While the old process produced annealed brass that was safe to fire, and dealt with the neck cracking issue, IMO and that of others it produces case necks that are too soft for best accuracy in many situations. We have become a lot more sophisticated about annealing, and we are generally not wanting fully softened necks. Back in the day, I followed the old directions to the letter, and when I shot the brass, the accuracy was worse than before annealing. The necks were too soft. Some powders need more bullet pull than others in order to produce the best accuracy. I have interviewed winning thousand yard shooters that do and do not anneal, based on their own testing with their particular caliber and load components. Their winning proves them both right. Some time back a friend needed to deal with inconsistency of shoulder bump with the same die settings. This was for ammo to be fed from magazines, for hunting. Soft necks would not have been suitable. We were able to set up a two torch timed process rotary annealing machine so that shoulder bumps were a lot more uniform while not over softening case necks. IMO there is little textbook info on this sort of partial annealing, which is what most who anneal for accuracy are doing.
