Annealing question

[deadwooddick]

Tumble, anneal and size OR tumble, size then anneal ?

 

[22DASHER]

Tumble, anneal and size

 

[deadwooddick]

Tumble, anneal and size

TNX... question came up w/ a Jones necksizer, leaving "scratches" in the annealed neck... even tho the bushing ID was "immaculate."

"a big thumbs up."

 

[zipollini]

Anneal, tumble and size

 

[dcali]

Sizing (and firing) work hardens the brass, and annealing reverses work hardening. If you size after you anneal, you have just added back in one sizing's worth of hardness. If you anneal after sizing, the brass goes into the rifle dead soft. Up to you to decide which you want and if it matters to you.

 

[Gappmast]

I started to anneal because I was getting inconsistent shoulder bumps. Annealing solved that so I say anneal before sizing.

 

[joshb]

Same here. Anneal first, hand wipe, size then tumble. Maybe I'm wrong but I feel my brass is fairly clean enough, so I don't tumble before sizing. It goes from ammo box to gun and back in the box.

 

[jlow]

Sizing (and firing) work hardens the brass, and annealing reverses work hardening. If you size after you anneal, you have just added back in one sizing's worth of hardness. If you anneal after sizing, the brass goes into the rifle dead soft. Up to you to decide which you want and if it matters to you.

FWIW, you never anneal so that the brass is dead soft, if you do, the brass is useless. The idea of annealing is not to remove all the spring back from your brass but to reduce work hardening and to make the degree of working hardening and spring back on all the brass the same.

Annealing to reduce work harding to a consistent level allows you to size afterwards and get a consistent should bump and neck size. You might put in some harding doing the sizing but the degree of work hardening is consistent which will give you consistent neck tension.

 

[Mozella]

Tumble, anneal and size OR tumble, size then anneal ?

A third option is to size, tumble, and anneal. My single-shot competition brass comes out of the rifle onto a clean towel; i.e. it never gets gritty. So I lube, decap and resize (plus any other required brass prep) when I get back from the range. Then I wet SS clean which also removes the lube. I dry the brass and then anneal, so my bullets get seated in softer brass. It also means that my sizing takes place on once-fired (slightly harder brass) on the next cycle.

This particular sequence might (in theory) result in a slightly different bullet grip and a slightly different sizing result from your routine, but any reasonable method will work fine as long as it is the same and produces consistent results on each firing/loading cycle. If you anneal every time, suit yourself on the sequence.

I have a strong preference for annealing clean brass. I like by brass to be free of both lube and soot; others don't seem to care. One advantage to my routine is that I only clean my brass once and I don't ever have to hand-wipe it or worry about chambering a round contaminated with lube.

Of course, if your brass comes home dirty and gritty, you would use a different procedure. In other words, depending on your situation, there might be a very good reason to use a method different from mine. And vice-versa.

 

[DJSBRS]

I recommend annealing first, then excercise your preference of method for case prep prior to loading.

DJ

DJ's Brass Service

 

[amlevin]

I clean/polish my brass using SS Pins. I anneal after tumbling because the brass is "flash dried" by the annealing. Any "work hardening" from the first sizing is negligible. Sizing AFTER annealing insures that neck ID's are all the same and not altered by the heat/cool process.

 

[dickn52]

11 opinions with a couple agreeing. Three step question. Amazing the different ways of approaching a simple issue. Nothing wrong here, just commenting on the variations of answers.

 

[eric32]

Where do you guys point the flame?

1. At the bottom of the shoulder

2. Bottom of the neck where it meets the shoulder.

 

[/VH]

Where do you guys point the flame?

1. At the bottom of the shoulder

2. Bottom of the neck where it meets the shoulder.

I point my flames at the middle of the shoulder per the Benchsourse instructions.

http://bench-source.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/annealerrevb.pdf

Bottom of page 11.

 

[Webster]

Sizing (and firing) work hardens the brass, and annealing reverses work hardening. If you size after you anneal, you have just added back in one sizing's worth of hardness. If you anneal after sizing, the brass goes into the rifle dead soft. Up to you to decide which you want and if it matters to you.

If your annealing to the point that the neck area is dead soft you have grossly over annealed and ruined the cases. Neck sizing will add a meaningless hardness increase to the neck. The Bison Ballistics chart of temp vs time has no value to compare to rapid annealing of cases. The chart is for one hour at temp. The hardness you get after annealing depends on the starting cold work, temp and time. It's not just time at temp

 

[jlow]

I like annealing before sizing for the reasons already mentioned, but honestly if you anneal after every firing, the difference between what I do and what Mozella does i.e. size and anneal probably is minor. I mean lot of people never anneal and here we are talking about annealing after every firing....

 

[dcali]

If your annealing to the point that the neck area is dead soft you have grossly over annealed and ruined the cases. Neck sizing will add a meaningless hardness increase to the neck. The Bison Ballistics chart of temp vs time has no value to compare to rapid annealing of cases. The chart is for one hour at temp. The hardness you get after annealing depends on the starting cold work, temp and time. It's not just time at temp

By "dead soft" I simply meant "as soft as it's going to get using your process.", but I don't think it really matters.

