When to anneal cases?

[Joe Marella]

How does one establish that it is time to anneal your cases? What do you look for? What are the the tell tail signs?

JPM

 

[ballisticdaddy]

Here is a recent thread on this subject.... http://forum.accurateshooter.com/threads/when-to-anneal.3931515/

 

[Mozella]

How does one establish that it is time to anneal your cases? What do you look for? What are the the tell tail signs?

JPM

As far as I'm concerned, it's time to think about annealing as soon as you accumulate a hundred or two hundred fired cases. The tell tail sign I use is the buzz on my wife's clothes dryer. After I clean my brass I dry it on her tennis shoe rack in her clothes dryer. Then I immediately anneal it. So for me it's a buzzing sound which is the trigger to start up my annealing machine.

Other people who don't anneal every time say that when your case necks all split, that's the tell tail sign that you should have annealed you brass one cycle earlier.

Seriously, why wait until you see some sort of damage? If you're involved in precision reloading, why not anneal every time? You can build a very accurate automatic annealing machine for around a hundred bucks, or a hundred and a half if you make it real fancy. It only takes a few minutes to anneal a hundred rounds and costs almost nothing.

 

[Capt. Oblivious]

I aneal after every firing, just another step in my reloading process

 

[Texas10]

How does one establish that it is time to anneal your cases? What do you look for? What are the the tell tail signs?

JPM

One of the early signs that annealing is advised is inconsistency in your shoulder bump. As the brass work hardens and become stiffer and more brittle, you'll get larger variances in your base to shoulder dimension after FL sizing. You'll also get more variation in bullet seating pressure, and therefore more variation in seating depth. And as the neck becomes more brittle and resisting bullet seating, the shoulder flexes more and then springs back.

I have recently switched to annealing with the hot salt bath method. Inexpensive to buy, easy to set up, consistent results. Makes annealing every cycle much more palatable.

 

[Mark204]

I'm annealing after every firing, me thinks it will keep things more consistent and predictable.


Mark