cut off. ( a cheap Chinese tool ) chucked in a drill and clamped the torch in a vice. About 7 seconds of spinning the neck in the flame seemed to be long enough. A bucket of water to drop them in below the vice and it works. There are better ways and it takes a while to do a thousand but I have time and never enough money for guns,powder,primers,bullets and brass. Happy loading

I like this idea, is this spinning required? I guess I need to get on you tube and watch how some of the automated devices do it.

Candle method also seems interesting, but seems like a lot of lamp black would need cleaned off?
Russellc

 

[RainDodger]

I began annealing a while back. Heating until orange colored is likely too hot in my opinion. Whether you ruined the brass or not? I couldn't tell you. Invest in a bottle of 750 degree Tempilaq and you may well be a lot happier with your brass.

Put a drop of the Tempilaq paint inside the case neck and heat your brass neck until the Tempilaq paint turns color. That's all you need. Adjust your flame distance, time how many seconds it takes and go from there. No need to use the Tempilaq on more than a few test cases.

In my experience, the brass is not approaching the orange point at 750 degrees. I use an annealing machine that rotates the brass so the circumference of the brass is heated equally. Good luck.

Edit: No need to drop the brass in water to cool faster.

 

[splattergun]

I use the lock stud from a Lee case trimmer to hold the brass, in a power screwdriver. I focus the flame of a propane torch just above the junction of the neck and shoulder, while the driver rotates the brass. When I see a blue line form just below the shoulder I quench the brass. This takes only about 3 seconds to reach the temperature where the blue line forms.
I haven't done this in the dark, so I haven' seen any glowing to the brass.
I have a set of .270 shells sized up to 30-06 on their 10th reloading without any of them cracked yet.

You may be getting them too hot if you see them glow orange, but only time will tell.

 

[jmorris]

I don't heat the brass to any degree of "glow". Using propane The flame doesn't even change from blue to orange and it will do that before the case glows.

 

[GBExpat]

Thanks for sharing that, Slamfire!

The only actual experience I have with annealing cases occurred in 1969 when my Dad & I experimented with the ol'Pan of Water & Propane Torch Method. We found the process and, to some degree, the results unsatisfactory.

I have long figured that the next time I decide to anneal cases that I will start with the Left Hand Hold Until Hot Method that you have described and if that proves to be unsat, move quickly to the Slowly Spinning Socket in a Drill Motor Method.

 

[edwardware]

Looks about right. A machine to spin the cases will yield better circumferential uniformity, but you're probably fine as is. Quenching is a great way to prevent heads from experiencing any heat.

Also, I anneal necks/shoulders to a dull glow, and don't have any issue with neck tension. Worst case is they'll harden back up over a couple resizings.

 

[RussellC]

I use the lock stud from a Lee case trimmer to hold the brass, in a power screwdriver. I focus the flame of a propane torch just above the junction of the neck and shoulder, while the driver rotates the brass. When I see a blue line form just below the shoulder I quench the brass. This takes only about 3 seconds to reach the temperature where the blue line forms.
I haven't done this in the dark, so I haven' seen any glowing to the brass.
I have a set of .270 shells sized up to 30-06 on their 10th reloading without any of them cracked yet.

You may be getting them too hot if you see them glow orange, but only time will tell.

Love the idea of using the Lee lock stud! Now if I can find those things in my pile of stuff....its been some while since I used those things.

Russellc

 

[homatok]

The reason to drop the case into water is because doing so immediately stops any further annealing. That said: here is the way I do it.


Annealing case necks in Lead

Annealing case necks by dipping them into molten lead that is held at about seven hundred degrees ‘F’ works well. Wheel weight alloy, which is approximately eighty nine parts lead, one part tin and ten parts antimony, melts at six hundred and nineteen degrees ‘F’ so you can safely set your lead alloy temperature at seven hundred degrees ‘F’. The use of a thermometer will take any guesswork out of the process. The reason for using lead for annealing is to keep the temperature low enough for proper uniform annealing, and that is simply not possible using the torch method. With a torch the case is often heated on one side more than the other, temperatures are not readily repeatable from case to case, and in falling over into the water, one side is quenched before the other.


