I never anneal and.....

[in2deep]

For the folks that do not anneal your brass feel free to chime in with your opinions and observations.
Is the thinking that after a few firings the brass will quit changing properties and eventually come to a uniform state that allows for more consistency? vs. annealing every few shots wherin the brass is never the same and is always changing?

 

[TonyR]

For the folks that do not anneal your brass feel free to chime in with your opinions and observations.
Is the thinking that after a few firings the brass will quit changing properties and eventually come to a uniform state that allows for more consistency? vs. annealing every few shots wherin the brass is never the same and is always changing?

Ron AKA posted these comments about work hardening of brass.

http://www.accurateshooter.com/forum/index.php/topic,3762045.msg35935923.html#msg35935923

I found it very interesting because I know highly successful shooters that anneal and others that don't. I do but I would like to understand when it may not be necessary. Basicly, Ron's data suggests that brass hardens quickly after very little stretch beyond the yeild point. At the extremes, you would expect the least stretch with a large caliber tight neck chamber and the most stretch with a loose small caliber chamber.
I have a couple of examples that appear consistent with that idea. I know a top F-T/R shooter who runs a 0.0015 neck clearance in his 308 and doesn't anneal while I did tests that proved to me that annealing was extremely important with my 6mmBR that probably has 0.006-0.008 inches of neck clearance.
I bought the machine to do the 6mm and now I anneal everything often because I have the machine and it doesn't take much time. But I haven't proven that I need to with about 0.003 clearance in my 7mm chambers.

Just my $0.02.

 

[V509]

I have some 25 year old 222 brass that was fired 3 times and then loaded in 1985. The cases have sat loaded since then. A large percentage of these rounds split the necks when fired, even more will split when sized for reloading. Has time been a factor??