Proper flame annealing technique

[RegionRat]

The OP was asking for info on tempilaq and dull red case glow when annealing.

The only point I was trying to make, was to try and prevent drift with respect to what low temps can do and the difference between some published information that represents bulk and that it is very different than a cartridge neck. I admit we went down a rabbit hole since it isn't applicable to home annealing. Without tensile testing, you can't detect it.

Tempilaq is useful to prevent case body damage. Damage to the body strength can occur as low as 530F, so use 400F Tempilaq to insure the body didn't get hot. That won't be hard to manage when you are properly flame or induction annealing.

It takes some practice to use it for the neck and unless you are correlating it to the glow point, it may be difficult to learn on your own. You end up needing the initial infrared glow point, so practice timing that in a dark room to hit it consistently and use that as a baseline.

 

[TQB]

Hello again,

I have decided to go with 7 seconds anneal time.

Is that the proper dull red glow you have mentioned?

The brass before:


And the brass afterwards:


What do you think?
P.S: I know that color change isn't a good indicator of proper annealing.

 

[RegionRat]

Flame proportion looks about right, just keep an eye on it as the fuel bottle temp changes or the level changes. Regulators can help and a large tank also helps.

Flame position looks about right and the timing would be typical too.

Now, without a hardness survey, only your results will tell.

ETA: Another way to get an indirect view, is to track your seating force stats. Those can be affected by friction changes, but are still better than nothing.

 

[richraceri]

Hi,

Not being sure if I can get a friend to induction anneal my brass before my next range trip, I am considering using for the first time my flame annealer.

What is the proper technique to flamer anneal? Should I use tempilaq? Were should I apply it? Inside or outside the case neck?

Should I do it as Erik Cortina, having the necks achieve a dull red glow? Or should I avoid glow at all?

Thanks,
Tiago

Use the AnnealRight system. I do my 750 wax and use an Amazon stop watch ($19) with the extra big digital numbers. As others say it usually takes about 4.5 seconds for a 308 Hornaday to melt wax. I add a second just to be safe (5.5 seconds in this example) and then just use the stop watch. After 10 or so its pretty easy to hit .5 seconds, and it goes reasonably fast. Air quench. I'm 100% sure the RF annealers are better and easier for a few thousand, but this works well and no wax residuals to clean out and no dark rooms etc. My groups seem to be much better then spinning them in a drill with 1 flame and water quench (my old method). I anneal every time. I used to see big differences in dry bullet lube technique but that seems to be less variable with consistent annealing. Just by gut feel consistent annealing produces better groups than trying to lube the grip force (variable hardness brass) into conformity. I think the formula is Force = friction factor (lube) x normal force (grip in this case), so nothing is squared suggesting one isn't more important than the other. But experience for me says annealing is a way bigger variable. I still dry lube but minimally w Q-tip. Have also found inner neck chamfer after trim to length seems to be a big variable (I assume changing grip force because an edge "could" exist and focuses force to point contact (deformation) rather than a surface contact (sliding)?). So I cut scotch Brite pads into 1/2" x 1/2" by 2" and chuck / spin them in a drill to polish out that inner neck ridge the hand reamer is supposed to (and largely does) trim away. But only the trimmed ones get chamfering and scotch bright by hand. Tried scotch Brite polishing all inner necks figuring this might produce a more consistent friction factor but graphite lube seems to make everything consistent so I only scotch Brite polish the trimmed ones post chamfering. I might not really be Scotch Brite-ing the ridge (already gone due to chamfering) as much as giving the cartridges that are most at risk of a little extra drag a little extra help in SD? This is all seat of the pants stuff that works for me, no science. I would always buy the best tech when money is no object. Smart people usually make nice stuff. Take my advise last I'm just guessing and staying with what works for me.

 

[CT10ring]

Hello again,

I have decided to go with 7 seconds anneal time.

Is that the proper dull red glow you have mentioned?

The brass before:
View attachment 1295011

And the brass afterwards:
View attachment 1295013View attachment 1295012

What do you think?
P.S: I know that color change isn't a good indicator of proper annealing.

To me, they look bit under-annealed. Or dam close?

