Annealing test

[jugornot]

Their are varying opinions on when to anneal. Not only how many reloads first, but before resizing or before seating. So I devised a test. I took 30 Lapua pieces of brass. I processed them all the same.

1. Deprime
2. Ultrasonic clean
3. Annealed
4. Lubed Lanolin and alcohol spray
5. Body size with Redding body die
6. Neck size
7. Trim
8. Tumble SS media
9. Inside neck chamfer

Then I separated 15 cases out and loaded them. The other 15 I annealed again. Then I loaded them. Exact same loads from then out. I did neck lube with a Q'tip with lanolin all 30 cases. The groups were very similar for both loads.


Series 7 Shots: 15
Min 2757 Max 2797
Avg 2786 S-D 10.6
ES 40

Series Shot Speed
7 1 2772 ft/s
7 2 2787 ft/s
7 3 2780 ft/s
7 4 2791 ft/s
7 5 2781 ft/s
7 6 2757 ft/s
7 7 2782 ft/s
7 8 2791 ft/s
7 9 2797 ft/s
7 10 2792 ft/s
7 11 2791 ft/s
7 12 2795 ft/s
7 13 2795 ft/s
7 14 2788 ft/s
7 15 2795 ft/s
---- ---- ---- ----
Series 8 Shots: 15
Min 2780 Max 2802
Avg 2790 S-D 6.30
ES 22

Series Shot Speed
8 1 2794 ft/s
8 2 2784 ft/s
8 3 2784 ft/s
8 4 2784 ft/s
8 5 2795 ft/s
8 6 2788 ft/s
8 7 2789 ft/s
8 8 2793 ft/s
8 9 2799 ft/s
8 10 2802 ft/s
8 11 2788 ft/s
8 12 2794 ft/s
8 13 2795 ft/s
8 14 2780 ft/s
8 15 2785 ft/s
---- ---- ---- ----

Everyone knows that sizing hardens the brass, what I didn't know is if annealing the brass twice would somehow ruin it. Well it appears from the spent shells are just fine. I'll take some measurements and see if their is any difference. The only change in appearance is they seemed to seal the chamber better. On the once annealed there are smudges part way down the neck that look like smoke. On the twice annealed brass it is a very clean neck. No sign of smudges. I know this is just a single test with only 15 shots each, but it is interesting. When seating the bullets the twice annealed brass was very very smooth seating. For once I got exactly what I expected (hoped) for. I know some will ask why not just do it once before you seat. I like how my brass resizes much better when it is freshly annealed.

Ok I measured the cases and all measure within .0005 of each other. No visible or measurable damage. What do you think?

[Yosemite Steve]

What method did you use to anneal?

[jugornot]

I have an AMP Annealing machine

[scatterbrain]

jugornot, do you measure before and after annealing? On first time anneals I have detected some increase in length. For that reason I anneal and then resize, I also pln clean before annealing. For me that produces the most even color indication, just a slight darker yellow.

[hounddawg]

good info. Now try it with and without lube and then with dry lube on half and wet on the other half

[jugornot]

I intentionally skipped dry lube because of this web page. It says, "Note: It appears that graphite does not coat freshly annealed brass as thoroughly as either unannealed brass, or brass that has been annealed and set aside for a day or two. We did experience some galling where dry (graphite) lube was used, in particular with pack 1." I don't intend to go into a lube test. The only thing I see in that direction is to lube one set and not lube on another. I did try the Imperial Neck lube, on a previous trial, but reasoned the force fit would just scrape it off as it seated.

I did not measure after annealing. I did anneal all 30 brass before resizing. I then annealed 15 pieces before seating. In effect annealing twice. I trimmed all after resizing.

[hounddawg]

when I wet lube I lube the bullet not the neck on the assumption that if I lube the neck some of the lanolin will be forced inside the case and contaminate some of the powder. That being said after testing unlubed, dry lubed and wet lubed I found zero difference upon firing.

Obviously lubeing affects neck tension somewhat and that triggered my first thoughts that as far as velocity consitency is concerned neck tension is a very minor factor. Apparently that is the conclusion Bryan Litz has also arrived at.

