I currently load for 12 cartridges from .17 Hornet, to .338 Lapua and everything in between. I invested in the AMP for consistency, safety and ease of use. If I'm going from .17 to .338, the effort to change over is literally 30 seconds with no loss of brass due to setup inaccuracies beyond the initial case sacrificed for calibration. Ruining a bunch of Lapua .221 Fireball because I botched how slow my drill spun the socket is not something I'd want to do either. For ME, I'm very satisfied with the investment. Also, I loaded for 32 years before I got my AMP, and I managed pretty well in that time so it's difficult to say but makes my current OCD happy.
Annealing brass
- Thread starter 156821
- Start date
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- Somewhere on the Hudson Bay Coast
There are/were a few procedures that potentially uniform bullet pull weight without the benefit of annealing. The most obvious is segregating your brass so that all the brass in a batch has been fired the same number of times. The idea being that all the necks work harden equally, thus a uniform bullet pull weight is maintained. Crimping your loads uniforms bullet pull weight, and seating the bullet to jam uniforms the bullet pull weight. Applying a sealent to the sank of the bullet would also uniform the bullet pull weight, but I don't recommend the practice, although I've seen it referenced for specialized applications, not necessarily for enhancing accuracy.
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Once I switched to a 300WSM for the 1st time I started seeing splits at the neck only after the 2nd firing. (Mostly winchester brass for some reason). As a result I started annealing using the finger method in a fairly dark room. Neck splits have pretty much disappeared since. Seconds in the flame is based on make of the cartridge. I find Federal brass heats up quick like 4 seconds whereas other makes can take 6 to 7 seconds so I sort my brass by make first. Once I start I do a count. After doing a few assuming same brand the count is pretty much bang on. Would love to buy an AMP but I don't shoot enough to justify it. And I don't drop them in water.
Well you gotta like that.
Reminds me of this:
Peterson (again) did a test loading a 308 Winchester to max Saami pressure. 32 times fired. Had 2 thou primer pocket expansion in the end. Had no split necks after 32 times fired. Not annealed along the way. And it was still accurate brass in the end.
https://www.petersoncartridge.com/technical-articles/posts/2017/march/32-firings/
Bubba Yugga
CGN frequent flyer
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- Midwestern Ontario
In the airplane business since the old Pratt & Whitney radial piston bangers like what you'd see on Beavers, Otters, F4U Corsairs, and P47 Thunderbolts, we've always annealed copper washers by holding them with needle nose pliers in a flame till they got all rainbow glisteny, then drop them into cold water.
The understanding was that the water quench would soften them way more than air cool.
Slower air cooling would allow a bit of recrystallizing and thus hardening of the atomic matrix.
Brass, being an alloy, can't be heated as brutally, otherwise the homogeneity or consistency of the alloy could be compromised, resulting in weak spots.
So, that's why you have to heat the neck and shoulder of each case in low light, so you can see when it JUST starts to glow that dark infra-brown.
Dropping it in water will get it just a smidgen softer than air cooling, and that's what I like to do.
Of course, the only (practical) way to harden brass is through work hardening.
The understanding was that the water quench would soften them way more than air cool.
Slower air cooling would allow a bit of recrystallizing and thus hardening of the atomic matrix.
Brass, being an alloy, can't be heated as brutally, otherwise the homogeneity or consistency of the alloy could be compromised, resulting in weak spots.
So, that's why you have to heat the neck and shoulder of each case in low light, so you can see when it JUST starts to glow that dark infra-brown.
Dropping it in water will get it just a smidgen softer than air cooling, and that's what I like to do.
Of course, the only (practical) way to harden brass is through work hardening.
BattleRife
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
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- of No Fixed Address
Oh, the things people come up with. Pure comedy.
I would sure like to see a copy of that Norma publication - particularly the part about "quenching" the case in the water as a stage in achieving consistent hardness (ductility?) in the neck and shoulder.
I can understand standing cases in water while hitting the necks and shoulders with a propane torch and then tipping them over prevents the heat from extending to the base of the case - but I don't believe the rate at which the case neck and shoulder are cooled after being heated is affected in any way by quenching.
Any metallurgists/P.Eng in the room? Metals Handbook or some similar SME reference?
Erik Cortina has a video where he puts annealing to the test, where he anneals brass up to 20 seconds, and believe it or not it's still workable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HfjRKrbYbo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HfjRKrbYbo
I shoot a variety of cartridges, several of which are wildcats. Bottom line is that I never anneal before at least 6 reload cycles (even for those like the Dashers which involve a lot of initial neck stretch when forming)... and all yield consistent 5 shot / 100M groups in the mid .3s when fired in capable rigs. I have a set of 30X cycled 30BR brass that is still producing mid .3s. Granted, most of my rigs are tight necked so cold working is at a minimum.
