How NOT to anneal your brass.....

Having cooked my fair share of brass, I wouldn't bother trying to work the necks enough to work harden again. They are soft like taffy and you can crush them using your finger nail - garbage.

The 650F tempilac stick is what I use and it does mark the brass enough. I started with the liq but it left a horrid crud on the case that was a pain to scrub off. The sticks just go poof and leave little trace.

The way I anneal, I know that I am on the conservative side as the colour change on the shoulder is just starting. I figure, better to be a little bit under then over.

I am playing around with dual flames and like it much better then twirling in one. I think using the blue part of the flame and getting a slower heating is better then the white part. Too fast and too much chance to go over.

That guy is going to make his brass supplier happy...

Jerry
 
SandRoad said:
Sorry, but no. Cooling of brass in water only stops the annealing process, does nothing to the physical quality of the brass.

See CyaN1de's post and the link I posted above.
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Sandroad you might want to read more on the topic.

Actually the method of cooling can change the the the yield stress of the brass. There are a million and one ways that the experts all swear by.

Heating and cooling very much affect the crystal lattice structure of the brass. If you heat brass and quench it in water at this point, the brass retains the small crystals and is annealed with very few dislocations and is stress free.

If the brass is slowly cooled, the small crystals begin to coalesce and grow into larger crystals and the properties suffer because the large crystal boundaries are not strong.

Go to http://varmintal.com/arelo.htm#Anneal for more info. I use this method and so should anyone who does not have specialized equipment.
 
Here's the method I use - right from a fellow CGNer

kombayotch said:
Very nice! I've heard of some of the benchrest guys going as high as 150 times. Let us know when you hit the next milestone. Its an interesting experiment.

Here's my economic annealing case holder to compliment this info:

P1040718.jpg


$3 worth of plumbing fittings. Works the same as the Hornady kit: insert case, rotate in flame using drill, tilt down and dump the case out (into water).

And yes, I know I need to get more of the shoulder...
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I need a propane torch and a dark room, and as soon as redness starts to appear on the shoulder, I dump it into water. I can do 500 in an hour.

This cheap hardware store setup provides very even heating, the jig protects the lower part of the case from the flame and acts as a heat sink, and there's no finger contact with hot brass. I know there are more expensive and complicated systems, but I doubt they're any better, and many are worse IMO.
 
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rightroad said:
Sandroad you might want to read more on the topic.

Actually the method of cooling can change the the the yield stress of the brass. There are a million and one ways that the experts all swear by.

Heating and cooling very much affect the crystal lattice structure of the brass. If you heat brass and quench it in water at this point, the brass retains the small crystals and is annealed with very few dislocations and is stress free.

If the brass is slowly cooled, the small crystals begin to coalesce and grow into larger crystals and the properties suffer because the large crystal boundaries are not strong.

Go to http://varmintal.com/arelo.htm#Anneal for more info. I use this method and so should anyone who does not have specialized equipment.
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We are all saying the same thing but in different ways.

What Varmint Al is saying is that if it is not stopped by quenching then the crystals will continue to combine into larger ones. This is because he is heating up his brass too hot, to about 750*°F, and because of that, he MUST stop the annealing otherwise his brass will become too soft.

You can reach exactly the same state of annealing by not heating as much, 650°F and letting them air cool.

Quenching the cases in water is a quick way of ensuring that the metals stop dissolving into each other and forming crystals when you have overheated the brass. The hotter the brass, the faster it anneals and you need to stop the process QUICK.

It is simply a matter of time and temperature and you trade off one against the other. All of the "methods" that people advocate are just variations on how to arrive at the correct combination of time versus temperature. The process is very well documented in all mechanics of materials textbooks.

Years ago I did experiments were we quenched, tempered and annealed many metals, and then polished samples and looked at them under a microscope to see the grain structure.
 
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SandRoad said:
We are all saying the same thing but in different ways.

What Varmint Al is saying is that if it is not stopped by quenching then the crystals will continue to combine into larger ones. This is because he is heating up his brass too hot, to about 750*°F, and because of that, he MUST stop the annealing otherwise his brass will become too soft.