To minimize the likelihood of lead ‘soldering’ itself to the brass case it is best to use as close to pure lead as possible (although any lead alloy will work). Anneal your cases with the fired primers left in, as that forms an airlock that keeps lead away from the inside of the case. With respect to annealing cases using molten lead, basically you: set the thermostat on your pot at seven hundred to eight hundred degrees ‘F’ pick up each case by the head and dip the neck of the cases about a quarter-inch into some powdered graphite or light oil (vegetable oil is fine). The oil keeps lead from sticking to the brass but, any lead that does stick is easily removed by a quick twist in steel wool while the case is still hot. Shake off any excess oil, dip the neck, shoulder, and about a quarter-inch of the case body into the molten lead and just as you begin to feel an uncomfortable degree of heat in your fingertips, drop the case into water. If you hold the cases in some other way than with your bare fingers, leave them in the molten lead from eight to twelve, but not more than fifteen seconds. When the case is hot enough that the lead does not cling to it, it is annealed. Pull the case up out of the lead, tap on the side of the case to remove any bits of lead (if the lead is really sticking, the case isn't annealed!), then drop it mouth down (straight) into a container that is mostly full of ice water. Following the anneal, it would be wise to closely inspect the inside of the case both visually and with a bent paper clip just to make sure there are no lead drippings adhering to the inside the case.


If you are left-handed, have the cases on the right side, the lead in the middle, and the ice water on the left. The cases go only one direction, to the left, and you use only one hand. If you are right handed, reverse the set-up. Because it only takes a few seconds per case, you can anneal hundreds of cases in an hour with this method. After the annealing process, remove the cases from the water, shake them out and use a piece of bronze wool to clean the annealed portion. This removes any residual lead and/or burned oil. Then, dry and tumble the cases to remove any traces of residual oil and they are ready to process.

 

[mstreddy]

A bit ago I bought one JMorris' excellent annealing machines. I messed with it a bit when i first got it, but had to put it away for a while. A couple of weekends ago I broke it out and ran several hundred 30-06 cases through. I had bought some TempilSticks, a crayon that works similar to Tempilaq (supposedly). I used the temp markings to determine if the cases were getting to the right temp. Set the height, distance of the flame, and went to town.

I had decided to get into annealing after some 30-06 I got from an estate, unknown firings, started splitting necks on my sizing run. I'll see how the rest of that batch does when I next work with them.

 

[FROGO207]

I have annealed with a lead pot using about the same method as homatok does. I use a leather glove with the ends of the fingers cut off to shield my hand against the heat though. Also keep the water and the lead pot away from each other. I have always had good results doing it this way for many years. YMMV

 

[Slamfire]

I sized about thirty cases today. The rest had already been sized. I could not crush any case necks between my fingers. I will be reloading some of them with bullets soon, so I will see if something funny happens next.

I won't be heating any case necks to orange or red in the future, I could see a dark blue creep across before the red came visible. I think I will stop there in the future. I did this in the dark by the way. I rolled the cases around as they were being heated so the heat distribution was fairly even. The pan of water was necessary as the cases heated up quickly and I had to drop them somewhere! I could hear the "zip" as the case entered the water.

 

[Laphroaig]

Your cases aren't "dorked up". In fact, they look great. I'm anxious to hear how they shoot, and I'll bet it will be fine.

I've been annealing brass using the blowtorch method for years. I do it in a dimly lit basement room and heat the necks until I detect the faintest start of a glow. Then drop them in water. I hold the case head with a set of pipe pliers and rotate as I heat. I get that same discoloration on my necks as Slamfire did (actually maybe just a little bit less), and it reminds me of some quality brass I have seen, such as Lapua. My brass shoots as well in highpower competitions as I can hold and I keep doing it so it works for me. I try to do it after the 3rd loading, and the annealed brass seems to last forever. I never do it a second time.

I realize there are other methods that must work too. As to the nay sayers who claim the time tested blow torch method is too hot, too imprecise, and otherwise not the proper way, I respectfully disagree.

Some times I sit in my dark basement with my Bernzomatic and imagine I'm heat treating early 1903 receivers at Springfield armory. We all know how well that worked out.

 

[243winxb]

Love these annealing threads. Seems near impossible to get it right.

http://forum.accurateshooter.com/threads/case-annealing-which-looks-correct.3934795/

 

[Nature Boy]

I decided to break down and buy a contraption to do the annealing (annealeez)

If I had to go through the convuluted process of heating up a pot of lead or molten salt or some of the other more manual methods, well, I’d find a way to be happy without annealed cases

 

[Decoy80]

If in the future I find the need to anneal a large amount of brass again I will either purchase or build a better way than the drill and socket method.
As posted above tempilsticks are available at the nearest welding supply and come in 25° increments and cover a broad range of temperature. I used them regularly in my work preheating metals before welding. I don't have any idea how much they cost they were always in the tool room or office working field construction as I did. To use them is simple as they work like a crayon and will only mark the metal after it reaches the temperature marked on the stick.
Personally I don't match shoot and don't think of annealing brass as rocket science those in your pic look good in my hop
Happy loading