A Definitive study of Annealing

I agree totally with the consistency first thing I did with my machine was void any warranty by replacing the PWM with this unit

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00QLYO7XU/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

here is the modded unit. With that PWM the speed will be exactly the same each time.

I let the flame burn for about three to five minutes to stabilize then put a trash case in with the motor off and the case in position. I try and pinpoint the cone of the flame vertically and with the junction of neck and shoulder horizontally. With a half full bottle of propane once the flame stabilizes it will be consistent for 50 cases no problem.

Also modded the torch holder a bit by adding a couple of knobs from a hardware store and a diy delron bushing. Not really necessary since once the torch is set very little adjustment is needed. You will notice that in these pics the cases were annealed after cleaning but before resizing and depining. after reading that report from AMP I am cleaned, depined, and neck sized before annealing to see what if any effect it has on SD

28jxngg.jpg
 
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Good thread.

I've not seen any accuracy gains with annealing. I sort brass by runout. IMO other brass processing steps that are used to ensure concentric rounds pay higher accuracy dividends. But I have extended brass life by annealing. I find I lose more brass to enlarged primer pockets than case neck problems with brass I have annealed regularly.
 
I've not seen any accuracy gains with annealing.
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just out of curiosity what distance/discipline do you normally shoot and what annealing method are you using? Unless you are a BR or a long range shooter I doubt you will.

Oh and why do you sort by concentricity? Ammo that is not concentric can be trued up. I have found most stuff coming out of a Lee collet is pretty concentric straight from the press out occasional a .0015 or greater will pop out. Not many but maybe 3 or 4 out of 50, but they can be tweaked back in with one of these

https://www.hornady.com/reloading/p...ols-and-gauges/lock-n-load-concentricity-tool
 
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I generally shoot at 200 yards at the range, 300 if I shoot from my property.

My method is simple, I use a Bernz-O-Matic torch, put the brass in a nut-driver, rest my hand on a support, and turn by hand and count. Works well for me.

I have Lee Collet Neck Dies for all my bottle neck cases but I discovered I get better accuracy when I FL size my brass. All my rifles have chambers on the small side of the tolerance range. In fact, I have discovered that different brand FL sizing dies make a difference in accuracy and I can tell where the round will land just by the feel of closing the bolt. For the cartridges I load I find Lyman FL dies the most aggressive when sizing cases and a close second is CH. RCBS, Redding and Hornady (when I had them) sized bigger than Lyman and CH.

I use the Forster concentricity tool.

I see your link but you could not pay me to keep a Hornady brand anything equipment on my bench. I've had multiple bad experiences with their Customer Service. With the exception of some bullets I bought in bulk, I purged my bench of all things Hornady long ago.
 
I don't think that at 200 to 300 any significant deviation in velocity won't affect ballistics much unless you are shooting BR and worrying about .1's

At 600 plus I can see my groups tightening though the more attention I give to case prep. I can't speak for all Hornady tools but the one I linked works pretty well
 
I agree, small deviations in velocity won't affect ballistics all that much and a person would be hard pressed to see the difference on a target. Where I see a difference is how the round chambers in the gun. For example, if I get resistance on bolt closure with my Kimber 84M 223 Rem the round always hits left, always. If I get resistance on bolt closure with my Sauer 202 7mm RM the round always hits down and right. 221 Fireball and 25-06 exhibit similar behavior.

Another thing I discovered just from shooting in different configurations is - I get more predictable behavior when I use a bi-pod vs. my Uncle Buds Bulls Bag. And, it makes a difference how I hold the gun when using the bi-pod. I find if I use a buttstock rest with the gun nested firmly in my shoulder and hold the bi-pod leg I get better results than if I use the buttstock rest and hold the forestock.

At first I thought these random anomalies but the more I paid attention to things the more I discovered the consistent behaviors that best favor accuracy.
 
Flashhole,

Have you read Bugholes from a Bi-pod?


