What is a good torch for annealing?

[jlow]

The last group would be the bench rest shooter who is actually looking for a soft neck to reduce the influence of neck tension. They can in fact accept a certain degree of variability as the softness of the neck has less influence on accuracy/precision.

NO....NO....and just plain WRONG assumption.
Winning credentials in Registered Benchrest Competition represents real world proven -documented performance......and THAT trumps all the internet theories ever concocted. Now I know why fewer and fewer accomplished shooters are willing to share their hard-earned knowledge on these sites.

OK, I’ll bite.

The reason I for my comment is when you are in that soft neck region of the annealing curve, it is falling off a cliff and so much harder to control absolute softness (so not a criticism of technique). Your comment says I am wrong but has contributed nothing to address whether softness is in fact consistent or not. I accept the fact that the good shooters do really well at the target, that is not a point of contention, just saying that the slightly higher degree of variation in softness does not affect that.

This is what bothers me a bit about the information on this board. The really good guys comes up and say no but don’t back it up with information or techniques. Even if you are right, it does not help the rest of us.

If a person is not contributing, then what exactly is he doing, this is why sometimes you get the "bragging" comment.

 

[LHSmith]

Those who "CAN" ......DO............those who "can't" ......teach......or theorize on the web.
Benchrest Competition IS the best proving ground on what works and what doesn't.....try it some time.
Why would a competitor give up the ability to control NT ?, when 1/ uniform seating depth is absolutely critical, 2/ the risk of having to extract a bullet stuck in the bore will likely lead to last place, 3/ some powders NEED high NT 4/ NT provides another avenue to fine tune to conditions.

 

[jlow]

I think you still do not understand what I am saying…

Never said a BR competitor will give up ability to control NT. I am absolutely sure that a good BR competitor will try as hard as any competitor to control NT. But if you look at this curve that Webster put up (not at the location but at the shape), you will see that if you are using low neck tension soft neck area, you will be in the part of the curve that is in the red highlighted segment (vs. the green which is the high neck tension area). In the red segment, a slight difference in the annealing time and temperature between cases will cause more of a difference in hardness (than in the green segment).

That is ALL I was saying. Not bashing the BR competitor in any manner but talking about the physics.