My Take On Annealing

[TATER]

MEATSAW,
For me, after sizing but before trimming.. unless I am forming.

Metal God,
If You can stay consistently consistent, That’s accuracy ..
On the Back porch at night with no lights. I sit with a bucket of brass on my right and
a 5 gallon bucket of water between my knees and a torch under one leg. twist the brass
in my fingers and drop. Chances are if I feel the heat, I have taken it too far.. You will get a feel
for distance from flame and time and I guess, twist-rate .. I'm trying to hit the temp somewhere
around a 5 to 8 count.

I will admit that it is not alchemy, But, close maybe.

[Metal god]

After 4th or 5th firing I decap , clean primer pocket , clean inside neck then tumble one hour . After tumble in this order I anneal , quick tumble , size , trim , tumble at least an hour , check flash hole for media , load .

You could skip the tumble before annealing and do a longer tumble after . The only reason I tumble after decap and cleaning the necks is that's the order I do all prep work regardless if I'm going to anneal . I never even concidered sizing before I anneal and never ask if one way is better then the other . Things that make you go hhmmm

As for all the different ways people anneal . I think my test have shown that most of them will work . What I've been trying to do is see where the true accuracy is and at what tempitures what does what . That is what I believe the OP was looking for , accuracy and cost .

[jmorris]

If you want for the annealing to show, like all military ammo must. You would anneal after tumbling. Factory ammo is tumbled after annealing to remove all signs of annealing.

My machine is case fed and automated and the bulk of the brass I shoot is pickup from matches so all of them get annealed every time. Some need it and it doesn't hurt the ones that don't.

[4runnerman]

jmorris- I was under the impression factory ammo is not annealed at all?. Just the good stuff was.

[Metal god]

I don't know this for sure but it's my understanding you need to anneal first to form a bottle neck case . The brass needs to be soft to be stretched pulled and pushed in to shape . The head I thought is always been a harder stiffer part of the case . I'd assume the whole case comes out the strength of the head . The top half is then annealed so they can shape the bottle neck .

That's always been my thought on how it goes . How ever I don't really know .

[Unclenick]

My approach is after decapping and cleaning, but before sizing, so sizing goes easier and is less likely to split a neck. If you have a machine and are doing it every load cycle to try for more consistent bullet pull, though, doing it after all other steps, like a manufacturer does, is probably where you want to go.


MG,

Try it again with a propane torch with air mostly choked off as I showed before. A reducing flame. See what happens. I think the reason the MAPP gas torch is giving you more orange by the time the inside indicator melts is that it is heating the outside surface faster than the heat can make it to the inside, producing a temperature gradient across the thickness of the neck. A slower heating flame may get the inside melted before you get the flare.

[Xfire68]

I ordered one of these https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCWni2nNNeE to anneal .300 Blackout. Can't yet comment of how well it works as it is back ordered until June.

[RC20]

Granger has a hot place that goes to 900 degrees, ceramic or aluminum top

Cost is $368

Some adventurous soul could figure out a pan and sand and test and it might be an interesting item.

Maybe a square rack to hold so may, temp stick right at the shoulder and get a time and then maybe good.

Beyond my means but something maybe for someone else.

[Metal god]

I think your on to something there Unclenick .

I went ahead and reduced the flame not sure if that's the same . What happen this time by reducing the flame therefore reducing the heat of the flame . I was able to get both 750°F inside the neck as well as the 450°F below the shoulder to melt at the exact same time with out any orange flame .

This is the case right as both indicators melted . I was only looking at the green inside the neck as to when to take the picture . I just got lucky getting the below the shoulder mark in the same pic .



The annealing still does not look like much . the other thing is you can still see a green-ish color inside the neck . I will say It defiantly changed color but after doing all these test I'd have to say the 750°F tempilaq changes color/burns more then it melts . The 450°F tempilaq melts and becomes clear . I have yet at any degree get the 750 to melt or disappear .




The above is to compare the green mark inside the neck to the after . There is a difference for sure . but is it the difference I should be getting to indicate the neck reached the right temp ?

I found this to be very interesting . It clearly shows why MAPP gas is not used . The flame is way to hot . My question is , Why 2 propane torches ? My tests seem to show one is all you need and getting to much heat to fast with 2 torches may not help and may even hurt ?

[jmorris]

jmorris- I was under the impression factory ammo is not annealed at all?. Just the good stuff was.

More often than not they are annealed several times on their way to becoming finished brass. Multiple draw and forming steps are required to make a ready to fire case.

[Unclenick]

4runnerman,

As Jmorris says, cases are annealed fully several times in the forming process to allow further drawing without cracking from work hardening. Mr. Guffey has mentioned three times as standard. Once the head is formed, though, they don't want to soften it, so full annealing is no longer used and only neck and shoulder annealing is done as the last step. That was not originally done, but in the 1920's the Brits discovered season cracking could be prevented by doing that last neck and shoulder annealing step, and since military ammunition is often stockpiled for long periods of time, it became a standard military practice. Commercial manufacturers also picked up on it for the reason of wanting long shelf life.

What the commercial makers do that the military does not do is polish their brass as a last step. Since the oxide color is only at the surface, polishing removes the annealing "stain". At some time in the 1920's, Frankford Arsenal found that unpolished brass survived weather and corrosive environments much better than polished brass, so the military began to require that the annealing stain on the neck be visible on finished brass both to prove it had been annealed and would not be subject to season cracking, and to prove it had not been polished and would therefore not corrode easily in poor storage conditions.

If you hold a commercial case up to the light and get the incident angle just right, you can often makes out a very slight difference in the brass yellowness where it was annealed and then polished.


MG,

2 propane torches are to achieve even heating when the case is not being revolved in the flame, as on most of the annealing machines. The Giraud annealer, which does turn the cases, uses just one flame.

As compared to just turning the torch down, I'm guessing the reducing flame will color the brass less at a given temperature because it has less oxygen in it. It also has a wider blue portion which may make it easier to apply the heat evenly. I have a batch of .30-06 I can anneal, so I think I'll play with that a little myself. I want to collect some more Tempilstiks first. I have an idea for another experiment.

[F. Guffey]

Quote:
jmorris- I was under the impression factory ammo is not annealed at all?. Just the good stuff was.

More often than not they are annealed several times on their way to becoming finished brass. Multiple draw and forming steps are required to make a ready to fire case.
jmorris is offline Report Post

The case is annealed as many as 6 times, I have what were believed to be exceptions, seems the arsenal decided to cut time and expenses by reducing the numbers of times the case was annealed. By that time and before the Internet I had already fired some of them twice.

F. Guffey

[Unclenick]

Mr. Guffey,

Sorry if I quoted you incorrectly. It makes sense to assume annealing after each forming step, except that doesn't appear to happen with .22 rim fire as shown here. I'm wondering now if forming by drawing a disk or by drawing a slug winds up with different numbers of annealings? Here's a patent that claimes to do away with intermediate annealing. I don't know if anyone is using its method. Perhaps your sample came from someone trying to use this technique for at least part of the task.