Annealing question. Too far?

[ImBIllT]

I annealed a fair bit of .308 brass the other day using a drill and socket. I've done it in a dark room a few times before with good results, but this time I did it with the tv on. I guess with the extra light I heated then quite a bit longer. The stain from the annealing goes past the shoulder part way down the case. The question is, how far is too far? It obviously isn't anywhere near the case head. Just wondering what some more experienced folks might have to say.

 

[jepp2]

Do yourself a favor and buy some Tempilaq 750 degree and paint the inside of the neck. When you get it hot enough to change the Tempilaq color, it is at 750. If you heated it until you could start to see the dull red glow - you got it too hot. If you did this with extra light, you got it really too hot. At 750 it doesn't glow. How far down is too far? Depends on how fast you heated it. I will include a pic of some LC brass with the factory anneal. It is pretty far down the shoulder in my opinion. I don't get a color change that far down when I anneal.

 

[fguffey]

The question is, how far is too far? It obviously isn't anywhere near the case head. Just wondering what some more experienced folks might have to say.

There are rules and factors, I do not know of a reloaders that has a list to follow when annealing with the one exception.. How far down to anneal? I have formed cases, when forming cases I had to anneal the case down to the case body/shoulder juncture of the new shoulder.

"Anywhere near the case head", there is a rule that covers that, many years ago I decided I would start annealing so I studied and then made tools for annealing, my tools took care of, "anywhere near the case head".

F. Guffey

 

[ImBIllT]

I might need to clarify the question. Is the brass that I already annealed a safety issue if the discoloration does not extend below halfway down the body? Almost all are about 1/4" below the shoulder. 2-5 of them have discoloration almost half-way down the body. They were in a socket, and the socket was in my hand keeping the socket centered on the bit so that the neck didn't wobble in and out of the flame. The point here is that the socket didn't get too hot to hold. I obviously annealed them quite a ways beyond ideal. The actual questions are: Is there a safety issue with annealing the body of the case, and if not, if the discoloration does not extend below the half-way point, is it possible that the case head has become too soft?

 

[Dos XX]

I used to powder charge my cases while watching Law & Order. I had to give that up.

 

[MrBottleneck]

Your asking us to determine if there is a safety question but, we do not know what temps you achieved. It does look like the case was over annealed. As others have stated you really need some Tempilaq.
As mentioned put some 750* inside the case mouth as it changes from greenish to clear and no longer green you have reached 750*. You can also get some 350* and put it on a donor case on the outside near the base of the case to make sure your not carrying excessive heat at the lower extremities of the case.
I mention donor cases as that is exactly how you practice getting your time perfect with culled/junk cases.
Below is four scrap cases I ran through my annealer for setting the time.
The case on the left was annealed perfectly without carrying to much heat downward. The others are not terribly bad just a touch longer annealed.
Not sure if I helped any but, there you go.

 

[Tesoro]

The benchmark developer knows alot about annealing obviously. He schooled me on how to do it correctly his way when I bought his machine. FYI he sells half his machines to industry people not related to shooting. So I go by his advice and seems to work well so far.

First of all tempilaq dosent work around flames as we have all found out who have tried. it wasnt designed for flames. But if you want to try painting it inside your neck then use the 650 deg one. By the time the 750 turns its usually too late and the neck gets too hot as it is delicate. Also the temilaq needs to be watery so it is best to use a thinner to water it down if you get a bottle that is gooey.

However he recommends using the 450 deg version. You paint it vertically from the case head up to midway. When you are setting up your annealing timing you can easily see how far down the heat gets to 450deg. When I set mine up the melt was at half way between the base and the shoulder so this means the bottom half of the case didnt get hot enough to do any damage.

On larger cases 223 size and up the pencil tip should be aimed horizontally to the middle of the shoulder to even the spread of heat up to the neck. On smaller cases like a fireball the flame should be aimed about 20 deg downwards into the shoulder.

I anneal in the dark to set up my timing so that the case leaves the flames when I see a dark red glow just begin on the inside of the neck. Thats what he recommended. This also coincides with the orange flame appearance give or take half a sec or so. The bluish tint only lightly appears just below the shoulder after cooling on my shiny tumbled cases. Apparently the pretty tinting will increase downwards with time due to corrosion. Thats why a polished case that is properly annealed wont look like the lc cases in the pic just posted. I have never waited long enough to watch it 'grow' with time. I might take one and set it out side and look at it in a few months.

Also i cant see the first red glow with normal lighting so I anneal at night and keep a little flash light laying on the table so I can see what is going on outside of the flame.

The one thing I did learn that he didnt tell me was to not put a donor case in the machine with a live primer! That will definitely get your attention!

 

[spclark]

Is the brass that I already annealed a safety issue if the discoloration does not extend below halfway down the body?

I doubt it but if you think you need to, toss 'em into the recycle bin.

Almost all are about 1/4" below the shoulder.

I routinely anneal my Lapua Palma brass so that the surface discoloration is to that point on the case body.
Never had a problem.
Same with 6XC brass made from their Palma brass or now their 6.5 Creedmoor.

2-5 of them have discoloration almost half-way down the body.

THOSE I would toss, just to be on the right side of safe.

Is there a safety issue with annealing the body of the case...

YES if taken to extremes!

...is it possible that the case head has become too soft?

I highly doubt it but as I don't want to be responsible for your personal safety or that of those around you, you need to decide for yourself whether what risk there might be is worth a few $$ worth of brass cases.

 

[Tesoro]

I used to powder charge my cases while watching Law & Order. I had to give that up.