You can reach exactly the same state of annealing by not heating as much, 650°F and letting them air cool.

Quenching the cases in water is a quick way of ensuring that the metals stop dissolving into each other and forming crystals when you have overheated the brass. The hotter the brass, the faster it anneals and you need to stop the process QUICK.

It is simply a matter of time and temperature and you trade off one against the other. All of the "methods" that people advocate are just variations on how to arrive at the correct combination of time versus temperature. The process is very well documented in all mechanics of materials textbooks.

Years ago I did experiments were we quenched, tempered and annealed many metals, and then polished samples and looked at them under a microscope to see the grain structure.
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Yeah, I see your point. I'm think Andy there has a really slick method I'm willing to try. My experience has meant I can reload 20-25 times before I start seeing a split case or two on a batch of brass.

Glad someone started this thread. Cheers!
 
after how many firings are you guys annealing your cases? Do you do it just once or say after every X amount of times fired re-anneal them?
 
That's my setup above.

I anneal after 5-6 firings or when I see that the brass needs it. If I'm not getting consistent neck tension after sizing, etc...

I anneal in a dark room. I use the Benz-o-matic torch with the hose (find it works better than the pencil flame). If you watch the neck in the flame, the brass turns blue before it starts to glow. The colour starts at the case mouth and propagates down to the shoulder (brass must be clean). About two seconds after it hits the shoulder, the case starts to glow. I pull it from the flame as soon as the colour hits the shoulder, before it starts to glow, and dump it into water.

I test each case by pressing lightly against the sharp corner of something hard (like the laminate on the counter). If this leaves a mark, the case is toast. After doing this for a while, I loose very few cases out of a large batch. Get some old cases or range pickups and practice for a bit before you try it on good cases.
 
Also, invest in a few gage pins. The cheaper ones only cost $3 each and come in 0.0005" increments. They are an easy way to verify neck tension and check for donuts.
 
tps50701 said:
I've seen that one before - oh boy is he ever using way too much heat.

As well as only on one side of the case!

I have the Brass-o-matic annealing machine - it covers the entire neck and shoulder and only uses the outside edge of the 2 opposing flames for 6 seconds, on a 308 case.

Just turns a very dull orange and then it`s out of the flame - you`re done! They give some very good research for their machine, in their instructions. This explains the whole process they went through to find the correct dwell times in the flame, when they used Tempilaq.

Nice machine - I really enjoy annealing now. Kinda like the whole process of reloading - laid back take my time and let the machine do it all for me.

I just feed cases onto the turntable and they drop out on the end of the cycle.

Cheers, Carl
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That is pretty slick... I'd set it up on my patio and drink beer and feed the machine...:D
 
Also, invest in a few gage pins. The cheaper ones only cost $3 each and come in 0.0005" increments. They are an easy way to verify neck tension and check for donuts.
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Please, I followed everything up to this point, can you explain "gage pins" and how same is used to verify neck tension, and what is a "donut". (I mean donut in this context, I know about the Tim Horton's kind ).
 
Duck_Hunter said:
after how many firings are you guys annealing your cases? Do you do it just once or say after every X amount of times fired re-anneal them?
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I don't believe there is a fixed number. I have a couple of rifles that crack brass in 4 loadings, and at least one that is currently up to 8 loadings without significant attrition.
 
commonman said:
Please, I followed everything up to this point, can you explain "gage pins" and how same is used to verify neck tension, and what is a "donut". (I mean donut in this context, I know about the Tim Horton's kind ).
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A gage pin is simply a rod that is ground to a precise diameter. You use them a go/no-go gages in holes, to tell their diameter.

http://www.meyergage.com/products/individual_class_z_pins.htm

Let's say I wanted 0.336" neck ID on my 308 Win. brass. A 0.3360" gage pin should slide tightly into the neck, but a 0.3365" or 0.3370" on should not fit.

See this thread for donuts and their negative effects:
http://www.canadiangunnutz.com/forum/showthread.php?t=330018
 
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