Fire-Forming Brass and Annealing

[Ganderite]

I am sizing 308 Lapua brass into 260Rem. I do this by running the case through a 7-08 die and then a 260Rem die. No failures in this step.

Then I anneal the cases.

The next step is to fire the cases in a 260Rem Ackley chamber, which blows out the shoulder, making for more capacity.

Should I anneal again??

Or should have I skipped annealing, fire-formed and then annealed?

 

[Declared Bishop]

I am sizing 308 Lapua brass into 260Rem. I do this by running the case through a 7-08 die and then a 260Rem die. No failures in this step.

Then I anneal the cases.

The next step is to fire the cases in a 260Rem Ackley chamber, which blows out the shoulder, making for more capacity.

Should I anneal again??

Or should have I skipped annealing, fire-formed and then annealed?

I am still learning a lot about this process, so I may be off, but....

When you run the brass through the dies, it work-hardens the brass and stiffins it up. Work it enough and it can crack and fail. When you anneal it, you re-align the molecules in the brass and softens it up again, making it more malleable. I apologize if this is already common knowledge to you.

Personally, my thoughts are that having the brass as malleable as possible for each of those steps would be a good thing. If it were me, I might even consider annealing before doing the first resizing so that I had a known starting point.

I think once you fire formed, you can treat it like any other brass and reloading on the schedule for annealing you are comfortable with.

This is just my $0.02. I could be very wrong, but this is what I would do with my limited understanding.

 

[remington jim]

I am sizing 308 Lapua brass into 260Rem. I do this by running the case through a 7-08 die and then a 260Rem die. No failures in this step.

Then I anneal the cases.

The next step is to fire the cases in a 260Rem Ackley chamber, which blows out the shoulder, making for more capacity.

Should I anneal again??

Or should have I skipped annealing, fire-formed and then annealed?

Absolutely Also anneal before you size the cases down . There is NO DOWNSIDE to annealing every time Only GOOD meaning longer life and more consistent neck tension .

 

[adamg]

More annealing is more better.

 

[Woking]

Anneal for sure.

 

[flying pig]

This is a good post, and appreciated. I’m in a steep learning curve right now with learning 280 Ross, and it’s my first off the path cartridge. I annealed once and have been finding out the hard way that more is better. Lots of inconsistency with case capacity and neck tension. But it’s getting better.

 

[257hunter]

If your annealing system is easy to do then after each step is ideal. Otherwise I would personally wait until you’ve done the fireform. I believe that firing the case hardens it a lot more than a couple passes through a die. I have a hydraulic form die for a 30 Gibbs and with new brass I’ve never ruined one but trying once fired stuff I had about 10% failure rate, annealing the once fired fixed that.

 

[bearhunter]

Absolutely Also anneal before you size the cases down . There is NO DOWNSIDE to annealing every time Only GOOD meaning longer life and more consistent neck tension .

There is no "downside" as long as the heat doesn't go too high, but if it's right, all is good.

I have an old friend who anneals after every shot. He claims it gives him better accuracy.

He can certainly shoot his rifles extremely well, so who am I to contradict him?

 

[remington jim]

There is no "downside" as long as the heat doesn't go too high, but if it's right, all is good.

I have an old friend who anneals after every shot. He claims it gives him better accuracy.

He can certainly shoot his rifles extremely well, so who am I to contradict him?

THATS why a AMP. Is the BEST a there is . Computer controlled annealing