Anneal or not .... ?

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Sharps '63

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I just went on a binge, sizing and trimming hundreds of .308 and .30-'06 casings to get ready for spring when I won't have the time. I noticed half a dozen case necks splits in an old batch of WW .308 brass, reloaded perhaps 4-5 times. Why Winchester? I've always bought factory WW ammo for hunting and accumulated the brass over the years, augmented by a couple of bulk buys at a good price.

I've long annealed my 45-70 brass and .30-'06 brass for my M1, so I know the drill and got busy on all my .308 brass as well. Monotonous and time consuming, but now I'm good to go for several more reloading sessions.

There hadn't been much case stretching in either the '06 or .308, commercial and military, but it all got trimmed to the recommended trim length and then run through my RCBS case prep machine before annealing. Next the priming chore .....

How many of you anneal your brass? I know guys who don't, simply discarding any cases with spit necks. I'm not prepared to that after I've gone through the bother of sizing and trimming hundreds of cases.
 
I've found that most shooters are not inclined to anneal brass. It seems to be a dark art.

It was my WW 45-70 brass that first got me into annealing. The thin case walls really got work hardened as my Shiloh '74 has a tight chamber and requires full length resizing.
 
I shoot a number of metric calibres that brass is either expensive or hard to obtain. I anneal everything after 5 firings. I have some cases that have been fired over 20 times by annealing them.
 
You only need to anneal when you get one cracked case. Certainly not on a regular basis and never every time.
As you have several WW cases that are cracked, I'd anneal the WW cases only. Annealing all your cases would take until spring.
 
Anneal yes.
How often depends on the brass.
Something odd and unusual and expensive I anneal every reloading.
308, 30-06, 25-06, 7 X 57 about every 5 reloadings.
300 HH, 375 HH, 308 Norma, 358 Norma about every 3 reloadings.

To me it is cheaper than replacing.

Ken.
 
Firstly, Winchester brass is near the bottom of the heap as far as quality goes, in my opinion. I buy Remington when I can, and Starline when I can't.
Annealing is a dark art. I have ruined some brass by over doing it, and have seen no improvement in case life by lightly annealing either.
I figure the brass is at the right temperature, or it isn't, close ain't good enough, and very few have the knowledge and experience to do this job right.
If all you want is longer case life, overly soft brass is probably not going to be much of an issue, but if not done right, the brass will not be as consistent.
 
I load and shoot in batches of 50. Once I get a split or a case mouth that won't stay resized, I drop the entire batch in a bag for annealing. I start with a new batch. I anneal when I have 500 cases to do.
 
I've done la lot of reading and surfing on annealing. Right now I'm content to judge heat exposure to a slow count of a few seconds, depending upon the calibre and brand name, military or civilian brass. I found that I wasn't a good judge by colour change, even with tempilaq. I've got it down to a science for my needs and purposes.

I used to water quench, now I let it air cool on the advice from old timers on the Shiloh forum. Works for me .... and them.

The old lot of brass I mentioned had never been annealed. Other brass of the same vintage that had been annealed has not yet suffered a case neck split. To my mind, that's a pretty good indicator that it's a worthwhile task.
 
Cordless drill, socket adapter , appropriate deep socket to fit the brass.

Regular torch.

Bucket of water.

Simply turn the neck of the brass through the flame, dump case in water once temperature is achieved, put in new case.Make sure the case is a bit smaller than the socket so it falls out easy, no burnt fingers. ;)

The socket also works as a bit of a heat sink on the lower part of the case as well.

silverfoxdj said:
Cool.. but looking for something simple
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