I'm not a precision benchrest shooter but have a lot of different calibers and some expensive brass that I'd like to maintain as long as feasible. I use an annealing machine, but wonder what process you experts use. I know that you should anneal before resizing fired brass because you want the brass "spring-back" in the neck for proper tension. I usually deprime fired brass first using universal depriming die, then tumble the brass using a Thumler with stainless steel media, then anneal, then resize entire case or neck, then trim length (if necessary), then prime and load.
The part that I wonder about is can I anneal fired brass without cleaning first? With my sequence, I usually have to clean the brass twice... before annealing and then again after resizing to remove resizing lube. Seems like redundancy to me. If it doesn't really hurt the brass to anneal "dirty" fired brass and then resize and tumble, that would save me some time.
The part that I wonder about is can I anneal fired brass without cleaning first? With my sequence, I usually have to clean the brass twice... before annealing and then again after resizing to remove resizing lube. Seems like redundancy to me. If it doesn't really hurt the brass to anneal "dirty" fired brass and then resize and tumble, that would save me some time.