Fireforming some brass

[kman300]

Gone

 

[Dogleg]

I like to do my fireforming with Cream of wheat and Unique.

 

[gitrdun]

I wanted some cheap practice brass for my 300 wby so I bought 50 pieces of unknown fired 300h&h brass that was mixed headstamp. Annealed the brass with a candle, put in some ancient 4831 (not sure if it's H or imr, it's "rusty", came in a metal bucket with a sticker on it, I use it for just such purposes), used up some pulled primers I had and some pulled 150gr bullets. I like to shoot the gong at 200 offhand, sitting, kneeling and prone when I'm fireforming but I decided to shoot 1 group at 100 anyways.

Group measured .52", the bigger hole is from the 35 whelen I also had along. I wanted to verify zero after removing the scope and putting it back on with warne qd rings (good to go by the way). 235gr cast in the whelen with 16.5gr unique. Awesome plinking load.

I had 3 cracked shoulders from the bunch. Rest is good to go for practice rounds. Also fireformed some 375h&h loads and that worked too.

As the saying goes, an accurate rifle will shoot crappy ammo better than a crappy rifle will shoot accurate ammo.

Are you sure that you are using the correct terminology? I doubt that you could reach 750F with a candle and have it restricted to the neck only. In fact I don't think that you could reach 750F (proper annealing temp.) with said candle. I anneal my brass, it takes two opposing propane torches about 3-4 seconds to reach the temp (using Tempilaq) but do it quickly enough to restrict it to the neck.

 

[kman300]

Discussion here.
h ttp://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/topics/9928826/all/Annealing_with_a_candle_-_than

 

[guntech]

From what I read it seems anecdotal, not very scientific. A candle just doesn't deliver the heat required.

This is how it should be done...

http://www.annealingmachines.com/how-to-anneal.html
To properly anneal brass, the temperature needs to be at 650 degrees F. for several minutes--BUT this will transfer too-much heat to the lower case in that time. So we need more heat for a shorter time. We need to raise the neck temp to about 750 degrees F. only for a few seconds to anneal.

 

[rokoro]

I don't think the candle will get a case hot enough either. I've used the procedure that Norma recommended over 40 years ago. Stand the cases in an old cake pan with 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch of water in the pan. Heat the case neck with a small propane torch until you see the colour turn blueish then tip the case over in the water. If you heat until the neck glows red you have over annealed and the neck will be softer than you want it. No problem. Re-size the case load and fire once and the case work hardens back to where you want it.

 

[kman300]

I've always used a torch in the past but since this was dirt cheap brass and who knows what shape it was in, I figured I'd give it a try. The brass doesn't get discolored like with the torch but it seemed to work just fine. To be fair I did not fireforming any without annealing but I have a feeling they would have all split.