New to annealing

[RegionRat]

@Webster is correct about annealing being the correct term in this context.

For those who want to understand, what we call cartridge brass is an alloy and it is all one metallurgical phase. We call this type the alpha phase. It is work hardened and is heat annealed. Carry on.

 

[Cecil S.]

Found this. It is from the internet.Annealing brass is a heat treatment process that softens the metal by heating it to a high temperature for a short time, then holding it there and cooling it. The recommended temperature is between 600 and 800 degrees Fahrenheit. Annealing can improve the brass's consistency, which is important for precision shooting, and can also make the brass last longer.

 

[Elfster4321]

Check this out using the EP 2.0 annealer with the "glow method" & using "test brass"....

 

[SD guy]

May find this one interesting in addition to the many offered on the AGS web site.

 

[Webster]

Ya didn't say what kind.
My bench source, 2 gas torches, I'd watch for a little red and turn it down just below that.
The idea is to get the the neck and shoulder up to temp fast as possible so the heat won't go down the case. It's hard to do with one torch, imo.

Now i have an amp

It's impossible to over heat the case body. 500-700F for less than a second does zero annealing. 750F for 1 minute does zero softening of the brass.

 

[chuckshooter]

It's impossible to over heat the case body. 500-700F for less than a second does zero annealing. 750F for 1 minute does zero softening of the brass.

I'm going to have to disagree with this statement. 750f for 1 minute would not be good

 

[Webster]

I'm going to have to disagree with this statement. 750f for 1 minute would not be good

Opinions are not facts. The below chart was created by the metallurgy dept. at Illinois University. I have many other quality annealing charts made in metallurgy labs. The data is from furnace annealed cold rolled coupons held at a constant 450C (842F) temp. for the time and cold work indicated.

1 full minute in the furnace at a constant 450C (842F) with 20.9% starting cold work the hardness only drops about 3 hardness units. This is about the 5th. time I put this chart on the website. All chart data is 450C. Time is total time in the furnace.

15% cold work for 30 seconds at 450C (842F) the hardness drops less than 1 hardness unit.


coupons

 

[chuckshooter]

It's impossible to over heat the case body. 500-700F for less than a second does zero annealing. 750F for 1 minute does zero softening of the brass.

I guess I'm Just confused, here you say

It's impossible to over heat the case body.

but in post 40 you say, "Perfect brass annealing would make the brass unsafe to use"

I'm just a simple minded person and I use a bench source and do what others have mentioned, start in the dark and get the dull red glow. lucky for me I do enough wild catting that I always have case rejects to test with. a simple pair of plyers and a squish tells me if I have achieved what I am after. no charts for me. If you want to subject your bass to 750f for 1 minute and then shoot it, that's up to you, I wouldn't do that not ever, not one time in my life.

 

[Bill K]

The equipment you ordered may well have instructions with it. Read fully if so. Google annealing brass also will get you some fine information on the ways to do so also. And a lot of your reloading manuals have a section that explains the ways to do so.

I just ordered an annealer but have never annealed and know nothing about it. The annealer has a timer and I been have searching trying to find out when my brass reaches the proper temperature.

 

[RegionRat]

Opinions are not facts. The below chart was created by the metallurgy dept. at Illinois University. I have many other quality annealing charts made in metallurgy labs. The data is from furnace annealed cold rolled coupons held at a constant 450C (842F) temp. for the time and cold work indicated.

1 full minute in the furnace at a constant 450C (842F) with 20.9% starting cold work the hardness only drops about 3 hardness units. This is about the 5th. time I put this chart on the website. All chart data is 450C. Time is total time in the furnace.

15% cold work for 30 seconds at 450C (842F) the hardness drops less than 1 hardness unit.

View attachment 1549135
coupons

https://ia904700.us.archive.org/21/...tion Making-NRA by G. Frost-(1990) _text.pdf

It is easy to be misled by handbooks, papers, and text books on engineering. Sometimes, it is best not to make too hard a stand on topics till you touch base with real experts with firsthand experience in a specific context. I have seen professors with no industrial experience make some serious mistakes when they first ventured out into industry and found what they had been preaching was not always applicable. It wasn't wrong, but it was out of context so it didn't fit the specifics when the context was very different than the standards.

