I started out annealing a few years ago using my drill, socket and torch. Then I decided to buy an Annealeeze, the price was right and it looked like it had potential. Well after doing 300 cases that got sent back to the shop. Then I decided to increase my budget and buy a Giraud annealer because a lot of guys I knew were using and swore by it. Well, that turned to have several major problems that no one wanted to admit to because Doug Giraud is a club member. I got rid of that one and got myself a home made Skip annealer. The design was excellent, but the motors I bought weren't very good and that gave rise to several issues. I still have it as a back up.
Then a friend of mine got an AMP annealer and sold me his Benchsource annealer. That was a well built machine that will probably be still working after I start pushing up daisies. However, changing calibers was a bit of a pain, two torches seemed overkill and having to feed one at the time got old fast. So I sold that off. I got myself an AMP because it was the "hot number". Annealing in the house without a torch had a good deal of appeal, alas it got to be painfully slow handling each case several times. To do 100 cases took me nearly 2 hours. To make matters worse my ES's and SDs remained unchanged. That wasn't a sustainable solution for me, so I sold that one off and bought myself an MRB annealer.
Well, I have to take my hat off to Mike, he made a few modifications to the Skip annealer design that I consider a quantum leap forward. He used heavy duty motors and a clever case ejection system that is brilliant. I believe that after a long journey I've finally arrived at my destination. Reliability, speed, consistency, easy to change calibers. It is very close to perfect. If it had a way to attach the propane tank to the annealer like the Giraurd does, and a handle to make moving the whole thing a one handed affair this would be the perfect annealer. It takes 17 minutes to anneal 100 cases. I've done 500 in one sitting without interruptions and hick-ups.
kindest regards,
Joe