Who's never annealed brass?

[N555]

I have a Mauser 6.5x54 Kurz rifle that my grandfather brought back from France during the Great War. Cartridges are long obsolete for the rifle but case forming dies are available. 308 Win are good parent cases for the forming process but case life is short due the the extreme reduction of neck diameter during the forming process. Neck annealing would probably extend case life but I do not shoot the rifle very often.

Annealing other cases would probably be useful but most of my shooting is casual and sporting. I’m sure completion shooters would want the the benefits of annealing.

I’m a sucker for “new to me” processes. Maybe someday I’ll get into annealig.

Anneal before forming, anneal the hell out of them. For a while I was making 8mm Mauser brass out of 30-06 and it helped a lot.

 

[Skeptic13]

Never have.

 

[gunmechanic]

I have never annealed either ,but it is my next purchase. It is very important for brass life and accuracy ,so i have been told !

 

[BWS]

It's a tool in the handloading toolbox....

Use it or not. Back when I started wacking Ghogs in the early 70's,finance dictated annealing those precious 222 cases.

By the 80's,cash flow and overall availability meant....we'd load them to a failure/fatigue number of times and chuck'm,easy to get more.

Well,you get the idea.... times and conditions change. Now,for cast rifles (condition change) since we flirt right at that edge of (lower) JB performance,annealing is a way of tricking the case into behaviour more inline with the case designed original intent. Will leave it at that.

Good luck with your project.

 

[jmorris]

In long range Benchrest we test everything including the test foremat and I can tell you with certainty that annealing is not a blanket procedure.

A lot of that could be attributed to brass that exactly matches the chamber before firing so it’s not “blown out” and working the brass like a normal rifle with factory spec ammunition.

 

[JFrank]

A lot of that could be attributed to brass that exactly matches the chamber before firing so it’s not “blown out” and working the brass like a normal rifle with factory spec ammunition.

Yes, very true and I’ve gone through the exact Scenario with inferior dies that want to move the .006-.007 where the answer was to replace the $50 die rather than buy a $300 annealing machine or a farm boy socket and blowtorch can do the job but how exact is up for debate.

I’m not anti annealing I’m pro testing..

 

[JFrank]

A few years ago I took my socket and cordless drill coupled with a propane torch to carefully anneal my expensive Lapua brass necks in a dim lit room. I really thought I was doing a good job of not over doing the deed, well in result my good brass was so soft I could size with very little effort and the necks would barely hold a bullet. My targets reflected the lack of bullet hold with inconsistency.

 

[Varminterror]

There is also a pretty big difference in a reloading process which uses custom dies reamed to match the finish reamer used to chamber the rifle, and neck turned brass cut to also match the tight neck chamber reamer, such the brass doesn’t move much - perceptibly not at all - between firing and sizing, and wash, rinse, repeating.

I started annealing a long time ago based on desire to improve brass life - eliminating neck splits and shifting my failure modes to ~10% lost cases, 40% loose pockets, and 50% “it’s old enough, I’ll just buy new.” Eventually, I shifted into annealing because it helps me ensure consistency of behavior from one firing to the next. I don’t anneal all of my brass for all purposes, but I do realize the benefits of doing so for certain applications.

 

[Okie_Poke]

I have not annealed yet. For hunting ammo, I’ve never needed to. I have more 30-06 brass than bullets and powder (probably). But it’s on my radar of things to try on the target front. I’ve so far gotten along just fine keeping my lots of brass separate and counting firings, but I’m not really competing yet. I can see the benefit if you shoot one rifle a bunch and can extend brass life. And I read folks say it helps control/maintain consistent neck tension, but I’m not at the point where I’m good enough to see a difference in accuracy between groups shot from my newer lots of brass vs groups from my older lots of brass. In time I plan to test annealing for myself though.

 

[Barbaroja]

I’ve only tried it once on some winchester 44spl brass that I was getting cracks when expanding the case mouth. I had very few 44spl cases at the time so I really didn’t wanna loose them. Hit them gently with the torch and I didn’t have another split. That was 3 years ago. Haven’t split one since

 

[JFrank]

There is also a pretty big difference in a reloading process which uses custom dies reamed to match the finish reamer used to chamber the rifle, and neck turned brass cut to also match the tight neck chamber reamer, such the brass doesn’t move much - perceptibly not at all - between firing and sizing, and wash, rinse, repeating.

I started annealing a long time ago based on desire to improve brass life - eliminating neck splits and shifting my failure modes to ~10% lost cases, 40% loose pockets, and 50% “it’s old enough, I’ll just buy new.” Eventually, I shifted into annealing because it helps me ensure consistency of behavior from one firing to the next. I don’t anneal all of my brass for all purposes, but I do realize the benefits of doing so for certain applications.

