Strange color from annealing.......

And then there is this: https://bisonballistics.com/articles/the-science-of-cartridge-brass-annealing.

Ah bison ballistics. Worshippers of the false chart. That annealing curve they show, is for a 4 hour temperature hold.
At least they got the part about quenching right.
I have overwhelming evidence that heating the bass up to 850F for less than several minutes does almost nothing.
What do the people in the 750 to 900F camp have?
Everyone else is doing it?

That bison ballistics thing is dated to like 2013 but the myth of the 800f case annealing goes back to at least the late 1990s when I started reloading.
I didn't know anything about neck tension and annealing when I started reloading. But I noticed some bullets seated easier than others. I heard about the annealing myth "only heat the brass till it discolored". I could still feel massive differences in neck tension when seating. As all my old and new brass was mixed together in one pile.
Then my annealed brass started to get neck splits. Figured my annealing was ineffective.
About that time I started high school. Yeah I started reloading because I couldn't buy ammo and learned mostly from books.
I really leaned about annealing in a short metals shop segment. Making pressed copper and brass sculptures and quickly learned a lot about very hands on brass annealing. Heating it up to where it just discolored didn't do anything. Heating it to a nice glow made it workable and didn't Crack when worked. Wasn't too hard to figure out how that would apply to cartridge brass...

Did we read the same article? I found no mention of time except he used a 1 hour chart because that was all he had. All I can say is I have used his method for years and it has worked for me. It cured my neck splits.. Now all I have to watch for is loose primer pockets.

When 750 Tempilaq inside the neck disappears plus a count of three.....
(My story... and I'm sticking to it.)



.

doubleh said:

Did we read the same article? I found no mention of time except he used a 1 hour chart because that was all he had. All I can say is I have used his method for years and it has worked for me. It cured my neck splits.. Now all I have to watch for is loose primer pockets.

Click to expand...

Either way why use an hour chart for an annealing cycle that's only going to last seconds?
Plus why do you want to be annealing the brass and landing some where on the hardness slope?
Wouldn't it make more sense to be on the flatter part of the curve?
Lets assume the chart is relevant. What makes you think you can hit plus or minus 50f of the target temp even using Tempilaq?
The way I do it I can be off nearly 100f either way and have a slight difference in hardness.

There's an annealing equation where you can in theory calculate taking brass from one hardness down to another by inputting alloy, temperature and time.
Problem is its a log scale.
Brass can be annealed as low as around 400f, only problem is takes a year or years.
Annealing brass in the 500 to 600f range takes more like days.
When working in the 700 to 900f range the time scale is hours to at least dozens of minutes.
Once you get above the 1,100 to 1,220 mark it starts to take seconds.
Annealing times to dead soft dramatically changes as you get above 1,000f. The change from an annealing cycles taking minutes to seconds is very sudden.

Using the hour long temperature for a few seconds barely allows annealing process to start. It softens the brass alittle. Maybe just enough to keep it from cracking.
The annealing process is barely starting to happen at 750.
Say you have hundreds of cases with different numbers of firings ranging hardnesses of 140 to 110. You heat them qith perfect consistency to 750 for 10 seconds. The hardness drops something like 5 points so the hardness is 135 to 105.
Add in the real world factors where they don't all heat and cool at the same rate or hit the same temperature you ending hardness range is going to be about 140ish to around 100 or so.
For consistency you would be better off removing the variable of annealing and separate the brass by number of firings.

The best explanation I can find of why 750f is wrong explained in less than 60 seconds.
https://youtube.com/shorts/4Oz-ibwSJqA?feature=share
As I'm finding the 750 to 900f camp have really short attention spans.

That's how I do it.

Edit: IMO it looks more orange in real life than what's pictured. Either it doesn't show up on camera or I clicked it a second too soon or too late.
Next time I'm annealing I'll play with the lighting, snap a bunch of pics and pick one that looks most like real life.

All of this reminds me of the old saw that It's scientifically impossible for the bumblebee to fly.
But the bumblebee, being unaware of these scientific facts ...flies anyway.

MEHavey said:

For the folks here that advocate dark rooms and eyeball'd color....
I do really suggest looking up low-numbered Springfields.

.

Click to expand...

A completely separate and unrelated issue to annealing a cartridge case. An under-annealed case may fail, but it will not be catastrophic. It is difficult to over-anneal it, unless you are willfully ignorant. You will know when it is over-annealed as you will have little to no neck tension, and may even be crushing shoulders. If the case is capable of holding a bullet when you try to pull it out with your fingers, it isn't over-annealed to the point of danger, even if the neck was fully glowing when it came out of the flame.

chevrofreak said:

A completely separate and unrelated issue

Click to expand...

End effect (catastrophic failure vs ruined article) is not the issue.
I'm afraid it is an an exact analogy, however, in using ambient lighting
and the human eyeball to subjectively judge pyrometric conditions.

chevrofreak said:

A completely separate and unrelated issue to annealing a cartridge case. An under-annealed case may fail, but it will not be catastrophic. It is difficult to over-anneal it, unless you are willfully ignorant. You will know when it is over-annealed as you will have little to no neck tension, and may even be crushing shoulders. If the case is capable of holding a bullet when you try to pull it out with your fingers, it isn't over-annealed to the point of danger, even if the neck was fully glowing when it came out of the flame.

Click to expand...

I anneal them like shown in the picture orange hot, dead soft, run them through the FL sizer die with expander ball and there's plenty of neck tension.
The lack of neck tension problem is imagery for any case that isn't an a thin walled case that is also tube magazine loaded like popular 30-30 rifles.
If I wanted to anneal 30-30 I would "over anneal it" and run it 2 cycles on the FL sizer with expender ball to work enough neck tension into the brass to make it usable in a tube mag.

