Ideal annealing frequency

[BenPerfected]

Shooting 6Dasher with .010 necks and have been annealing after each firing. What annealing frequency do you use? Is the frequency of the annealing measurable on the target? Is annealing after every firing detrimental to accuracy? Is the ideal annealing frequency dependent on distance....200 yds vs 1000?
Ben

 

[ShootDots]

My Dashers never needed annealing after every firing. However, my .284's and Shehanes did. My .260A.I. needs it every other firing. I found all this out over a few years of firing. As long as that bullet seats smooth as butter going in, what need is there of annealing? You can readily tell when the cases need annealing>>>the bullets seat with varying degrees of force. I do NOT have one of those "force measuring arbor seaters" but I do use an RCBS "Partner" press which is very small and light. I can easily "feel" varying pressures used to seat the bullets. All of the bullets that seat different, I place in my case as fouling rounds. If a goodly amount of them go in there, the next firing it's annealing time.

 

[Gb300wm]

I anneal every firing.

 

[Gina1]

I anneal after every firing. With an induction annealer it only takes 10 minutes to do fifty cases with almost no set up time (with saved set up). Just flip on the switch and anneal.
If your handy, you can build your own. check out...

Induction brass annealer redux on this site, reloading forum

 

[clowdis]

My Dashers never needed annealing after every firing. However, my .284's and Shehanes did. My .260A.I. needs it every other firing. I found all this out over a few years of firing. As long as that bullet seats smooth as butter going in, what need is there of annealing? You can readily tell when the cases need annealing>>>the bullets seat with varying degrees of force. I do NOT have one of those "force measuring arbor seaters" but I do use an RCBS "Partner" press which is very small and light. I can easily "feel" varying pressures used to seat the bullets. All of the bullets that seat different, I place in my case as fouling rounds. If a goodly amount of them go in there, the next firing it's annealing time.

I don't anneal every time, but I agree with shootdots that when you start feeling a difference in seating pressure or see a difference when you full length resize, then it's time to anneal. As brass workhardens it tends to spring back more than annealed brass so even if your sizing die setting was good a couple months ago it may not be good after 4 or 5 firings.

 

[John Russell]

I anneal ALL new cases before loading them.
Match cases get annealed every firing.
Varmint cases, ever 3 or 4 firings.

 

[fgregorio]

It depends on what you are looking for:
Maximum accuracy- deprime after firing, anneal on the same day as reloading. Fire the rounds same or next day. Keep the rounds cool, etc
Hunting- Anneal when rounds feel like they have different seating pressures.
Brass work hardens but it also hardens over time after annealing. I felt on my hydro seater that it hardens noticeably within one week after annealing and the spread of seating pressures also widens.
My current cases in a experiment 2 month ago
Annealed on the day reloaded 1 hr after annealing- seating pressure 28 psi to 32 psi. ext spread 4 psi
One week later- seating pressure 34 to 52 psi, ext spread 18 psi.
My groups tightened once I started annealing. Noticeable from 300m to 1000y.
Where it stands in my priority list:
1- case preparation and weight batching.
2- barrel tuner, barrel dampening and titanium firing pin
3- powder weight accuracy (rcbs m500 + dandy auto trickler)/ loading at the same temperature that firing takes place.
4- annealing
5- primer selection and weight sorting
6- seating depth accuracy from dies and runout
7- load develoment
8- sorting projectiles by weight (I use optimus which are made on one machine only. They are as uniform as it gets. No odd balls in thousands that I've shot. I weighed each and every one.)
9- firing rounds in order by neck tension pressure (use dry lube inside necks when seating) within 24 hrs of reloading
10- Getting your dies trued by a competent gunsmith (all contact surfaces squared up in sequence from the bottom up), locking your dies in under pressure from the ram with an empty unprimed case in them (for perfect alignment) and reloading hygiene (powder residue+ humidity= gunk that coats your sliding or pressure contact reloading gear. If its not cleaned, forget about consistent runout.

 

[Nomad47]

I anneal all my varmint brass (no longer competing) after every firing. And I use the cheapest method of annealing. Only takes a couple minutes, so why not?

 

[Lapua40X]

I anneal every firing.

Ditto

 

[fourpower]

Shooting 6Dasher with .010 necks and have been annealing after each firing. What annealing frequency do you use? Is the frequency of the annealing measurable on the target? Is annealing after every firing detrimental to accuracy? Is the ideal annealing frequency dependent on distance....200 yds vs 1000?
Ben

when we brass was scarce in my area I started annealing to try and get more reloads out of what I had. I had never annealed before in 45 years. man what a eye opener. 6.5x47 reloaded 31 times going strong. 7mm rem mag 12 reloads doing great. .338 win mag on 10 reloads. 25-06 15 reloads going strong. as you can see I now anneal every firing!!