When you think about the pressure inside that case when fired does it really matter if the neck tension varies by 10, 30 or even 100 psi pull force ? That bullet is coming out of that case and the neck tension isn't even a speed bump on the road

I still anneal after every firing but that has more to do with the fact that the Anealeeze is paid for and is very convenient to use. If it saves me one hundred per year in brass replacement cost then it is worthwhile. Keep in mind though I have some .308 Lapua Palma cases that were only annealed by the torch and socket method every fifth loading and got over 20 reloads

[Slamfire]

Very interesting. I am not seeing indications of velocity differences between my annealed and non annealed cases either. However, I think I am getting weird out of group points of impact due to over annealed cases, but I can't prove this, because I could be flinching.

These are the first cases I annealed. Annealing positively reduced the number of cracked case necks for these 30-06 cases expanded to 35 Whelen. However, I got most of the case necks orange to red before dropping in the pan of water. Some case necks were over annealed, the bullet would not stay in the case. Since then, I have been annealing in the dark, when ever I see any red/orange color, I drop the case in the pan. Seems to be working better.

[RC20]

I do my annealing after I have sized. Its juts more convenient.

I try to anneal each 3 cycles.

I don't believe that sizing hardens the brass, that is done under the firing end. It does work the brass. I get split necks from firing not sizing.

Slamfire: glow even in the dark is over temperature.

I need to work with some dud brass at the 800 deg point to see how close that is.

One of my cross checks is to anneal in the dark (Annie so I can see it). I don't use it as a definitive, just use it to establish a time that I want to be shy of. Call it a safety check, the crayons are the main line of testing.

[hounddawg]

another tip for lubing but if you want to go the alcohol /lanolin route then put the bullets in a old plastic butter tub, spray em from your case lube bottle then roll em around and let em dry. If you want to get real anal as you load them wipe the base off with a paper towel if you are worried about the powder getting lanolin on it

[jugornot]

Slamfire, there was only 4 fps difference in the averages in both groups. What I expected and got was the better consistency (SD) with the twice annealed brass. As you said way overannealed in your picture. On clean brass on my AMP, sometimes there is very little color change.

RC20 yes sizing does work harden brass. Webpage "So how quickly do case necks work-harden with reloading? The answer is: really quickly. Just one pass through a standard resizing die with an expander ball is usually enough to add 20 HV + to the hardness. Seating the bullet adds another 5 – 10 HV. Interestingly the actual shooting of the cartridge has a relatively minor effect." AMP contends that firing has a minor affect on hardening brass.

Hounddawg I did about the same thing by placing bullets up side down in mt 223 loading trays and spraying them . It was much messier but slightly quicker.

I have several more ideas to try. Qne is to try lubed against non-lubed bullets. Anyway the process continues. I will say among the twice annealed brass there was no problem retaining the bullet in the neck, so I guess the brass was not dead soft.

Uploaded pics of fired brass. Left the twice annealed. The right is the once annealed. Notice the more pronounced soot on necks.

[hounddawg]

are you keeping the once annealed and twice annealed separated so after 4 or five firings with one set not annealed between firings then you can shoot the exact same load prepared the exact same way and see how much variance there is. I will have some virgin Peterson .260's next week I could try that with I suppose. I started doing that when I first became fascinated with annealing last year. I was using some new .308's but never finished it because I rebuilt the .308 as a .223

[RC20]

Juggernaut: Thanks for the reference, interesting reading.

[jugornot]

They are separated at this point, but I will just incorporate the extra annealing into reloading routine. It looks like about a 40% reduction in SD. I think I will switch back to 223 to see if it has the same affect.

[hounddawg]

It looks like about a 40% reduction in SD

statistically that is meaningless. I shot three sighters at 800 the other day and the group was 1/2 inch wide by 2 inches tall. That does not mean that either myself, the load or the gun is a 1/4 MOA shooter. It just means that for three shots I did everything right and the mirage god was smiling down. If I could do that with 20 shots I will have something worth talking about.

Do the test 5 times and it may have some significance if you use the same load data

[jugornot]

Statistical significance, its still early. Practical significance 70% to 80%. I'll take that and run with it.

[hounddawg]

well you guys just cost me another 30 bucks

https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Advanc...70_&dpSrc=srch

grampa's gonna go see what the experts say

[jugornot]

Dawg we are as close to experts as rednecks get. We only lack a few million in equipment and we would be right there too. Do you think he can come up with the crap we think about? We got chronos and calipers, he's got a frickin company behind him.