I turn 30-60 brass into 8mm Mauser brass which is like a 4mm shoulder bump and I over anneal the 30-06 brass just like in the picture, never crushed a shoulder.
Crushed shoulder is too much lube. Almost all the crushed shoulders I get are 30-30 and I don't anneal my 30-30 brass.

I have been annealing brass like this since about 1999 to 2000 and never had a case "catastrophically fail". The only cases I have ever heard "failing catastrophically" from "over annealing" way back when is in the early 2000s to late 1990s. Some genuine genius put his win mag brass in a kitchen oven set on on the highest setting it would go to for hours. Then loaded them up and thr first and the shot blew the rifle apart.
The case head was annealed to near dead soft.
Work hardened brass in the case head has a tensile strength some where around 70,000 to 80,000psi. Dead soft brass has a tensile strength around 45,000psi. See the problem?

If almost no annealing occurs at 750f which I have very throughly proven. Half the case body has no visible discoloration, discoloration meaning it was never heated above 400f. How is the case head softened?

MEHavey said:

End effect (catastrophic failure vs ruined article) is not the issue.
I'm afraid it is an an exact analogy, however, in using ambient lighting
and the human eyeball to subjectively judge pyrometric conditions.

Click to expand...

You say it's not possible but black smith's who discovered how to make steel have been doing exactly that for at least a thousand years....

...never had a case "catastrophically fail".

Click to expand...

I don't be believe anyone has proffered catastrophic failure if/when only the shoulder neck is involved.
Only that a 750-ish objective control point inside the neck as a departure point to final start count down
(3-count in my case) is both reasonable, predictable, and produces neck tension I would trust in a gas gun.
... and no split necks.

"Good Enough" is the most difficult of all the scientific arts to grasp
...an oxymoronic quality to be sure, but then so is "social science"


.

black smith's...

Click to expand...

If only wishes were horses...

I'll agree that 3 secomds at 750f is predictable because at that time and temperature almost nothing is happening.

MEHavey said:

If only wishes were horses...

Click to expand...

So you are saying black smith's can't heat treat steel? Well what they do must just be magic then. Which is an explanation I find acceptable.

N555 said:

Crushed shoulder is too much lube. Almost all the crushed shoulders I get are 30-30 and I don't anneal my 30-30 brass.

Click to expand...

I should have said buckled as opposed to crushed. Seating a flat based bullet on an over-annealed case that has not been expanded with a mandrel will almost always result in the shoulder buckling rather than the bullet entering the neck. Even a boattail will do this if the case is truly over-annealed.

chevrofreak said:

I should have said buckled as opposed to crushed. Seating a flat based bullet on an over-annealed case that has not been expanded with a mandrel will almost always result in the shoulder buckling rather than the bullet entering the neck. Even a boattail will do this if the case is truly over-annealed.

Click to expand...

Obviously. That's why I anneal then FL size and expand.
I anneal the brass dead soft so it's all the same then cold work some hardness back into it.
That's the only way we will ever get improved consistent neck tension.
Heating to 750f for a few seconds reduces hardness a little, but also keeps all the variations in neck tension and probably increases whatever the variation in neck tension you started with.

To fully give the Devil his possible due....

Does brass react differently when heated by "clean" induction to cherry red...
vs heated by direct flame impingement to the same temp/color effect ?

MEHavey said:

To fully give the Devil his possible due....

Does brass react differently when heated by "clean" induction to cherry red...
vs heated by direct flame impingement to the same temp/color effect ?

Click to expand...

Absolutely.
Torch heat is slower than induction. Induction annealer takes about 6 to 8 seconds, torch takes about 15 seconds.
Torch target is about 1,250f, induction heater is about 1,450f.
The induction annealer oxidation cleans off real easy compared to torch oxidation.
Torch flame is a dynamic oxidative environment, will make a heavier oxidation layer every time on brass.
I have a annealeez and my experimental induction annealer rig and I'm kinda favoring the induction rig.

In a big hurry? Fire up your A/O rig, 6000 degrees, and git 'er done. The flame will be oxidizing at that temperature but it would be fast. Dial it back to 5000 where it's neutral and take a little more time.

Just kidding but I have soft soldered copper pipe with A/O when it was all that I had available. It IS quick.

Here's a video done by Erik Cortina a couple of years ago where he purposely over annealed cases and tested them for shoulder bump and seating pressure. The last 5 minutes of the video is the seating pressure. Interesting test in showing if you over anneal a little bit, it may not ruin the brass.

FLIGHT762 said:

Here's a video done by Erik Cortina a couple of years ago where he purposely over annealed cases and tested them for shoulder bump and seating pressure. The last 5 minutes of the video is the seating pressure. Interesting test in showing if you over anneal a little bit, it may not ruin the brass.

Click to expand...

The only way to over anneal the brass is if the case head is heated to the point where it's softened or the neck gets melted.
Erik Cortina pretty much had to melt a case neck to get a primer to cook off using torches on a case neck and shoulder.
One of my reloading buddies some how determined primers cook off at 350F.
Brass heated to 400f takes months to start annealing and a year or years to fully soften.
So no chance any level of annealing focusing on the shoulder and neck will soften the case head.
My induction annealing target temperature is around 1,450f or 1,250 with a torch because the torch is a lot slower. Seems a lot of people think that completely ruins brass.

My point on the video is a lot of reloaders get terrified over possibly over annealing the case neck and shoulder if the neck shows the start of an orange glow will result in destroying the brass. Cortina went really far and didn't result in necks that showed no seating pressure at all.

N555 said:

Worshippers of the false chart.

Click to expand...

It should be noted that this kind of childish behavior and condescending aggression is how everyone on my ignore list got there.

At a certain point it’s just insecure people trying to be bullies.