Annealing

bobv

bobv

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Today , I tried my hand at annealing some of my 308 Brass with a machine one of my friend threw together with some wood , a 10" metal plate drilled , an 1" drive wheel, a BBQ motor and 2 torches. Works just fine, fast, consistent speed and clean. Did about 200 cases in about 25 minutes...see pic
Bob

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That is really awesome man, please let us know if your brass lasts forever and your shooting is more accurate!
 
Nice looking rig you have there. Is there a way to regulate the rpm on the motor? I was considering making something similar but I got stuck on trying to have the cases rotate individually as they revolve on the plate. Please post picks of your finished cases.
 
I don't think you can regulate the speed of the motor...maybe with a dimmer swich...don't know!!!All i know is that ,the motor turns a 1" or so wheel that runs againts a 10" plate that holds the brass ...so you get a 10 to 1 reduction..which seems to work alright, the brass doesn't stay too long in the flames and come out with the right color on the neck and shoulder..see pic. As mentioned I didn't make this machine...but it's cheap and does the job
Bob

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The brass does not spin on the plate but the flames heat the brass at different angles and the heat transfers pretty evenly around the brass. You could always place the torches differenty of course, so the heat from both sides..I guess!!But like I said it seems to work great the way it is...:cool:
Bob
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Looks really good. You may need to adjust one of the torches so that it is hitting the mouth of the case too - the cases look annealed except near the mouth where it looks to be the same color which may lead to a cracked mouths...
 
You have a triangle cut into the base. If you let the cases drop through into a pail of water, you will eliminate the chance of heat conducting down into the case head where it will soften the head.
Neat set-up, I might have to do the same!
 
Instead of rushing out and getting my dad to make me one of these units, would you guys recommend just getting some gloves, a torch, a pail of water and trying this out? It looks like an afternoon job to make this device!
 
Chise, that is a nice useful tool if you're making a tool to do a lot of cases. It doesn't have to be made from metal and it doesn't have to be motorised.

I'm not really sure why everyone is so paranoid about the base getting heated though. The chances are extremely slim that there will ever be enough heat generated there to make a hint of difference. Those cases are flash heated when fired to a far higher temp than that.

New brass is very even and soft by the way and I've personally heated a 25 round batch of brass in an oven to over 400 degrees F before quenching at least 10 times.
They are Winchester commercial and in 300WSM. They have a bad habit of getting hardened after each firing and have done so since new.

Ive never had a problem with any of them. The only casualty so far is the one I sawed in half to check wall thickness at the area above the web. It was fine. None of the cases has any head expansion nor do they show any expansion rings that aren't normal. There isn't any sign of primer pocke expansion either.

I'm wondering how much of a myth that really is about heating up the necks only? Maybe perpetrated a century ago when the cases contained more copper and they were just interested in neck resizing rather than full length resizing.

Nice rig by the way and looks simple, Maybe you fellows should build a cleaner version and market it commercially. I'll bet someone like Cabellas or Sinclairs would be interested.
 
I'd be willing to pay money for something like that if my father wasn't retired / bored / good at fabricating stuff and for some reasons seems to enjoy the fact that his son took up a shooting hobby.
 
Could you build ME one? I put one together except I lack the drilling capability and I used a 10" saw blade mounted on a BBQ motor as well. The teeth of the saw blade move the cases just fine, but I had trouble coming up with a system to mount the torches. That looks fretty cool - well done
 
To make the brass spin, mount a rubber band under the plate, so that the rubber band just rubs against the head of the case, or engages in the groove of the rim. It will be like a little pulley. As the case moves along, it will spin itself.

Just a rubber band between 2 tacks. then you can place the tacks to get tension and pressure on the case head correct.

You don't need to quench if you don't overheat the cases. Keep in mind that when you are not quenching, it is better to use LESS heat. It is hard to tell, but by the colour change of your cases the brass might be getting close to being overheated.
 
bearhunter said:
New brass is very even and soft by the way and I've personally heated a 25 round batch of brass in an oven to over 400 degrees F before quenching at least 10 times.
They are Winchester commercial and in 300WSM. They have a bad habit of getting hardened after each firing and have done so since new...


I'm wondering how much of a myth that really is about heating up the necks only? Maybe perpetrated a century ago when the cases contained more copper and they were just interested in neck resizing rather than full length resizing.
Click to expand...

Are you saying that you do this oven thing to soften the necks because they have been hardened by firing & sizing? Because 400F will take approximately a million years to achieve any annealing affect on brass. If it did, your rifle would no longer be in one piece because the case heads on drawn brass cases are intentionally left in a very hard condition. No, that is not old wives' BS, the cases are left in a hard drawn state up to within about 13mm of the shoulder.

So, I am not sure why your cases are getting better life by your baking technique, but there is essentially no way you are annealing them.


I will agree that the heads are far more tolerant of heat than most people give them credit for, and I never quench any of my cases after annealing. You would have to be quite reckless to get the heads up to the 350C plus required to anneal them in a short period of time.
 
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