i cooked my brass too long :O

nate18

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so i got a new frankford aresenal and i started using it, well i put my brass in the oven on low to dry but i kinda forgot it in there. it sat in at 350 for maybe an hour. its got darker color to it now. think its ok? if i can figure out how to upload pics to this damn site again i will.
 
Don't put in the oven past 200F 45 minutes will dry over 200 308 cases from my SS tumbler, as long as I roll them around in a towel before the oven. Less chance of screwing things up that way.
 
350F should be fine. Cartridge brass doesn't typically soften until closer to 500F minimum

The color is just some accelerated oxide layer
 
nate18

I dry my brass in a five gallon bucket using a hair drier, and it dries in 15 minutes. I got side tracked and let them dry too long and the top cases in the bucket looked like yours and totally annealed. The cases were fine and never reached 650 to 700 degrees needed to ruined the brass.

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The Science of Cartridge Brass Annealing
http://bisonballistics.com/articles/the-science-of-cartridge-brass-annealing

It is critical to understand that we are talking about annealing case necks only. The rest of the case is work hardened during manufacturing and left that way on purpose. It must be strong enough to contain the pressures of firing, and annealing any part of the case except the neck is potentially dangerous. Do not do it. Under no circumstances should you let the case body get anywhere near 700 degrees. If you do, the case is ruined,

brass-annealing-temperature2x_zpsbw9ahn1x.png


When your hot, your hot and when your not your not. ;)
 
If you've ever looked at military cartridges that were not polished after being annealed you will notice blue temper colours on the shoulders, so dark straw is no problem.
 
so i got a new frankford aresenal and i started using it, well i put my brass in the oven on low to dry but i kinda forgot it in there. it sat in at 350 for maybe an hour. its got darker color to it now. think its ok? if i can figure out how to upload pics to this damn site again i will.

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.
 
The problem is that an oven may reach much higher temps than desired till the thermostat reacts.
I personally would advise against using that brass since there is no way to be sure what temperatures were reached.

On the rare occasions that I dry brass in the oven I will preheat the oven to 250F and turn it off before putting the brass in the oven.

What kind of brass are we talking about and how much of it?
 
You guy's must be rich to run an oven or cloth's dryer just to dry brass!
I put mine in a mesh/deepfryer basket over a heating duct over night
 
I have never seen a need yet to put them in the oven. I'll let them air dry for a couple days or put them by a heat vent for a couple hours in the winter. In the summer I let them dry in the sun outside and that worked really well on the sunny days.
 
You guy's must be rich to run an oven or cloth's dryer just to dry brass!
I put mine in a mesh/deepfryer basket over a heating duct over night

That's what I'm say'n. If you need to use that brass to reload immediately, you don't have enough brass in your stash. :p

I just collect my brass in a deep fryer basket (Dollar store), shake out as much water as possible, dump onto a papertowel lined tray, shake around to get the surface water off then let sit in front of a fan on low (or by a heat register) for an hour. In the winter time when the air is dry, my brass is usually dry within an hour. In the summer, it's about 2-3hrs. Not like I'm gonna reload right away so what's the rush to dry 'em?
 
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