Yes , I believe I said that firstly but perhaps not clearly.
We really don’t need custom dies, learning how and where to measure is the task. Off the shelf Wilson or Hornday “Match” dies for example do a great job of minimum sizing. I hear lots of guys suggesting dies because of lowest price and to me that is just poor advice compared to leaning the chamber.
Again I suggest annealing a sample of brass that one has a history with to compare results on target and make an informed decision whether to introduce the deed into the program.
Just me of course.
( quiz: is to ask guys how much sizing his die is producing and wait for a variety of answers )

 

[Laphroaig]

By chance, did anyone else check out this link that was posted on a previous thread about annealing?

https://ballisticrecreations.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Ryan-Stevenson-Dissertation.pdf

I'd like to reference the thread and post where I saw it to give credit where credit is due but I can't find it now. I referenced it a bunch of times, and finally saved it as a favorite on my computer. What kept drawing me back was it contains quantitative data collected by a degreed mechanical engineer on university quality laboratory equipment. I've never seen anything comparable and I have searched for such data many times.

In a nutshell, an Australian F-Class shooter coerced a grad student (I'd guess Masters degree) to conduct his thesis research on the properties of cartridge brass. He took some new Lapua .308 brass and measured various properties along the way through 6 firing/reloading cycles. At the start, half the brass was neck turned and half was left original. After 3 firings, half of each group was annealed then all 4 groups fired another 3 times. The annealed brass was annealed again after 6 firings.

The description of the annealing methodology is somewhat sketchy but I interpreted it to be done with a torch, maybe turning the case with a drill socket or some such. He calibrated the torch time with 750* tempilaq then quenched in water.

The parts that I found interesting were:

Microhardness, pgs. 41-47. It shows a progression of work hardening through each firing/reload cycle. The curve starts out pretty steeply, but gets flatter after 3 cycles. Annealing did bring the brass back to a softer state, and a couple of times comparable to unfired hardness. I was a guy who annealed after the third firing. My conclusion was that doing that put my brass back on the steep, most inconsistent, part of the hardness curve and maybe extended the case life, before neck cracking, about 2 or three additional times.

Seating/Pullout Force, pg. 59-62. The results are somewhat erratic, and the author opined that his equipment was maybe at fault. One thing that I noticed was that the unannealed/unneck turned brass (red line) showed the most consistency in both measurements through all 6 firings.

Micro grain structure, pgs. 34-40. After annealing, the grain structure was different from the new brass. Also, the annealed brass didn't always result in uniform crystal structure in the neck area.

There are other properties that he measured that I didn't pay much attention to. For you guys that neck turn brass some of his micro photos of the neck area are revealing.

So my conclusion, for what I do, I don't think I'm going to continue to anneal. One thing that led me there was around the time the other, sometimes rather contentious, annealing threads were circulating I shot a very tight highpower rifle 20 shot slow fire prone group. I thought that this was proof that my annealing technique worked just fine. But when I checked my notes, that brass was on its fifth reload and hadn't been annealed. As always YYMV.

 

[.38 Special]

I only do it for very expensive and/or hard to find cases, before significant changes (wildcatting and such), and with "once fired" brass of unknown origin - and in the latter instance, I do it once when I first receive them and never again.

I have significant doubts regarding the idea that annealing improves accuracy. I am sure there are instances of it, but as a general practice I would be surprised if it had a noticeable effect.

Overall, I suspect that the annealing trend is just another example of hobbyists finding ways to spend time and money. After all, one definition of "hobby" is "To take a simple thing and make it as complicated as possible."

 

[NapalmMan67]

I never have. I usually never shy away from a chance to play with fire, just not sure if I need to do this, or why I would need to for any of the calibers I shoot.

 

[Varminterror]

the annealed brass didn't always result in uniform crystal structure in the neck area.

Of note, the evidence there supports (as stated on page 38) “This suggests that annealing process is not able to apply consistent amounts of heat to each cartridge that is annealed.” Reminding that the process used is manual annealing by spinning cases with a drill, held within a propane torch.

Also of note, from page 65 of the Recommendations section, based on the conclusions following the experimental analysis:



How many times will quantitative research have to show the inconsistencies of spinning cases in torches with power drills before folks finally get the message?

 

[Mk-211]

Just 1 more time?

 

[pintail]

I only neck size my 308 and 223 brass, some of my federal 308 brass have 15 reloads through them, ditto some of my 223 r-p brass.
I can't get a 30/30 lee neck size die here in the uk so I just squeeze the necks until the die nearly hits the bottleneck and it functions fine through my 94 win.
This is an image of how the cases look after such treatment.
I don't anneal.

 

[murray brook]

Been reloading for over 45 yrs. Began annealing ( salt bath) about 4-5 yrs now. What I found is that the shoulder bump and seating force are much more constant, but with my hunting rifles it hasn't translated to any gain in accuracy. Now in my varmint rifles and 6mm BR it seems to help, BUT only when I anneal after each firing. If not then I found it takes one firing to get back to top accuracy which I find takes too much of a toll on components and barrel life. JMO

 

[johnjohn]

Never felt the need to. No exotic calibers (expensive). Where I mostly shoot once fired brass is on the ground or in the trash can.