[hounddawg]

Litz spends the money and time so we rednecks don't have to. He also gets paid to shoot, something I envy greatly

For the annealing he took 36 .223 Lapua cases, divided them into 3 lots and shot each ten times. One lot never annealed, another annealed after the fifth firing, and the third annealed after every firing. There was a minor difference in SD between the three at the end of the test. He also saw no physical deterioration of the brass due to never being annealed. He did stress though that this is only one test and he wants to do further testing and the jury is still out

I will probably continue my annealing every firing. The machine is paid for and convenient to use but if one of my shooting buddies asked my opinion I would tell him to save his money or spend it on something else

But it is great book and has lots of other good info in there also. I several of the commonly asked questions here on the forum addressed. Lets just saythe money I spent on it appears to have been spent better that the money I spent on my Anealeeze

[jugornot]

Already I find his test concerning. Why 223? Why Lapua? Why 10 times? He took the best brass and tested it. Why wouldn't you take something more common and mainstream? The only necks I have had split on 223 is Winchester. Why not 308? Any affects caused by brass would possibly be magnified by the choice. Choose 338 Lapua. Probably one of the more stressful calibers on brass. During all my searches on the internet, 223 is one of the more problematic calibers to get good SDs and ESs on. And as the author says do not read to much into it. Now I have o redo the test on 223.

[hounddawg]

Already I find his test concerning. Why 223? Why Lapua? Why 10 times? He took the best brass and tested it.

As far as the #of tests, that should be enough to see start some pattern. If a trend starts to develop it could be extended. I am starting to use a similar approach in my load testing. Start off with smaller samples then refine to get statistical significance by extended testing and refining of the more promising nodes.

why .223 and why Lapua ? probably because .223 is one of the most popular calibers and people who buy cheap brass don't won't be as likely to put a lot of effort into. He had just obtained the AMP and is planning on doing a lot more testing before his next book comes out. He did some Win .308's but invalidated the test because he used the wrong settings on the AMP for that brass. As you know the AMP will use different programs for variances in lot #s of for the same brand and cartridge. That was one of the reasons I really thought I wanted an AMP, if annealing does work the AMP is the machine to test it on. Don't despair on the .243. With most of the other concepts he covers and tests in his books .243's are a common test platform

I will not be spending time and resources testing annealed vs non annealed from here on out. The money I save from powder and bullets can buy me Litz's next book and I will read about his testing.

On bullet convergence in this latest book he performed over 60 tests using various calibers and bullets from .223 to .50 cal. My head is still spinning from reading that chapter and it will require a couple of re reads to grasp. That being said I am sure he will be at least that thorough on annealing tests.

[T. O'Heir]

"...varying opinions on when to anneal..." It's not an opinion based thing. You only need to anneal when one case neck cracks. You pitch that case and anneal the rest.
It has nothing whatever to do with sizing or seating. Nor is it something that needs doing every time. Neither is trimming. Nor does annealing have anything at all to do with accuracy.
You cannot anneal the brass twice either. Once it's annealed, it's annealed. Over heating the alloy will soften it excessively.
And you don't need to body size and neck size.

[hounddawg]

You need to make a thread T'OHeir and show us all the testing you have done to arrive at your conclusions. I am sure there are many on here who would love to see procedure you used. I am sure it was quite scientific and detailed not some divine knowledge pulled from the nether regions of your anatomy

[hdwhit]

RC20 wrote:
I don't believe that sizing hardens the brass, that is done under the firing end. It does work the brass. I get split necks from firing not sizing.

Any cold working of brass hardens it. The extent of the hardening may vary based on the conditions under which the cold working is done, but it is not accurate to conclude that some cold working does not harden brass while other cold working does.

[jugornot]

T. O'Heir said
"...varying opinions on when to anneal..." It's not an opinion based thing. You only need to anneal when one case neck cracks. You pitch that case and anneal the rest.

And thank you for your opinion. But why would you wait until you lost one case? Why not anneal before you lost any? If this is as you state a fact and not an opinion, what is your source of this fact? As far as my dies go the body die does not touch the neck. The body die is used in conjunction with the neck bushing die. So in my case the body die does not size the neck and the neck die does not size the body, making both dies necessary to fully resize the brass. I could forgo the body sizing until I had difficulty chambering the round, but then I would be firing a round that varied dimensions. And I do not want that. Once again thanks for your opinion, but our opinions differ dramatically on almost every aspect of reloading.