Has my annealing failed and has it banjaxed my accuracy test?

[4runnerman]

Those that take themselves to seriously- Most time Guffy are the best shots. I am not the best shot by far, but I do take what I do very seriously. I have learned that if you want to play with the big boys, You need to learn what works for the big boys and duplicate that. Maybe I push to hard, Maybe I don't. I just know what I want in shooting and until I get there- I will keep pushing harder and harder. I offer advice that has worked for me as you do and all others in here. If my advice is used- Great-- if not- Oh well. I lose no sleep over it.
In fact right now in another post- I am looking for advice on head spacing issue that I think I am having. I read the reply,s I try, I learn and hopefully advance from it.

[Unclenick]

4runnerman,

Have you tried simply leaving the expander out for the initial pass? If your die is one that needs the expander to serve as a chuck for the decapping pin, you can probably order an expander for the next smaller caliber so it won't actually pull on the neck, but still holds the pin and still irons out small mouth dents. I'm just thinking to have you avoid over-working the neck by sizing it twice.

[4runnerman]

Thanks Nick- Not sure if this works, but what I did was to extend the decapper down as far as it will go. When I go to decap, I barley have to even touch the neck before the pin pops the primer out.

Nick-If you have time-Find my post about case head Seperation. I would value your input on it very much

[Pond, James Pond]

I've re-necksized my remaining 74 Norma cases. I did it with the Lee neck collet die and the results are a bit odd.

The die was at the same setting for all of them and I squeezed till there was no longer any movement (Lee Hand-press). I now have neck OD of 8.40mm (x1), 8.42mm (x10), 8.43mm (x18), 8.44mm (x17), 8.45mm (x12), 8.46mm (x7), 8.47mm (x7), 8.48mm (x1) and 8.50mm (x1).

I tried the collet die another time on both cases at the extremes of the range and no change with either. Some cases seem to have a slightly oval mouth as the reading might change by 0.01mm if I measured again at 90 degrees.

What does any of that tell you?

[F. Guffey]

What does any of that tell you?

Tell me? Nothing, I have dies, lots of dies, Most of my dies are full length sizing dies. My full length sizing dies are very versatile, when I run out of ways to use my full length sizing die I get out the case forming dies and start over.

I have specialty dies, I have small base dies, neck sizing dies, forming/trim dies reamer dies etc. Before I ordered the specialty dies I tried to get all the use out of my full length sizing dies. To go with my threaded full length sizing dies I have feeler gages. I call the feeler gages 'companion tools to the press.

Before I started annealing I studied the art of annealing, after that I made tools for annealing based on simple rules.

F. Guffey

[Pond, James Pond]

Tell me? Nothing

How does that help me?

Which dies you have does not help me determine the state of my cases, nor what I might need to do with my dies, unless you're offering to give me all you dies.

Are you offering to give me all you dies?

If not, then your dies are not part of this equation.

if you're implying that I don't know much about annealing, then I'd agree but that observation too does little to help in this situation...

[Snyper]

What does any of that tell you?

That tells you why blueprints always give a tolerance range, since manufacturing is never that precise

I'd worry less about minor variations on individual cases, and concentrate more on how well they perform in the real world

No matter how "perfect" you make the cases, other variables beyond your control will cancel the benefits, which are too minor to measure

[Longshot4]

I haven't heard a word on how neck turning will effect case tension on the bullet when annealed. We know that neck turning makes the neck thickness equal on all sides. If we annealed without turning necks then we should have inconsistent tension on the necks. Is that correct?

[Pond, James Pond]

I'd worry less about minor variations on individual cases, and concentrate more on how well they perform in the real world

OK, but here I have a whole bunch of cases, recently annealed and neck sized, all at the same, so no changes to the collet die yet I have 0.04mm spread in mouth OD.

That would not concern me normally except that when I loaded the bullets the first time round, there was clear difference in the ease with which the bullets entered the mouths and the suggests they'd have similar difference in ease when leaving them.

Given that this test is supposed those if a) a suppressor changes POI and MOA performance of my best loads and if b) charging with the Lyman Gen 6 of a beam scale makes any appreciable difference in MOA performance, I don't want to start out with known inconsistencies.

Now that I know about the issue, I'm curious as to the cause.