I final neck sized 250 223 cases down to .226 the other night while watching a movie and didnt realize I had bumped the adjuster down so the bushing was hitting the shoulder a tad. Now i have 250 donor cases for my annealer.

 

[jepp2]

I find this video to be very helpful in judging when brass is over annealed IF you aren't using Tempilaq.

 

[Tesoro]

I discussed that video with mr benchmark and the flame comes from an alloy in the brass. Depending on the % content it can flame out sooner or later. But the glow of the copper is pretty constant however i found it to be close to the flame out so i guess either way works fine.
Also some like to anneal less or more than others to control neck tension. So there really isnt anything set in stone. From 450 up the brass starts to soften so there isnt a text book temp.

As an experiment I just neck sized 50 223 cases after i annealed them to the barely red glow point. Wont do that again. Size first! The 3x bushing neckdowns put my softer brass out of wack big time. Runout was like up to 5 tho as it must have put the shoulders out of alignment too.

 

[ImBIllT]

Sounds like I'm gonna pitch the few that have marks half way down and go easier next time.

 

[spclark]

I discussed that video with mr benchmark and the flame comes from an alloy in the brass.

Erm... kinda.

Remember brass is an alloy.

Can vary in its composition but for our purposes it's mostly copper (Cu) and zinc (Zn).

The risk in over-annealing (stress-relieving might be a better term; we don't want a full anneal which would be too soft) is that a portion of the zinc present can literally burn off, leaving behind the copper which by itself is too soft.

I think what can be observed in that video when the flame begins to turn orange/yellow is the zinc beginning to burn out or oxidize.

Copper melts at 1,984°F, zinc at 788°F. Both will oxidize when heated in air. If you're heating cases to the point a red glow can be seen, temps are at or above the point where zinc will oxidize.

 

[Martin52]

..... The question is, how far is too far? It obviously isn't anywhere near the case head. Just wondering what some more experienced folks might have to say.

How many seconds were the cases in the flame ?

 

[6MMsteve]

Do yourself a favor and buy some Tempilaq 750 degree and paint the inside of the neck. When you get it hot enough to change the Tempilaq color, it is at 750. If you heated it until you could start to see the dull red glow - you got it too hot. If you did this with extra light, you got it really too hot. At 750 it doesn't glow. How far down is too far? Depends on how fast you heated it. I will include a pic of some LC brass with the factory anneal. It is pretty far down the shoulder in my opinion. I don't get a color change that far down when I anneal.

View attachment 1007187

there fine, mine are annealed like that 308... 27 firings still going

 

[BoydAllen]

Some time back we used three different temperatures (300, 400 & 500 degree) of Tempilaq to do some investigation of what was happening to our setup case for a new two torch rotary case annealer. We put thin stripes of each from the point of the shoulder down to the head. The flames were pointed above that, at the middle of the neck. What we learned was that when the 500 degree stuff was burned down to about the same level as the annealing color on Lapua brass, we had some neck spring left and the shoulder bump became a lot more uniform. For the socket and drill guys I have some well tested advice, standardize your flame adjustment and its position relative to the case and buy a cheap battery powered metronome, set it to 60 beats per minute and use that as an audible timer. A friend did this at my suggestion and it worked out very well for him. Another way to do the same thing is to download a fee program off of the internet that will do the same thing. I don't have a smart phone, but it wouldn't surprise me if there were several for them.

 

[ImBIllT]

I didn't count. I've always gone for the first color change, but after I turned the lights on it was obvious that having the tv on in the room put off enough light that the first visible color change was hotter than usual. If I had to guess I would say close to 5-6 seconds. I doubt any where got more than 10 seconds. With a single for propane flame I would assume you need to go a little longer than with most setups.

 

[spclark]

I used a single propane torch for years after first discovering what annealing could do for uniformity of brass processing. Burned a couple starting out too, thinking they needed to be red hot to gain any benefit.

Wrong idea.

With the flame adjusted so the inner, bluer flame cone is 5/8" - 3/4" long, then hold cases about 3/16" - 1/4" off that cone's very tip, the 5-6 seconds you describe is pretty close to the countdown I used for timing.

I tried a metronome early on but with an innate skill I developed doing commercial photo printing years ago I quickly found I could count consistently enough to do an acceptable job.

Last year I bought one of Mike's Reloading Bench annealers. Saves me hours and the sore back from holding a heavy Milwaukee drill I'd used to spin cases in front of that torch. The interval they're held in its flame is almost exactly the same as when I did it by hand. Case color change on 308 brass extends about 3/8" down from case shoulders with that inner cone pointing at the shoulder/body junction. It's possible to do less with ease but I'd think doing more just isn't necessary.

 

[nmkid]

Last year I bought one of Mike's Reloading Bench annealers. Saves me hours and the sore back from holding a heavy Milwaukee drill I'd used to spin cases in front of that torch

Same here. Granted it is a chunk of "shooting" money but, for me...It has been money well spent!

 

[Joe R]

I annealed a fair bit of .308 brass the other day using a drill and socket. I've done it in a dark room a few times before with good results, but this time I did it with the tv on. I guess with the extra light I heated then quite a bit longer. The stain from the annealing goes past the shoulder part way down the case. The question is, how far is too far? It obviously isn't anywhere near the case head. Just wondering what some more experienced folks might have to say.

I've done the same thing when I first started using a machine and didn't set up right. As long as your case head is fine, don't worry about it, just shoot the rounds as you would normally. I did and that was several rotations ago.

Joe