Different kind of annealing question

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PWC

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In Handloader #308, Jun 2017, John Barsness talks about annealing rifle bress. His friend Fred Barker published an article in Precision Shooting where he used a candle flame to anneal brass. A candle's flame is far hotter than needed to anneal (1400 degrees per the I'net). Using fingers midway on a 30-06 case and turniong the case in the flame until it is too hot to hold, then drop on a wet towel to cool, and he can do about 20 cases in 5 min. And he says this is the method he now uses on his big game rounds. The article is worth a read.

Now, if you are looking for that blue annealing mark, you won't get it. Mfgrs must have a higher thruput than 20 every 5 min., so they use higher heat on faster moving cases to anneal; higher heat results in the blue color.

I don't shoot thousands of rounds a year, but some of my brass is in need of annealing, I think, so I think I will try 10 or 20 this way and see how their life holds up. I think I will compare to the socket/drill/tourch method. I've never done that either so I start off at week one, day one with both.....

Hi volume reloaders, that anneal, probably have their own annealing process now, but for a wildcat or low volume reloaders, this may prove to be sufficient.

I found John Barsness article interesting and I've never seen it discussed before so I don't know if the reloading community has rejected it out of hand, or if they have spent their $$ on the fancy machines.
 
I use the socket, drill, and torch method. It has proved to be sufficient for my shooting needs.
The candle flame sounds interesting.
 
Do yourself a favor and get the two necessary ranges of Tempilaq to confirm you are not wasting your time or ruining your brass.

Keep us posted.
 
candle flame to anneal brass.



Made a sponge donut about 3/8" thick & 1 3/4" round. Wet sponge with water. Keep case neck/shoulder low in the flame.

Heat case while rotating 180 . When you hear water boiling, anneal is done.

243 win brass, about 30 seconds or till water sizzles. Any less time and brass in just stress relieved. Temperature + Time = Annealed.

I have played with the candle annealing . The test batch didnt come apart. But if using a bushing die, i dont need to anneal.
20200124_194833.jpg
 
Dredd & MEHevy- If you read the article, you will see Barsness used templaq to arrive at his discussion point.
 
You are correct. I did not read the article.
I didn't see a link to it and I didn't put out the effort to track it down.

I'm glad you will be using the Tempilaq.

I hope you have great results.
 
The only way I have ever annealed was with a pencil torch and blow the flame straight down on to the brass until the mouth starts to glow. Did this with 223, 30-30 and 8x57.
 
Wolfe Publishing...Rifle, Handloading, Hunter, Load Data and others, now has the publications on line. Used to be only in .pdf downloads.....no more. After signing in you can copy and paste articles to save But not the entire magazine.
 
I've tried several methods: gas torch, induction heating, the candle method, my wife's gas range, and molten sodium+potassium nitrate. One of the keys is to apply plenty of heat quickly, so the heat doesn't have time to travel to the case head and soften it.

The candle method is a little touchy. There isn't much time between the case head being OK and too hot to handle. I suppose that it works, but haven't thoroughly tested it because it produces too many burned fingers.

Induction is slick, but the little heater I bought required more power supply than I have available.

For a long time, I used my wife's gas range. I'd remove the grill, and hold the case with the mouth in the flame, gripping it with a pair of pliers at the rim. In the old days, metallurgists watched for the bluish oxide to form, and that seems to work satisfactorily. I restored a batch of 7.62x54R brass that came poorly annealed, and consequently formed cute little pleats on the shoulder. Annealing this way fixed it. It also made it easy to form 8x57 brass from 30-06 in one step. I haven't tried the socket method, but I think it has merit.

What I use now is the molten potassium+sodium nitrate method. I run the bath at about 820F. The heat capacity of the bath is so high that the temperature at the mouth and shoulder comes up very quickly, before much heat travels to the head. You often get little splashes of solid nitrates, sticking to the brass just above the end of the annealed region. Since the bath melts at 525F, we know that portion of the brass was no hotter than that.

Holding the case head below 450F is unnecessarily conservative. It takes an hour at 550F to just barely begin to anneal brass. The degree of annealing goes up with both time and temperature, with temperature being the stronger variable. The way I do it, a 3 second dip does the job and the case heads remain hardened.
 
I use the socket/torch method and a laser temp gauge, once you test a couple and get the timing the rest are quick.
 
I built a machine to do it, for the most consistent results.

In any case (no pun intended) you don’t need or want any “glow” of any color. If you are using propane you don’t even want the flame to change from blue to orange, which it does before the case becomes hot enough to glow.

This is a good read.
https://www.6mmbr.com/annealing.html

The flame remains blue throughout the cycle, the annealing is even all the way around the case and the base can be held with a bare hand.



It’s also has collated case feed, so you set it up, dump in brass get back to what you were doing.

 
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