[Dave P]

" I lube the outside, not the inside of the mouth."

Is this right? You are not lubing the inside when the expander ball goes thru?? You have to lube the inside for this process.

And of course, you have to measure the amount of lube you place inside each neck. I have a die for that.

[Pond, James Pond]

Honestly, I've never needed and I've never been told that this is necessary. Lee's own instructions say that no lube is needed for the collet and I've only ever lubed the exterior when FL sizing. Again, never had any problems, stuck cases, so had no reason to think it needed lubing there.

There is no expander ball that I've seen in my Lee collet dies, just a cylindrical mandrel. On the FL that mandrel has a spear-head profile but that is it. As I said, that has never got stuck.

[aarondhgraham]

I keep forgetting you are a Brit.

banjax
verb
To defeat utterly; clobber •Popularized in Great Britain by the Irish broadcaster Terry Wogan in the 1970s : She upped and banjaxed the old man

[1939+; origin unknown]

Aarond

.

[Pond, James Pond]

Pond talks like a Brit, perhaps even shoots like one.... but is Pond a Brit?

Pond, James Pond. International man of misery. I mean mystery.

[Snyper]

Pond, James Pond. International man of misery. I mean mystery.

LMAO
That's signature material there

[RC20]

James,

All the other stuff aside what you are describing is the result of what I got when I did not anneal cases for 8 or 10 cycles.

Some were hard to insert, some still ok.

When I annealed I went a bit overboard (torch) and got too much but they are consistent and they don't shoot too badly.

Not match grade but good enough for 1" MOA and sometimes sub 1 inch MOA groups.

One method was to control the torch flame through the vent holes being taped off but you need the type of torch that has that and not all do.

I do have access to a pyrometer so it comes home some day and I will see how hot my tip flame is. If I can get a good spot and then time it that should be pretty good. Will see

[Pond, James Pond]

Got to the range first thing this morning and had 300m to myself. I'd zero'd at 100m, then raise POI but about 5MOA which should have put me on paper at 300m, and it did.

So my plan had been to compare 4 10-shot groups. All with Amax 155n bullets, all Norma cases whose neck ODs were as close to identical as possible, all with my best charge weight to date of 40.55gn of N135 (read 40.6gn).

The first 10shot group had been metered with the Lee as I have always done, the second was metered with a Lyman Gen 6. Groups 3 and 4 were exactly the same as 1 and 2, only they were fired suppressed. The was a moderate, gusty breeze.

Firstly, my groups were not brilliant, even by my standards and did not get very close to my best ever 0.9MOA at 100m

In each group there were one or two flyers so I calculated groups sizes with and without those. Without was never less than 8 or 9 shots, so not too great an omission.

So max spreads as follows-
Lee safety loaded (minus 2 flyers): 1.46MOA
Lee safety loaded (full group): 2.2MOA

Lee safety loaded suppressed (minus 1 flyer): 1.2MOA
Lee safety loaded suppressed (full group): 2.3MOA

Lyman loaded (minus 2 flyers): 1.2MOA
Lyman loaded (full group): 1.9MOA

Lyman loaded suppressed (minus 1 flyer): 1.1MOA
Lyman loaded suppressed (full group): 1.8MOA

So I can see from this that the Lyman loaded ammo was more accurate, be it full group, but even more so with obvious flyers eliminated. Great news and exactly what I wanted to see. It means that I can now load via the Gen 6 in confidence, rather than worrying that my charge weight accuracy would suffer.

POI did change also with unsuppressed impacts landing by and large in the vertical plane of the POA, whilst POI when suppressed was grouped perhaps 0.5MOA right of the POA vertical plane.

I hope that would not exacerbate over great distances, requiring constant windage adjustment regardless of wind conditions, not least because I looooove shooting suppressed! It makes morning of .308 feel like a morning of hot-ish .223!

Anyway, a nice way to start the day and now, having a couple of bachelor days to myself, I shall do some case prep over numerous hops-based beverages and DVDs, surrounded by empty pizza boxes!

[Mozella]

I'll give you a couple of suggestions and a comment as well and I sincerely hope you don't find any of this offensive. It's easy to hurt feelings when critiquing somebody's shooting results. That is not my intent.