If you seat bullets with an arbor press, you can easily feel -
1) the ease to seat in "softer" brass
2) a consistent feel with the press - aka neck tension

Have you loaded em. Shot any?
Not an expert!

 

[DocCarbon]

TQB
I won't argue the point of under annealing as being NO annealing ,its crystal clear in its explanation .

NOT being an expert in metallurgy but having #55 years reloading experience come Feb. 2022 , IMO your brass ISN'T annealed or sufficiently ductile /malleable . I base this upon two observations .
Knowing what Clean unpolished .308 cases look like after proper 750 F Tempilaq annealing ,yours are NOT hot enough or heated long enough .
See photos ; Bottom photo .Those are brand new Lapua Match cases unfired and everyone of them has discoloration from annealing , 0.5910 from the case mouth to the end of discoloration even the .223 or 5.56x45mm exhibits the near identical annealing length . MY LC case is in the middle* . The loaded case is Factory Lapua which came to ME via a friend in Europe . When I received some boxes of ammunition many years ago ,to the best of MY knowledge Lapua loaded ammo wasn't available in the US ,as they had started supplying cases but Not Ammunition . * Unfortunately MY case rolled while marking it but its near identical in annealed length and discoloration . Upper Photo shows Raw cleaned NO lube polish or any treatment ,other than ultrasonic 3 1/2 minute bath and deprimed cases . MY flame is pinpoint mid shoulder neck angle pointing towards the case mouth at 15-20 Deg. angle . and again 750 Deg. Tempilaq inside the neck and as the brass cases turn a dull red/orange then almost Blue the Tempilaq melts and Not before . In MY particular scenario the base upwards of 0.500" of the case never sees 200 Deg. ,because I did low temp Tempilaq there also . Just so I'd know what to look at . All I can say is I'm getting GREAT life out of MY cases and those are OLD LC cases ( probably some of the First 7.62x51mm ever made ( headstamps are 52-53-54

 

[Webster]

RegionRat : You asked the question ?

I didn't use pucks or cups only MY personal cartridge cases and the question was ; had I ever seen re-crystallization .

Did You not understand what I had typed ?

" So I hardly qualify myself as some sort of expert in that realm ."
The only time I've personally seen crystalized restructure on brass . Where I noticed it predominately ,was when it was allowed 28 + minutes at 800 F. approximately 427 C. recrystallization was visibly noticeable under magnification . I did that inside a tempering oven and NOT open flame .

As to MY personal qualifications : Does a PhD. in organic chemistry ,along with a MSEng from UCSD ,along
with being a batch chemist early in MY career for Hercules Powder Company ( industrial Division ) .




Good advice to follow :

I suggest we don’t make very assertive comments regarding indirect knowledge of cartridge production based on being in a related field, and without any direct experience.

View attachment 1295711

I like your post. I was involved with qualifying to specs ASTM, MIL, aerospace and NAVSEA 250 Nuclear (Nuclear welds) for many years. Plus, failure analysis. I was recognized as being very good at some types of failure analysis. Some of the info put out on this website doesn’t make sense.

• 450-500F recrystallization starts. Published data refutes this. The proper charts have been put on this website several times and people ignore real data.
• Who came up with 750F as some great temp to shoot for?
• Amps suggest some ideal hardness to shoot for. This may be fine but it implies that if you are a little harder or softer you won’t achieve good results on the target.
• I still see people saying cartridge brass hardens with time, it doesn’t.
• Some guys still think you have to water quench.
• A PHD metallurgist engineer I worked with who later became a consultant to the copper industry told me 1050F was red. Different degrees of red?

Annealing brass isn’t that complicated. After about ten years with a torch, I have shortened my annealing from 9 seconds to 5. It’s probably stress relieved and not annealed. I don’t care. I am happy with the case life and results on the target. A lot of guys on this website that don’t have any back ground in metallurgy are explaining what’s going on after reading someone else’s technical article.

Many times I have thought about leaving this website but I have not. I can solve the small problems that come up myself. Never had 95% of the problems people on this website have. There must be 5000 post and replies on how to anneal and how to lube a case.

