Hornady's annealing kit?

[JohnD]

Has anyone tried the annealing kit made by Hornady and do you like it? Thanks, John.

 

[CatShooter]

Has anyone tried the annealing kit made by Hornady and do you like it? Thanks, John.

I have one and it's the best thing since sliced bread.

I do a lot of annealing, and used to sit them in a pan of water, .... never again. The pan of water does not allow the cases to be evenly annealed on all sides.

With the Hornady thingie, I can do ~250 cases an hour, and each one is perfect.

Here's some tips I learned the hard way.

If you do a lot of cases, either do them in small batches - 20 at a time with a 30 minute break, or reduce the spring in the power driver - the tip of your finger will get numb,and maybe injured) from lack of blood circulation. After my first session,3.5 hours continuous), I didn't have any feeling in the tip of my left thumb for more than two weeks.

Get a power screwdriver, and if the switch is stiff to push,it probably will be) open it up and remove the torsion bar spring, or otherwise reduce the spring so it goes on with a very light touch.

Or use a hand drill.

Presto makes both small and a large torch heads - get the large one.

If you are going to do 50 cases, you can do it any way you want, cuz that's not a lot, but if you are going to do several hundred,or thousands), lay it out like this.

Get the short, fat, propane bottles, and just sit the torch on the right side of the bench with the flame pointing up to the left.

Put a piece of towel in the middle of the bench with three layers of aluminum foil on the towel. Crumple the foil, then lay it out flat so there is air space between layers.

Now,with the torch lit), you take the power drill in the left hand, put a case in it, hold the case in the hot tip of the flame for 6 to 8 seconds, stop the drill, dump the case on the3 foil, put another case in with the right hand, and repeat ad infinitum.

My first session, I had 1000 cases to do, but quite after 150 - the driver spring was too hard. That's when I decided to take it apart and remove the main torsion spring. That was the biggest obstacle.

Also... keep in mind that the propane bottles get cold after a while. When they get cold, the pressure drops way down and the flame gets little. Then it is a bitch to work, cuz it takes forever to anneal the case. If the flame gets small, and you need to keep on going, run hot water over the bottle to bring up the pressure.

At this point, I use a a 20 pound propane bottle with an adapter for the torch head... and I hold the torch head in a vice.

And heres another tip - if you are going to neck or full size, do it before annealing. And the next time you size, make sure that you lube the outsides of the neck - annealing leaves a thin layer of extra soft brass that can stick to a bushing, and then it starts to scratch the following necks and will drive you crazy trying to find out what happened to your die or bushing,don't ask me how I know).

After the first sizing, you can neck size without lube.

If you have any questions, just ask.


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