What's a sensible frequency of annealing .308 cases?

[JimPag]

Glad you have the game all figured out.

Glad you have the game all figured out.

How did you come up with that one? Never said I have this game figured out because nobody does and nobody will ever. I have my program pretty much running as well as I can at this point.

 

[LHSmith]

This is going to be more consistent than any other method in my opinion (this is just informed speculation) and it turns out that light neck tension and many times fired brass was (or still is? I don’t keep up) a typical recipe in short range benchrest. The trick is that it has to be light tension - around .001 depending on caliber.

Light neck tension may have dominated BR 2 decades ago, but a .256 bushing generally yields the best accuracy in a 0.262 necked 6 ppc powered by N133-perhaps the most prevalent powder used. It is hard to know what neck tension is used in comp. but IME 2 to 3 thou. NT works best in the 6 ppc or 6 Beggs using LT-32

 

[HomeSlice]

I don't know, but I continue to anneal mine. Here's why.

Snip

I will too. I was just curious if the experiment was enough to change Mr. Litz’s mind about annealing.

My reasons are a bit more simple than yours, though: I own an annealing machine; most of the good brass comes that way (they wouldn’t add a manufacturing step if it wasn’t helpful); and most of the shooters who i highly respect do it.

The question of frequency is of interest to me, and I’m here to learn.

 

[Mozella]

The problem with shooters in particular is they hold to myths and beliefs like it’s some sort of religion. There IS science to annealing brass. And most of these theories can be confirmed or disproven by analyzing data or conducting experiments (not involving shooting) to determine if one method or another is better or worse or if it really makes any difference. But shooters don’t, won’t, or can’t do the data analysis and have no idea on how to determine the changes to the metallurgy they create. So they rationalize a belief based on what they want to believe. This isn’t limited to annealing either.

So believe what you want. It doesn’t make it absolute truth.

As I said, I'm not a metallurgist but I did take several metallurgy classes as part of my formal education. Part of my study involved annealing and studying cartridge brass. I know how it works. And although I don't routinely measure the hardness of my brass or spend hours polishing and acid etching samples to study under the microscope like I did in the past, I have a pretty fair idea of the results of my particular annealing process when comes to the metallurgical properties of cartridge brass. It has nothing to do with what I WANT to believe. Annealing cartridge brass is well understood science.

What you seem to have missed is that both Mr. Lutz and I are unable to prove is how annealing affects, positively or negatively, the group size of a representative batch of rounds fired at a target 100 yards away. But being unable to prove something is not a final answer, one way or the other.

I don't know how Mr. Lutz feels about annealing after his short experiment but I happen to believe that annealing every time is one small step of many which helps me make ammo good enough to win matches. If I had to choose among three results, those being annealing hurts a little bit, annealing can't possibly make any difference, and annealing is likely help a little bit, I would select the last one, especially since I know something about how annealing works. It makes sense to me that annealing should help even if only to a small degree. It doesn't make sense to me that wearing lucky underwear is more effective than annealing. I happen to believe that one is science and the other is a myth. Others may disagree.

The statistical noise inherent in the way most of us test ammo makes it impossible to quantify the effect of a single small step, uniforming primer pockets for example. But that doesn't mean that uniforming primer pockets isn't worthwhile when combined with annealing, bullet sorting, and so-on.

Your post disagrees with this idea. Please explain how you can apply scientific testing methods to the process of annealing cartridges and prove or disprove the effectiveness of annealing without involving shooting.

 

[Dusty Stevens]

As I said, I'm not a metallurgist but I did take several metallurgy classes as part of my formal education. Part of my study involved annealing and studying cartridge brass. I know how it works. And although I don't routinely measure the hardness of my brass or spend hours polishing and acid etching samples to study under the microscope like I did in the past, I have a pretty fair idea of the results of my particular annealing process when comes to the metallurgical properties of cartridge brass. It has nothing to do with what I WANT to believe. Annealing cartridge brass is well understood science.

What you seem to have missed is that both Mr. Lutz and I are unable to prove is how annealing affects, positively or negatively, the group size of a representative batch of rounds fired at a target 100 yards away. But being unable to prove something is not a final answer, one way or the other.

I don't know how Mr. Lutz feels about annealing after his short experiment but I happen to believe that annealing every time is one small step of many which helps me make ammo good enough to win matches. If I had to choose among three results, those being annealing hurts a little bit, annealing can't possibly make any difference, and annealing is likely help a little bit, I would select the last one, especially since I know something about how annealing works. It makes sense to me that annealing should help even if only to a small degree. It doesn't make sense to me that wearing lucky underwear is more effective than annealing. I happen to believe that one is science and the other is a myth. Others may disagree.

The statistical noise inherent in the way most of us test ammo makes it impossible to quantify the effect of a single small step, uniforming primer pockets for example. But that doesn't mean that uniforming primer pockets isn't worthwhile when combined with annealing, bullet sorting, and so-on.

Your post disagrees with this idea. Please explain how you can apply scientific testing methods to the process of annealing cartridges and prove or disprove the effectiveness of annealing without involving shooting.

Most solutions about shooting on the internet do not actually involve shooting. That would be crazy.

 

[dcali]

If you can’t tell if it matters, you’ve sort of answered your own question. If it can’t be measured, it can’t be measured. That doesn’t mean annealing is bunk. Of course it’s not. It’s old, mature industrial science. That doesn’t mean it makes you shoot better.

Outside of short range benchrest, you should be able to measure anything that matters on the target with a reasonable sample size.

As for short range benchrest, I admit ignorance. Those guys come up with some brilliant stuff and some utter hogwash. Sometimes it’s hard to tell which is which.