Things start to happen in cartridge brass at temperatures above 400 F. We start investigations with any accidental exposures above 440F just to guard against unwanted changes. The biggest reason for the differences were due the way very thin sections do not follow bulk behavior. When we teach new techs and engineers about cartridge heat treating, we use 400F Tempilaq on the case body to illustrate the conductivity risks.

I'm linking a PDF of an old publication on ammo manufacture that contains some details of case manufacture for rimfire and brass bottleneck cases. If you read the chapter on cases, you will see several places where the temperatures he mentions are much lower than what folks read in other metallurgical papers that tend to be based on thicker sections. Things start happening much lower and much faster in thin sections.

You can also read in that publication that getting an initial glow was (and still is) used to adjust the heat treat on the necks. We know that effect is due to what is termed the Draper Point and luckily it serves as a good physical constant that we exploit for alpha phase cartridge brass since it serendipitously lands us at roughly 977 F.

We don't dwell there, we adjust the flame or induction heat to insure we get the area of interest and no more. The hardness survey is then the proof we need to infer that we have the properties we care about. None of that follows the metallurgical text book heat treat schedule of bulk brass either.

Also remember that hardness is just the proxy we use to infer the properties of those thin walls. Direct mechanical measurements on those tiny case wall and neck sections don't follow standardized methods either, but after over a hundred years of cartridge making we have a pretty good understanding of the differences between cases and standard tests.

No need to argue over standardized methods versus specialized context when it comes to metallurgy. I challenged all of it when I was a young student. The bosses and chiefs were patient with all of us and allowed us to challenge and test all we liked. In the end, they were always correct since their predecessors had done all the hard work long before any of us, our parents, or even grandparents were born.

The publication is old, but even with modernization over my career, the important process control points haven't changed. If you haven't seen the publication before, it is worth the time. It is a shame there isn't a modern equivalent, but corporate attitudes since this came out have changed more towards keeping these topics behind a wall. Papers from relevant conferences are also not public and the better text books are very expensive and have copywrites. Enjoy the freebie.

 

[Webster]

I guess I'm Just confused, here you say

but in post 40 you say, "Perfect brass annealing would make the brass unsafe to use"

I'm just a simple minded person and I use a bench source and do what others have mentioned, start in the dark and get the dull red glow. lucky for me I do enough wild catting that I always have case rejects to test with. a simple pair of plyers and a squish tells me if I have achieved what I am after. no charts for me. If you want to subject your bass to 750f for 1 minute and then shoot it, that's up to you, I wouldn't do that not ever, not one time in my life.

I didn't post it in the proper format.

The top sentences were someone else’s post and the bottom was my response.

 

[Webster]

I guess I'm Just confused, here you say

but in post 40 you say, "Perfect brass annealing would make the brass unsafe to use"

I'm just a simple minded person and I use a bench source and do what others have mentioned, start in the dark and get the dull red glow. lucky for me I do enough wild catting that I always have case rejects to test with. a simple pair of plyers and a squish tells me if I have achieved what I am after. no charts for me. If you want to subject your bass to 750f for 1 minute and then shoot it, that's up to you, I wouldn't do that not ever, not one time in my life.

I never suggested annealing for 1 minute. The data points out that flash annealing hardness must be much less change if not much occurs at 1 minute at temp. If you cannot over anneal in 1 minute at 842F you cannot over anneal by flash annealing for a fraction of a second at that temp.

 

[chuckshooter]

My hornet brass has thinnest necks I work with, I can only use one torch for about 2 seconds on the timer, I have over annealed a few in my lifetime and when trying to seat the bullets, the neck folds. that's a bummer because there no fixing that. I tried work hardening the brass again, but it's only so, so. I have used tempilaq in the past but, after 30 years of annealing brass, I trust the dull red glow and my redneck method of testing the hardness with plyers.

 

[Tesoro]

Dull red glow inside of case necks. 10x Optivisor ( if you need). Dark room