Annealing till glow or 750??

[Richard Coody]

Bit confused ? Should I go 750 or red?

well think about it this way. you are timing how long it takes to melt the templaq right? how long does that take? from room temp to 750 to 800 degrees? 6 or 8 seconds. how much longer do you think it will take to get to 1000 degrees? 1 or 2 seconds? you could always time it to glow and see. i expect with most annealing machines by the time the templaq melts and the case drops it got to 1000.

personally i think stress relief at 800 works great for me if that is what i have been doing. i have over annealed. you can certainly tell when seating. almost no seating effort.

i guess like most things in reloading it what works for you.

 

[BCBRAD]

I am still using a drill motor and a single flame propane torch.

Spinning the cartridge case reasonably slow I hold the the flame at a ~45 degree angle to the neck, the body of the torch is in close proximity to touching the case.

I do this for 8 seconds, 223 Rem and such 6 seconds.

You do not want to see sparklers off the case mouth during this process.

The brass sizes accurately, aids in lowering ES, primer pockets are the first thing that indicates the case is done.

There are many ways to skin a cat, this is one.

 

[ej3rd]

I’ve used the salt bath method for thousands of rounds now. It’s very accurate and controllable as far as temperatures go. No more guessing. With a digital thermometer and thermocouple I can keep the temperature at the recommended 1000 degrees C spot on for as long as needed. Neck tensions are very consistent, brass lasts a long time (primer pockets go first) and the whole setup is about $160.00.

 

[Richard Coody]

I’ve used the salt bath method for thousands of rounds now. It’s very accurate and controllable as far as temperatures go. No more guessing. With a digital thermometer and thermocouple I can keep the temperature at the recommended 1000 degrees C spot on for as long as needed. Neck tensions are very consistent, brass lasts a long time (primer pockets go first) and the whole setup is about $160.00.

i am old and clumsy. i don't even like hot grease. casting lead bullets scares me now. can't even imagine what 1000 degree melted salt could do.

 

[Webster]

Bit confused ? Should I go 750 or red?

750F. This temp will work and keep you out of trouble. A little higher temp would be OK but it's harder to be consistent.

 

[SGK]

If your removing heat when the Tempilaq melts at 750F how could it glow red. Red is about 1050F?

Using an induction annealer in a darkened room potentially provides a little clarity on this. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the thinnest part of the brass in question 'gets to glow' the fastest. With my GinaErick induction annealer implementation, I can observe the very rim of the mouth of the case begin to glow and then this redness shoots down the case neck just prior to the case dropping out of the work coil. I think the real value of Tempilaq - and obviously this is complicated in the case where the heat source is a flame - is in telling you when the region, say, one shoulder width below the shoulder/body junction hits circa 750F. If that happens you can be well assured everything higher up has, briefly, hit a much higher temperature (while knowing you haven't overheated the case wall too much).

 

[DRNewcomb]

Bit confused ? Should I go 750 or red?

I don't think you ever want to go to "red". I only anneal in the dark and look for the first hint of a change of color. This is more than enough to melt my 700ºF Tempilaq.

 

[muleman69]

I don't think you ever want to go to "red". I only anneal in the dark and look for the first hint of a change of color. This is more than enough to melt my 700ºF Tempilaq.

If there is tempilaq left on shoulder body area does it hurt anything? Can I still size and load it or do I need to scrub it off?

 

[hambone1971]

Scrub it off, scrub it out, before resizing/loading.

 

[hambone1971]

Bit confused ? Should I go 750 or red?

Starline Brass video shows how they make it and anneal it. Pay attention between time 1:30 and 1:45 on video for temp info. Pretty good video..HB

 

[Fliers]

Has anybody tried an ir temp gun? This one is good to over 1900F for $75.
Temperature Gun by ennoLogic - Accurate High Temperature Dual Laser Infrared Thermometer -58°F to 1922°F - Digital Surface IR Thermometer eT1050D

 

[hambone1971]

Has anybody tried an ir temp gun? This one is good to over 1900F for $75.
Temperature Gun by ennoLogic - Accurate High Temperature Dual Laser Infrared Thermometer -58°F to 1922°F - Digital Surface IR Thermometer eT1050D

I've used one a few times to test the temp of my brass. The problem is aiming it and getting it right. The red dot isn't helpful at close range you have to move the gun around and find the real aim point of your gun for accurate measurement. I think it does work ok though once you have that worked out. Even a fixture to hold the gun just right on the brass neck would help a lot. HB

 

[kadrick]

When I Anneal brass (Lapua) and it does not reach a "slight faint glow" in the neck, I am forced to reset the sizing die to achieve the .002 shoulder bump I needed. What my case bumping & neck sizing was telling me that my brass is not annealed enough to account for the "Spring Back Effect". Initially I started using the Tempilaq method but found adding 1 - 2 seconds more Annealing time got the faint glow that works !

 

[Dave M.]

Carbon in the necks?