Accurately measuring a good 5-shot group (where they're all touching) is difficult but usually possible. Not so with a good 10-shot group because all you have is a big hole with no idea where the bullets actually impacted. I would recommend you shoot 5-shot groups and evaluate them. Plus, when most folks talk about precision, they often talk about 5-shot groups so if you do the same, you can compare apples to apples.

Second, you have to count flyers if you are serious about precision shooting. Otherwise, you run the risk of getting off into the area of "bar talk", which is something quite different. Flyers are real shots just like the ones which group together unless you somehow thought you were doing a dry firing exercise and the gun accidentally went off. Otherwise, count your flyers................ every one of them. A high percentage of my "pretty good" 5 shot groups have flyers where four bullets touch each other and one is separated from the other four by some measurable distance; some worse than others. If I ignore them, I might think I should start packing for the Olympics.

I imagine your .308 should shoot as well as a typical .223 at 100 yards and perhaps do better at longer ranges. In any case, if you are not shooting 5 shot groups approaching .5 MOA at 100 yards with some regularity, you will find it hard to notice differences caused by annealing, flash hole de-burring, neck size measuring, primer pocket uniforming, and all the other tiny improvements we try to make to our brass.

Expecting to filter out changes related to neck size measurements when you're shooting up around 2 MOA just isn't going to work. If you can't get your 5 shot groups to average around .800 MOA with the good ones down around .500 MOA or below, then you're wasting your time and should look elsewhere for answers to get you to that level of precision before you even start measuring neck size.

Moderately priced factory ammo should shoot below 1 MOA with ease assuming your rifle is good and if you also do your part. If you're not willing to slap a five dollar bill down on the bench and say "Watch me shoot a sub MOA group and pick up this five dollar bill if I don't.", then talk to someone at the range who can do that and ask him for some advice.

Perhaps ask the local hot-shot to give your rifle a work-out to see if it might be you rather than the rifle. Perhaps someone will let you shoot a rifle and ammo combination which is pretty much guaranteed to shoot sub MOA. See how you do with it.

No matter the reason, I would say you have issues other than neck size which need to be addressed first. Get your average group group size down below 1 MOA by using decent factory ammo (to eliminate one unknown) and by addressing the big things like bedding, scope, stock, rest, trigger, the action and barrel, technique, and yes......... the shooter himself.

After that start working on improving even further before you start working on all the tiny stuff which keeps this game so interesting (and frustrating), like the condition of your case necks.

[Pond, James Pond]

Thanks for the review Mozella.

My shooting is by no means perfect, but I saw no reason in making it knowingly worse, if my neck tension in a set of cartridges was allover the place. After all, the whole point of these cartridges was to check on the accuracy of my rifle and suppressor combo as well as to see if my Lyman Gen 6 could generate the same charge weight accuracy as doing so with my Lee Safety Scale from which I tend to add/remove single granules to get it dead on....

When I first loaded them there was tangible difference in the ease with which bullets seated. I didn't think that would help matters, rather than being the source of all my shooting woes.

Re the flyers. Knowing that I could not reject them outright, I included measurements with and without, partly because I knew that one some shots I just flinched before the shot went but could say which they were as I could only see the target once I got back down the trench to pick it up. Remember this test was to see how accurate the rifle remained with a can added, so leaving in known mistakes on my part would not help with that.

This load has produced a sub-MOA 10-shot group at 100m, which for me is bordering on divine intervention, so the rifle and load can perform.

Unfortunately, there is no such thing as moderately priced ammo where I live but my handloads have given me some encouraging results.

At 300m, there were several factor at play. A little bit of wind, my inexperience at that range and a scope whose 12x was starting to work against me with the target I had. A more suitable target, next time would help. Of that I am sure!

It is a work in progress, but I think I will try my 170gn and 146gn loads next and see how those fair!

[Dave P]

"Accurately measuring a good 5-shot group (where they're all touching) is difficult but usually possible. Not so with a good 10-shot group because all you have is a big hole with no idea where the bullets actually impacted."

We don't need accuracy to 3 decimal places - one is plenty. And if you measure outside-edge to outside-edge (and subtract one caliber) will give a valid measurement, on any group.

[Unclenick]

James,

After getting the neck size variation, did you still feel a seating force difference?

