Annealing question

Do you fully know the brass' history, #firings, age ? (and does all the brass have the same history?)
If not, annealing could both uniform things, and save you a lot of irritation later on...

(not absolutely necessary, but then.....)



(postscript: what is your normal annealing process/discipline?)

My process is to anneal every three firings to keep the necks from splitting or becoming too work hardened and/or loose neck tension. Do not own a M1A so not sure how brass life is for it otherwise. Still I am a 300 YD or less shooter so that last bit of neck tension difference in my ammo may not be evident at the target. YMMV

Annealing is an 'As required' thing only. It's not required every time. Nor is every three firings doing much of anything. Only when you get one cracked case neck, you pitch that case and anneal the rest. It has nothing whatever to do with the regular reloading process of any brand of case. Doesn't affect neck tension either.

tcoz said:

I'm most concerned about the LC which is processed and will be fired in the M1A. It will have a fairly short lifespan so I don't know whether it'll help to anneal it now or not. I know all of it is annealed by the manufacturer.

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Annealing helps improve case life - you might not gain anything by annealing before the first firing, just depends on the history of the brass this far. Annealing will move the failure point away from split necks - so you'll get loose pockets, body splits, thinning above the web (case stretch), or separations as your failure modes. Not much you can do about any of those, but since cases tend to fail neck first, a long ways ahead of these other failures, annealing does add a lot of life - and saves a lot of money.

A guy really can't "save a batch" by annealing once splits start happening. The best way to prevent splits is to anneal early and often.

Sunray said:

Annealing is an 'As required' thing only. It's not required every time. Nor is every three firings doing much of anything. Only when you get one cracked case neck, you pitch that case and anneal the rest. It has nothing whatever to do with the regular reloading process of any brand of case. Doesn't affect neck tension either.

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Really bad advice here.

Annealing is an opportunity to bring your necks back to a consistent tension from one round to the next, improving consistency in bullet release, and has as much or more to do with precision as it does with case life. A reloader has to determine how often they need to anneal, generally every 1-5 loadings is what is needed, and depends upon what you are asking of the ammunition and what you're asking of the case. For practice ammunition in short action cartridges like 243win, 7-08, 6.5 creed, 22-250, etc, I can usually get away with every 3rd to 4th loading, and if I mind my P's and Q's for pressure, brass will last on the order of 20+ firings on average (if I get splits before 15, I anneal more often, and anything past 20, I'm more than happy, some will go 25-30loadings). Annealing also helps improve neck tension uniformity in a mixed set of brass, so as you replace damaged, split, or lost brass in your batch. For belted magnums, I need to anneal every loading or every other to help keep brass happy. For 223rem practice ammo (not blasting, but high volume), I'll anneal every 5 and can go a couple dozen loadings, less in AR's than bolt guns.

Annealeez

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Good God... another toy I've got to look to exploring.... ! <== (my wife)
Does it come with Tempilaq to baseline the timing/speed?

.

I started annealing when I started noticing seating force variation in .223 in LC brass. It solves that nicely. It also reduces reforming force for .223 to .222 conversion.

I'm now at 20+ loadings of a batch of LC15, annealing every 3ish, and rolling merrily along. At this rate, my stash of LC brass will last until the next millennium.

MEHavey said:

Good God... another toy I've got to look to exploring.... ! <== (my wife)
Does it come with Tempilaq to baseline the timing/speed?

.

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I know what you mean. I broke down and bought the annealeez this year. It's doesn't come with Tempilaq but I do use the 750 deg formula to gage my set up then load it up and let it run.

It's too easy not to anneal after every firing so that's what I do, mainly to keep consistent neck tension.

If I was doing it by hand I'd probably go a few more firings between annealing just to limit the PITA factor

Walkalong said:

Completely incorrect. When the neck cracks you are way to late annealing the batch. Annealing does indeed affect neck tension because it affects brass spring back.

That said, you can get great case life not annealing. I don't anneal .223 and getting 10+ firings out of them with no cracked necks is easy. Sometimes, depending on the load, the primer pocket gets loose at around 8 firings, but often lasts 10+ as well.

Annealing every third firing is almost too late, every time is more than needed, but folks like to do things the same each time and like to anneal every time. Won't hurt a thing annealing every time. With brand new Lapua using a bushing die if I don't anneal after the second firing I just about need to use a slightly tighter bushing. Fired three times I definitely do. We do things with reloads we expect world class accuracy from that we don't for plinking ammo, even informal target shooting.

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For the sake of not making another thread and i apologize to the OP for hijacking this one.

Why don't you anneal .223? I have a lot of LC once fired from the military and i started noticing some of them are getting a little hard to size and seating feels a little funny so i was thinking about annealing them using this method in the link below but im a little worried about those tiny cases getting my fingers too close to the flame.

Annealeez: at first thought, "the stuff that comes in a tube"? Brilliant name for the contraption. I don't know how much they are now, but my wife would probably kill me if I bought one(or either).

ironworkerwill said:

Annealeez: at first thought, "the stuff that comes in a tube"? Brilliant name for the contraption. I don't know how much they are now, but my wife would probably kill me if I bought one(or either).

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You can always build your own Annealing machine.
I built one a few months ago for about $100 bucks.

I have built a number of machines to anneal brass that work well as do many other machines out there. That said a lot of methods I read about likely do more harm than good.

I suggest, no matter what process you wind up doing, have a “control” set of cases that you don’t anneal. At least this way you can see if your extra work is gaining you anything at all or at least know for sure it’s not making things worse.

Varminterror said:

Really bad advice here

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Sunray? Bad advice? Say it ain’t so!

So let me tag onto the OP's original question. If one is fire forming brass for an Ackley cartridge, I assume annealing before doing so could ease forming the case. I envision the following process:

Once-fired .243 case
Deprime and wet tumble
Anneal
Size
Prime and charge
Fire form

Or would you anneal after sizing and before priming and charging? Comments welcome.

I prefer to anneal before sizing. If your doing a lot a brass forming it may be beneficial to do it afterwards too, depending on how much stress you put on the brass. If you do it afterwards the necks are very soft and can be damaged easily if not careful. This way you have 1 work cycle on the brass so it's not completely soft which will give you a little more neck tension to.

I can feel a difference in the neck tension when I'm sizing brass that needs annealing.
All range pick-up gets checked for incipient head separation and annealed before going any further. Don't invest time in bad brass. MY brass gets checked against my loading journal for lot history, annealed every 5th reload, processed and is sized appropriately full or neck only then separated between auto loader or bolt.

Very interesting article in Handloader #308, Jun 2017 pg 38. I've seen a lot of annealing on You tube; some good, many dangerous. Only requires as much heat as necessary and that is lower than you might think. Too much destroys cases. Many just want to showcase homebuilt skills, no problem there, wish I could do that too, but your process can be simple or you can go as complex as you want.

When I looked at the amount of brass on the shelf needing to be processed, I ordered an Annealeez. Hopefully it will get here this week ...

tcoz said:

This is just my opinion but I can’t see why anybody would spend more money for any other unit. I can’t imagine them being any easier or more reliable than Annealeez.

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I concur. Though there could be some quality upgrades, I feel for the price it is a very fine unit. Verily, it is so easy to anneal with it I use it every cycle.