 

[DocCarbon]

I like your post. I was involved with qualifying to specs ASTM, MIL, aerospace and NAVSEA 250 Nuclear (Nuclear welds) for many years. Plus, failure analysis. I was recognized as being very good at some types of failure analysis. Some of the info put out on this website doesn’t make sense.

• 450-500F recrystallization starts. Published data refutes this. The proper charts have been put on this website several times and people ignore real data.
• Who came up with 750F as some great temp to shoot for?
• Amps suggest some ideal hardness to shoot for. This may be fine but it implies that if you are a little harder or softer you won’t achieve good results on the target.
• I still see people saying cartridge brass hardens with time, it doesn’t.
• Some guys still think you have to water quench.
• A PHD metallurgist engineer I worked with who later became a consultant to the copper industry told me 1050F was red. Different degrees of red?

Annealing brass isn’t that complicated. After about ten years with a torch, I have shortened my annealing from 9 seconds to 5. It’s probably stress relieved and not annealed. I don’t care. I am happy with the case life and results on the target. A lot of guys on this website that don’t have any back ground in metallurgy are explaining what’s going on after reading someone else’s technical article.

Many times I have thought about leaving this website but I have not. I can solve the small problems that come up myself. Never had 95% of the problems people on this website have. There must be 5000 post and replies on how to anneal and how to lube a case.

Absolutely correct the recrystallization of brass regardless of it's usage , DOESN'T occur for Several minutes 26-30 at 800 Deg. F or shorter duration at Elevated Temperature. Yet still requires more than a few seconds or even minutes to begin . What WE Reloaders and Shooters are doing is WORK HARDENING BRASS CASES ,by shooting and then Stress Relieving or returning the Brass to a state of ductility /malleability .

I was informed by a fellow shooter ,who just happened to be a metallurgist for Boeing and as I was on loan to them we were discussing Brass cases over lunch one afternoon . He suggested by open flame 750 Deg. F at the neck was sufficient for a few seconds . And as any of us knows getting an accurate Temp reading while an open flame is in close proximity is Impossible . So Tempilaq is about the best true indicator . Mine seem to work ,I've tried to mimic Lapua's straw color and approximate the depth of discoloration to the best of MY ability . With the case life I'm seeing , I'm more than satisfied .

I'm convinced as the case's continue to rotate in the flame before dropping out , in MY scenario ,My necks see 800-950 Deg. F . perhaps ?. And as I'm color blind I'm not a reliable source on what color they are or are not and openly admit that .
FYI : I asked three people one day what color a particular aircraft was , I got #3 DIFFERENT answers !.

Sorry about all those postings ,something wasn't right with the photo up loading yesterday . I've deleted them hopefully ?.

 

[darkangel_r2]

What I think is important is the actual effect on bullet grip by the brass. How much work needs to be done to remove the bullet from the case. Traditional annealing methods do significantly reduce how much force it takes to seat and pull and bullet. They also improve the consistency of these forces firing number to firing number. Weather this occurs due to changing grain structure or simply stress relieving the material is irrelevant in a practical sense.

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Traditional methods may not return the brass to virgin seating forces but it will return them to a consistent lower seating and pulling force. And I don't think anyone here was arguing that it won't do this but I just wanted to make it clear to the people reading here.

Also upon review I think the flame color changing temp is the carbon in the neck burning off (carbon burns orange). As it is a thin layer exposed to a 3000 degree flame it makes sense that the surface temp may reach the 1200f required to burn it off. So perhaps its possible to anneal well into the red glow without harming brass.

 

[TQB]

Hi,

Sunday I went to the range and tried 14 pieces of brass with 7 seconds of annealing time.

The resulting ES was if 36 fps with an SD of 11 fps.
There was some horizontal spread, but ir wasn't terrible.
The group is in the picture (between targets 13 and 14)


What is your advice?

Thank You,
Tiago

 

[AzMandella]

Simply put Annealing is "Normalizing" Using heat to releave the stresses created from heating and cooling .

 

[BoydAllen]

Hi,

Sunday I went to the range and tried 14 pieces of brass with 7 seconds of annealing time.

The resulting ES was if 36 fps with an SD of 11 fps.
There was some horizontal spread, but ir wasn't terrible.
The group is in the picture (between targets 13 and 14)
View attachment 1297338

What is your advice?