I don’t think so Dusty. I’ve annealed 10’s of thousands of pieces of brass of all makes and cartridge size and one thing that I’ve consistently found is that the time to anneal Lapua brass to a dull red in a dark room is longer than ADG, Peterson, Hornady, WW, Norma. For instance, my 6 dasher brass (FF Lapua 6 BR brass with 12.5 thousandths necks) anneals to a dull red in 6.7 seconds. My girlfriend’s Peterson 6 Dasher brass with 12.5 thousandths necks, anneals to a dull red in 4.1 seconds. Brass weight is nearly identical. According to both manufacturers, they are using standard “cartridge brass” alloy.
Dave

 

[drop_point]

Bear with me, I may have some terms wrong here, but I will pass on what hours of reading has done to mold my understand and annealing practices.

Using 750 Templaq doesn't seem advantageous, but may even be foolish. I read on a lot of metallurgy pages that the key to annealing is keeping it to temperature for a certain period of time, which we cannot accomplish with the flame annealing machines because the flame has a propensity to go PAST the target if you try to maintain that temperature. Additionally, the Templaq only tells us the temperature on that portion of the case neck, be it inside or outside, but the whole will not be the same temperature. So essentially, Templaq tells us when we've crossed a line, but there is measurement for how far past that line and for how long.

The understanding is that the brass begins to cool as soon as its removed from the flame, if you heat up to 750, the temperature isn't maintained for full annealing, therefore we must "flash anneal," as it was referred to on one page, by bringing the brass to an even higher temperature for just a fraction of a second. For instance, perhaps 1200 degrees for 0.5s or 750 degrees for 3s (and these are numbers that are made up for demonstration purpose). I have a hard time doing this with a flame annealer as each piece of brass reacts differently and I have no way of measuring that temperature or time interval.

Essentially, without proper control and equipment which isn't available to the average handloader, annealing is an art. Being an art, scientific observation of Templaq can be disregarded. I've experimented with my results and I've found going to a dim glow in a low-lit room (not a dark room) is working well for my rifles' precision across the board. I do this every firing, POI doesn't seem to shift all over the place, nor does velocity. Some may believe I have "over-annealed", but I can find no evidence of that other than people's talk about "color" which is not a measurable scientific observation of the naked eye.

 

[Tesoro]

Exactly!! This is why I sold my benchsource. Good machine but for doing smaller 223 size cases I found there was not one set time that would anneal all evenly, and esp with thinner neck non-lapua. The proof was in the lineup afterwards comparing evenness of the annealing stains. So I went to hand annealing with a smaller adjustable flame tip, which I find the process to work as fast or maybe faster than the machine when doing smaller batches of 50 and less. I made my own turntable out of a $18 mini potters wheel with adj speed. ps: inorder to duplicate Lapua looking stains I go past the first sign of cherry glow to full glow. Plenty of sub 2 groups using this method.

 

[uncle fester]

I’ve used the salt bath method for thousands of rounds now. It’s very accurate and controllable as far as temperatures go. No more guessing. With a digital thermometer and thermocouple I can keep the temperature at the recommended 1000 degrees C spot on for as long as needed. Neck tensions are very consistent, brass lasts a long time (primer pockets go first) and the whole setup is about $160.00.

I am scared of burning myself.

 

[SGK]

3 1/2 year old thread. Check out the GinaErick thread for latest thinking.

 

[Dave M.]

I’ve used the salt bath method for thousands of rounds now. It’s very accurate and controllable as far as temperatures go. No more guessing. With a digital thermometer and thermocouple I can keep the temperature at the recommended 1000 degrees C spot on for as long as needed. Neck tensions are very consistent, brass lasts a long time (primer pockets go first) and the whole setup is about $160.00.

You must get amazing performance after melting all of your brass at 1000C. Also, try not to let any sweat drip from your forehead into the salt…you won’t like the results.

 

[Webster]

So I have an annealeez. I also have 750 tempilaq. With the cheap hornady brass I have, if I turn the lights out the brass gets the deep glow right at 750 degrees. Perfect. Then when I do the lapua brass I turned to the same neck thickness to the hornady and run it through the annealer I see no glow when the tempilaq disappears at 750. Even if I slow down the speed a lot, way past the 750 mark, I still don’t see a glo. What the heck. I do not want to super over anneal the brass and ruin it. Thoughts please

Check out the video by Erik Cortina on annealing. He is one of the best long range shooters in the world. Not very technical but it may make you feel better about heating until orange glow.

Do a search on YouTube.com for Erik Cortina. I enjoyed everyone of his videos.

So I have an annealeez. I also have 750 tempilaq. With the cheap hornady brass I have, if I turn the lights out the brass gets the deep glow right at 750 degrees. Perfect. Then when I do the lapua brass I turned to the same neck thickness to the hornady and run it through the annealer I see no glow when the tempilaq disappears at 750. Even if I slow down the speed a lot, way past the 750 mark, I still don’t see a glo. What the heck. I do not want to super over anneal the brass and ruin it. Thoughts please