I left the numbers off that chart because I didn't want people to misinterpret it (people tend to confuse chamber pressure units and strength units because they're both psi). I only wanted to show that there is a sudden, marked drop in hardness followed by a leveling off as you increase temperature. The data is actually from an ASTM spec on cartridge brass, and the strength runs from roughly 85ksi+ for fully hardened brass down to about 20ksi or so for fully annealed brass. But as you can see, the majority of the change happens very quickly at a relatively low temperature. *This is not exactly correct - as it's a 1 hour anneal, not a 6 second anneal, but the general shape should be the same*. Note: for reference, the yield strength of 6061 aluminum is roughly 40ksi.

So I don't really believe that over-annealing is that big a deal. Judging from all the people I see heating the bejeezes out of their necks and still being able to load it, I think there is a good bit of evidence for that. Honestly, I think the whole concept of over-annealing and "you'll ruin your brass" comes from the worry that people might anneal the case head, which is of course, a Very Bad Thing. Those strength numbers above are probably about right for a case head vs an annealed case head - potentially a 4x reduction in strength, and that's *definitely* enough to ruin the brass. But case necks? Do we really care if they're 20ksi or 28ksi (or whatever they are - I'm just guessing here)? I'm all for consistency, but I just don't believe that matters much, and I'm far too lazy to test it. Heck, I don't even anneal unless necks are splitting, which is practically never. I lose primer pockets before I get split necks.

Another way to put it is that if a guy thinks he's catching the brass at some point half way down the main transition (which exists when you look at the time axis as well as the temperature axis), I believe he's fooling himself. And if he *is* catching it half way, it's going to be more inconsistent.

If someone has data suggesting that the above is not the case, I'd love to see it. But extrapolating from the engineering data that I do have, and just by seeing that people anneal their brass (necks!) to levels far beyond what is necessary without incident, I'm pretty comfortable with it.

What I will say is that the data on very fast annealing times is not terribly easy to come by, but this is my best guess at it given what I know.

 

[msinc]

So I don't really believe that over-annealing is that big a deal. Judging from all the people I see heating the bejeezes out of their necks and still being able to load it, I think there is a good bit of evidence for that.

If someone has data suggesting that the above is not the case, I'd love to see it. But extrapolating from the engineering data that I do have, and just by seeing that people anneal their brass (necks!) to levels far beyond what is necessary without incident, I'm pretty comfortable with it.

What I will say is that the data on very fast annealing times is not terribly easy to come by, but this is my best guess at it given what I know.

I agree...I have taken resized brass cases and heated them glowing bright orange from the shoulder to the neck, dropped in water, dried and loaded to have them shoot just fine. I don't routinely do it this way, but I have more than once, just to see what would happen. What happened for me was nothing. I have scorched the cases so bad that the black coloring on the neck and shoulder wouldn't even tumble or buff off and they loaded and shot just fine.

This will make some people mad but, I see two kinds of "annealers" out there...one takes a propane torch and softens his cases, the other either wants to sell a device or just in general impress someone. We all know the type...trim your cases to a ga-zillionth of an inch or throw them away they are ruined. Now we are annealing brass with a $1000.00 device that catches the nano ga-zillionth of a second that gets them partially halfway soft......or toss them they are ruined. Dude!!!! Take a torch, soften the case mouths....and go shoot!!!!

 

[joshb]

Now now, youngster. We "older guys" have a little more time on our hands, so we CAN over obsess about such things! I'll lay down good money and bet that most advancements in the field come from guys that do just that!

 

[jlow]

I agree...I have taken resized brass cases and heated them glowing bright orange from the shoulder to the neck, dropped in water, dried and loaded to have them shoot just fine. I don't routinely do it this way, but I have more than once, just to see what would happen. What happened for me was nothing. I have scorched the cases so bad that the black coloring on the neck and shoulder wouldn't even tumble or buff off and they loaded and shot just fine.

This will make some people mad but, I see two kinds of "annealers" out there...one takes a propane torch and softens his cases, the other either wants to sell a device or just in general impress someone. We all know the type...trim your cases to a ga-zillionth of an inch or throw them away they are ruined. Now we are annealing brass with a $1000.00 device that catches the nano ga-zillionth of a second that gets them partially halfway soft......or toss them they are ruined. Dude!!!! Take a torch, soften the case mouths....and go shoot!!!!

I kind of wish you are right as it would be a hell of a lot less work and cheaper, but…

I don’t think anyone will be mad, everyone has a right to his opinion and you are actually right that there are 2 types of annealer but they are not what you think they are. The two types are

1) those who anneal to reduce their chance of the neck splitting and they are only plinking, so from that perspective, annealing your case unevenly with a drill and socket works just fine. As long as they don’t heat the case so much so that the head of the case goes soft, they are safe and GTO.

2) those who anneal so that they get as perfect as possible shoulder bump and neck tension as possible, these folks use a machine because you can only do this with a machine, and yes, they definitely do not heat the case until it is dead soft. You know you are there when you go through all your brass prep and your headspace measurements vary by less than a thousands, seat a bullet with something like a K&M seating force measuring rig and you find your neck tension does not varied by more than 10 units, and fire your round and you get single digit Sdevs.