How do I Anneal?

Looks like there is lots of schools of thought on this with a common consensus.
That's why I love this place. Different opinions but all are respected.
I think I'll use the practice with range pick ups and start to time it.
I'd hate to ruin my Lapua cases annealing. Kinda defeats the purpose lol.
So many variables make it a real trial and hope no error process.
 
Yup , just heat up and then tip in a pan of water and/ or just hold it till she's too hot and drop her in the drink. Rotating of course and just barely get the neck orange. Dunno if it's right but it's easy and seems to work for me. Sometimes skip water and just place in table.
 
This topic come up fairly often, bad information is given and seems to be accepted by quite a few members.

Proper info is given and most seem to gloss right over it and continue the debate of incorrect procedure.

If you want to do it correctly, you must understand the colour means nothing other than being over cooked. If you don't want to spend loads of money, that's fine, the drill method or finger method works. BUT you have no idea what temperature your actually hitting unless you use tempilaq to gauge your time and flame depth. Once you can get those correct and consistant, run all your same batch brass. Consistency and temperature are the big factors here.
 
Shooter ----/ said:
This topic come up fairly often, bad information is given and seems to be accepted by quite a few members.

Proper info is given and most seem to gloss right over it and continue the debate of incorrect procedure.

If you want to do it correctly, you must understand the colour means nothing other than being over cooked. If you don't want to spend loads of money, that's fine, the drill method or finger method works. BUT you have no idea what temperature your actually hitting unless you use tempilaq to gauge your time and flame depth. Once you can get those correct and consistant, run all your same batch brass. Consistency and temperature are the big factors here.
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You're absolutely right that you can't know the precise temperature or control the precise amount of annealing by only looking at the colour but if someone doesn't need the utmost level of consistency for ultra-precise, competitive, long range shooting, the colour shift appears to be good enough. You say the colour change means it's too hot but what does this level of over-annealing do? I get significantly less neck splits (almost zero) versus not annealing using this method, no excessive case stretching vs. unannealed brass, no crushed necks, no donuts, and no loose bullets from poor neck tension. It appears to greatly extend my brass life but doesn't appear to have any downsides within my uses. There is significant anecdotal evidence saying the same thing. I know the plural of anecdote is not data but I don't see any issue with this method for most practical applications.

I'm not a consistent 1/2-MoA long range precision shooter though so maybe the colour-change method isn't ideal or maybe is terrible for that application. I've talked to several people who shoot at 900m regularly and go to some casual competitions who use the colour-change method and haven't had problems (again, anecdotes aren't data, but it's a pattern).

I have intentionally over-annealed brass before (glowing cherry red) and the necks collapsed when I tried to seat bullets. I have also read of many people who heat the brass to this point and don't have problems so maybe I'm doing something different/wrong. At the end of the day, heating brass till it turns blue appears to greatly reduce neck splits, not cause excessive case stretching, and doesn't appear to negatively effect accuracy. I don't load to 110+% of max pressure like some long-range guys do so maybe things change at some point.

Don't take this the wrong way. I'm not saying "you're dumb, you're wrong" or anything like that. I understand that knowing the precise temperature will make for much more consistent annealing; but what does this extra consistency mean in the real world? If we're talking about shooting a .05" smaller group at 1000yds, then it's probably worth it for people in the competition world. But for those of us who shoot for fun and just try to beat our previous best; will it even make a noticeable difference?
 
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medvedqc said:
anyone ever used a candle and his hands to do it?
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Technically a candle will do the job. But it'll take a LOT longer to heat up and the candle will soot up the casing so you don't see the colour change.

So in practical terms no it won't work. The sooting up will ruin the ability to see when the metal undergoes the colour shift. You need a clean burning blue flame.
 
wolf300H&H said:
Yup , just heat up and then tip in a pan of water and/ or just hold it till she's too hot and drop her in the drink. Rotating of course and just barely get the neck orange. Dunno if it's right but it's easy and seems to work for me. Sometimes skip water and just place in table.
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A pretty constant point in the thread before you posted is that actually reaching a temperature where a glow from the metal is obvious is a sign that it went way past the target temperature. An orange neck to me suggests that it's up to a dull red heat. And that's WAY past where you want to be.
 
The only colour change I've seen occur at the correct temp seems to come from the flame and not the brass itself.

Like I pointed out, if you know the correct flame placement and time, the basic techniques work. I myself am not OCD and therefore can't count off seconds close enough each time to get the consistency needed for accuracy. Maybe running a metronome or a grandfather clock would help. For someone who has been doing it for a very long time, I would expect that he/she would have a system down and would have found what timing and flame worked best for each large batch of brass. Some high level shooters cycle through brass lots of one thousand cases at a time. With all those cases being match prepped, a consistant technique is really the biggest issue.

Really the big point is, get some Tempilaq and give it a try. For something so cheap, it boggles my mind why people won't just order a bottle to do this whole exercise correct.
 
sunray said:
Blue is too hot. Red hot is worse. Heat until the brass changes colour only.
Really best to sit the cases in a pan of water up to the shoulder, heat 'em and tip 'em over.
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this is your best option and safest. you will have to really work to get them too hot sitting in water up to the shoulders, as the heat transfer to the water thru brass is funking amazing. you will need oxy acetelene to ruin cases this way.

when he's right.. he's right
 
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