You are reporting a 0.08 mm outside diameter (OD) range (about 0.003 inches) in neck OD, and that's knocking on the reality check door for me. Assuming uniform neck wall thickness, a case 0.08 mm bigger than another is more than the amount by which the Lee mandrel is under the diameter of the bullet (about 0.002" or 0.051 mm on my copies) so a bullet should just fall into a case mouth 0.08" larger than the smallest one. If that didn't happen, I expect there is a measuring method issue here. It's pretty easy to fool a caliper at these difference levels if you don't have a delicate touch with one. I would try slowly closing the jaws until turning the case neck around between them just barely scuffs the jaws at the widest point. Note the measurement. Then turn the case 90° and move the jaws in until, turning the case back and forth just a couple of degrees you feel the jaws start to scuff the narrowest point. Note this smaller measurement. Use the average of the two as your number for the neck. You may have to repeat this ten times and take an average until you get used to doing it and develop a touch for same.

If it turns out the cases really do come off the collet die with different ID's, then the uniformity of the annealing job seems in doubt. Do you, by any chance. own any bullet casting equipment or know of someone who does? A method that pretty well guarantees uniformity is to heat a melt to the 385-400°C range, dip the case necks in powdered graphite (so prevent soldering) then hold the necks down in the melt and turn it back and forth a little (so you can angle it just enough to avoid the melt overheating your fingers directly) until the case gets too hot to hold, as before with the candle. If you time this you can switch to using the watch so you can wear a glove to set the cases more vertically into the melt, and go by the time you expose the neck.

[Pond, James Pond]

After getting the neck size variation, did you still feel a seating force difference?

No. After collet sizing the lot before re-re-reloading them, the pressure needed for seating bullets was very uniform. Not particularly stiff, but all uniform.

Regrettably, I have no access to any casting gear locally so that method is a no-no.

On the plus side, I have recently started "recalibrating" some Brazilian milspec ammo (spec, not surp as I think it is made to military spec, but is not actually old militiary stock) that is far cheaper to buy: CBC cased. This means that I am quickly amassing a sizeable stock of once fired brass that, whilst not Norma quality, is seemingly OK. Therefore, aside from a few recipe rechecks with new brass, the Norma's that have served me for 4 years now can be retired soon!

[Unclenick]

I think if your seating feel is uniform, the OD's are some kind of measuring glitch and your cases are actually fine. It would seem to eliminate annealing as the source of the problem. Let us know how the shooting goes.

[Pond, James Pond]

I think if your seating feel is uniform, the OD's are some kind of measuring glitch and your cases are actually fine. It would seem to eliminate annealing as the source of the problem. Let us know how the shooting goes.

The seating felt uneven before I pulled them all and re-neck-sized them. After that it felt much better.

Details of the shooting are in post #41 above. Not massively impressive given this was the same load that managed 0.8MOA at 100m some months back, but for other reasons, I am not too disappointed, and at least I have useable results to work with.

[Unclenick]

The change in bullet pull can still have some effect. It's not impossible you'll see a change in the second post-anneal reloading. This is part of why some folks have gone over to the automatic annealing machines and anneal for every load cycle on them. They wind up with a different load developed, but it's consistent.

BTW, have you read through Bugholes from a Bipod? The loading method is interesting. He applies what he calls Froggy's Lube inside each case after brushing as a method of keeping bullet pull constant. It's no longer sold, but I got second hand that it was just graphite powder in alcohol. So that's another approach you could take. It will likely mean your charge weight will go up a little if you are lightening the bullet pull like that. Perhaps as much as half a grain or so to tune it back in.

Training methods in that article are good, too. A number of fellows are taking a worn case and filling the primer pocket with hot melt glue to act as a snap cap that cushions the firing pin impact for extended dry firing practice. Squirt enough in to make a retaining bulb on the far side of the flash hole.

[Pond, James Pond]

I think I have to be realistic about how deep I go with annealing. Yes I want to extend case life, but not to the point that I have to buy €100's of kit!! I will see if I can have a go with a blow torch and see how my cases turn out that way, but full annealing machines are not going to happen.

As for the link.... I've not read beyond the intro for now, but looks interesting because the set-up described is exactly what I have: .308 and a Harris bipod, so there's hope for me yet!!

The training methods will be of interest.
Any reason a snap cap won't do to protect the firing pin instead of the glue and case?