 

[jsthntn247]

I got lazy and didn't anneal once fired brass for my hunting rifle this year. Seating pressure was all over the place according to my hydro press. ES was about 40 on those rounds as well. Being OCD I shot them all and annealed them. Seating pressures after annealing was under 10lb variance and ES was 15. I've done this before and had the same results, I usually anneal every firing.

 

[jlow]

If the goal of precision reloading means loading every round so that they are the same in every way time and time again, then it makes sense to anneal every firing since firing/sizing change the work hardening and so neck tension. It’s a bit like FL sizing vs. neck sizing. Why let things like work hardening or case size change and affect the precision of your rounds until it gets so bad that you have to? FL size every time and annealing every time is the logical answer.

I understand the pain of annealing every time but that is why we have machines.

 

[RonAKA]

Some things to consider:

1. If you have a SAAMI chamber, and are using regular FL sizing dies with an expander ball, you are working the brass big time. You can be expanding the neck 5 thou or more on firing. Then risizing it down by 10 thou or more, and then expanding it back up again with the expander ball. For sure that work hardens the brass fairly quickly. Despite that abuse I have had .264 WM Winchester cases last up to 20 reloads without cracking. If nothing else it shows how much abuse the brass can take.

2. On the other hand if you have a tight neck, turned neck OD, and use a bushing die without an expander ball, this whole cycle of expansion and contraction is reduced by a huge amount. The issue then becomes more one of uniform tension than preventing cracking.

3. If your last sizing step is a reduction with say a bushing, then as your brass work hardens, you get more springback, and tension is reduced. If your last sizing step is an expansion with an expander ball, the reverse happens. More springback gives you more tension. I use a hybrid method and use a bushing which minimally reduces the neck size, and then follow that with an expander ball that just slightly increases the neck ID. I feel that method is less sensitive to brass work hardening effects. I have gone 5 firings, and not noted any significant difference in feel, or required a bushing size change. But, then I just go by feel and have no fancy seating pressure measurement system.

4. And last the amount of softening that the annealing process does is highly dependent on the initial hardness of the case. See the graph below which illustrates how much the hardness is reduced with the same annealing temperature and time, but with three different hardness states. The harder it is (yellow line), the more effect annealing has. So if consistency is your objective, letting the brass get hard will result in a big change. And on the other hand if it is soft already (blue line), you may be essentially doing next to nothing or nothing at normal annealing temperatures. And just a personal theory, but I suspect many are annealing at too low a temperature to do much at all. By my estimations you need to reach about 875 deg F for 7 seconds to anneal harder brass. At 750 to 800 F for a few seconds nothing will happen.

 

[Bob L.]

Ron,

If I may ask, where did you find these curves? They have more relevant info regarding annealing time than I have seen to date.

 

[RonAKA]

Ron, If I may ask, where did you find these curves? They have more relevant info regarding annealing time than I have seen to date.

The graph comes from an Aurubis product specification sheet for C26000 Cartridge Brass. Aurubis is a major supplier of copper and brass products and are based in Germany. Possibly a supplier to Lapua. Who knows...

Here is a link to the complete Technical Datasheet which has the graph. The problem with the graph as you have probably already figured out is that it is on the wrong time scale for reloaders doing annealing. A 2 minute annealing time is impossible unless you put the bases in water to keep them from overheating, and even then 2 minutes per case is very time consuming.

What I did is extrapolate their rule of thumb at the bottom of the graph which says if you increase the temperature by 10 deg C you cut the annealing time in half. What I found was that when you kept halving the time until you got to 7.5 seconds, the temperature was about 875 F. Not the best thing to do, but it is the best technically sound data that I have found to date, on what temperature to anneal at.

 

[Bob L.]

Thank you, Ron. The only other curves I have seen with useful information are from the American Society for Metals, but they were only for an annealing time of 1 hour, with no temperature-time corrections at all.

Your method for arriving at a time of 7.5 sec. at 875 deg. F seems perfectly reasonable to me.

 

[Webster]

Some things to consider:


4. And last the amount of softening that the annealing process does is highly dependent on the initial hardness of the case. See the graph below which illustrates how much the hardness is reduced with the same annealing temperature and time, but with three different hardness states. The harder it is (yellow line), the more effect annealing has. So if consistency is your objective, letting the brass get hard will result in a big change. And on the other hand if it is soft already (blue line), you may be essentially doing next to nothing or nothing at normal annealing temperatures. And just a personal theory, but I suspect many are annealing at too low a temperature to do much at all. By my estimations you need to reach about 875 deg F for 7 seconds to anneal harder brass. At 750 to 800 F for a few seconds nothing will happen.

Best info on annealing I have seen in a while. You shouldn't be able to anneal brass in a fraction of a second at 750F. Must be stress relieving. I have put the data on the website many times and few people believe it. People still think brass hardens with time. Not true, I don't care what a gauge indicates.

 

[Nomad47]

Ideal annealing frequency?

Oh, I would say about 60 hertz - unless you live in Europe.