Thank You,
Tiago

Commenting on a target without any details other than what you provided would be making a wild guess. If there was a significant difference in seating force compared to the brass you used to work up the load, you may want to do a retune, but since we have nothing to compare with, even that is pure speculation.

 

[RegionRat]

@TQB I agree with Boyd.

There are too many details with respect to case prep, neck tension, friction, etc., to be able to give you good advice on annealing adjustments.

If you were not so far away, I would suggest sending me some cases to inspect and anneal for you as a comparison test, but with the import/export regulations it would be complicated.

A side-by-side test would show if the tune was affected by annealing adjustments, so maybe find your best tune and baseline the optimized group and see if there is any difference at all as a starting point.

If a difference shows, then compare the processes to the each other but keeping in mind the two different processes may require the tune to be re-optimized independently for a good answer.

Remember, many times the outcome is being dominated by other factors which can make the results confusing. You must have some confidence in your results based on stability which comes from testing in many different conditions and on many different days.

When you load ahead of time to some pre determined recipe, as compared to loading at the range and adjusting for conditions, then the stability issue is even more important. Most high level BR match shooting is done while adjusting for conditions in place, rather than loading in advance. That means the tuning is often done on the spot.

Pre-loaded ammo can still perform at high levels in many games, but it is harder to get those groups to compare to the state of the art groups produced at high level BR matches where folks will optimize their ammo on the spot.

 

[TQB]

BoydAllen and RegionRat, you are both right.


As far as seating forces the seemed to be more consistent, but the sample size was only 14 pieces of brass. I don’t own a press with a force gage, so the results are highly subjective.

For comparison I will link to a thread where there are other targets and an explanation to the subject.

https://forum.accurateshooter.com/threads/seating-depth-testing-for-308-win.4050555/


The idea of annealing was intended to help uniform neck tension and achieve lower ES/SD, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.


Thank You,
Tiago

 

[Travisb]

I have a AGS Brass annealer.

It only uses one torch. My only complaint with it is that due to its compactness, it is rather short. If you let some cases build up underneath the shute, they will end up sticking out and block the carousel. This can be easily overcome by putting something underneath the unit to raise it.

I have the same one and that can be a pain. Also I wish the dial was repeatable so I can set it exactly the same each time. I’m going to try and research a different speed controller that is repeatable.

 

[TQB]

I have the same one and that can be a pain. Also I wish the dial was repeatable so I can set it exactly the same each time. I’m going to try and research a different speed controller that is repeatable.

When You find one, please let me know.

 

[Travisb]

When You find one, please let me know.

so.... I am thinking of modifying mine to make it taller, making it less chance for backed up cases. Im going to add aluminum or SS on the side and switch to this controller.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07WR4KBMF/?coliid=IZZ16Q6SOE4JP&colid=3BGH08O3T9YQ5&psc=1&ref_=gv_ov_lig_pi_dp

 

[Woofie]

LOL, who'd a thought such digital pugilism on the simple (?) topic of annealing.
Cleraly there are people posting in this thread that are knowledgeable material scientists/engineers, and... those that aren't.
I eschewed annealing for a long while thinking it a fad, frankly. I'm not sure I was wrong to this day. I don't know I'll ever be persuaded to part with North of $1K for an annealer, as perfect as its little Kiwi roots may be.
I *did* buy an Annealeze. Takes a bit of getting used to , but I have it adjusted so the flame colour change *just* occurs when the cases dump into the collection tray.
Seems to work for my long range range brass (1/3 MOA from cheap PPU) and doesn't hurt brass life.
At that point, honestly. I am done with the discussion. Too much work otherwise.

 

[Webster]

Hi,

Sunday I went to the range and tried 14 pieces of brass with 7 seconds of annealing time.

The resulting ES was if 36 fps with an SD of 11 fps.
There was some horizontal spread, but ir wasn't terrible.
The group is in the picture (between targets 13 and 14)
View attachment 1297338

What is your advice?

Thank You,
Tiago

No consistency in group size if they are all the same load. Many variables. How do you say the group appearance is just the variable your interested in?

 

[TQB]

You are right Webster. I can't isolate all the variables.