I'll restate what I said earlier: unless you know you have a truly and measurably consistent annealing method, it's very hard to know whether failure to see an accuracy improvement is because annealing doesn't help or because you've introduced variation in neck strength and hardness or because you are annealing to a sub-optimal degree. So far, only the AMP unit has a verifiable approach to producing a certain targeted hardness. Even then, you are depending on them to have determined what hardness is best for precision shooting. We know that manufacturer annealing prevents season cracking, but do we know that is also what's best for target precision? I think there is still work to be done in this arena.
 
Thank's for that article on Froggy. I remember reading that a couple of years ago but had lost the link and forgotten it. It's a great read and I also envy the neatness of his bench

My theory at the moment is that extreme speed anomalies are one of the causes of flyers. A 50 FPS difference will not affect the external ballistics more than a .1 inch or so at 100 yards however it could cause a major difference where the bullet exits and at which point in the barrel whip because of the harmonics which could put the shot off the group by an inch or more. This is just my theory but it would be like shooting 1 round with 44.0 grains of powder then the next with 44.3 or 43.6 to get the velocity spread. Something to think about. I don't think many here will argue that consistency in all the aspects of loading and shooting is the key to accuracy and neck tension does should affect the velocity.

Just my 2 cents worth
 
Hounddawg,

What you are actually describing is change in barrel time, and that does happen. The bullet experiences greatest acceleration at the pressure peak, which occurs in the first couple of inches of travel down the bore. If that peak is higher, then it starts the journey down the rest of the tube with higher initial velocity and that gets it out of the muzzle early, shortening barrel time. QuickLOAD gives barrel time in its output,

The harmonics are frequently mentioned and are an older idea that I think the late Creighton Audette started the conversation on with his ladder technique. It is, however, not exactly what goes on. The harmonics actually appear after the bullet exits. It's like the firing event plucks the "string" that is the barrel, and free ringing oscillations then occur. What happens when the bullet is still going down the bore is two things: First is that because most rifles have the bore axis above the point of support at the butt, the muzzle rises with recoil and this puts a bend in a barrel for the same reason raising the handle of a whip to crack it puts an arch in the thicker part near the handle. On a barrel that is long relative to its diameter, this bending is significant and the upper hump of the arch is complete before you get to the muzzle, which is then around the corner from the end of the main hump. The location of the corner is what barrel contact tuners in the stock control, with a longer muzzle portion just past the bend having a slower rise for longer barrel times. Secondly there is some pressure distortion that changes the barrel stiffness and rolls it forward behind the bullet. This cracks the whip by trying to straighten the bore back out again.

These are complicated interactions, but Varmint Al has a good animation done by finite element analysis on fancy government software. He also has a page showing a series of animations of the 8 different harmonic modes of a barrel after the bullet has left, which are interesting but not particularly relevant to accurate shot placement.

Both the Audette Ladder and the OCW system of load development use barrel time to tune loads, though the former is aimed at the vertical dispersion while the latter tries to take both axes into account and that pressure wave distortion of the muzzle can affect POI. In both instances it is desirable to find a flat spot wide enough that you can change the load by as much as possible without changing POI. This gives you immunity to the velocity variation you described. If we could make absolutely perfectly consistent guns and ammo that produced the same velocity with the same amount of muzzle deflection for every shot, we wouldn't need to tune the loads at all, as the shots would always then have the same angle of departure and trajectory. But since guns bend a little differently as they heat up or expand against their bedding and since ammo barrel time tends to follow the velocity around a mean value with a normal distribution, finding a wide sweet spot grants you immunity to a good deal of that variation and is why the OCW method (or a good Audette ladder, for that matter) looks for a same POI from at least three load increments in a row.
 
F. Guffey said:
Mozella. very good.

And again, I decided there were rules to annealing, I decided there were factors; and then I sat down and made some equipment that did not violate a few simple rules and agreed with factors.

F. Guffey
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you sure like to talk in riddles... makes you feel superior?

Mozella said:
For example, I refuse to cut powder kernels. (It isn't).
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wouldn't that alter the burning characteristics, and therefore burning rate/speed and defeat the purpose?

I remember reading an article about BRs weighing powder to the exact, so an experiment was done altering weights, and it was apparent that a difference of 2-2.5% made no difference on target.
perhaps a confidence builder?
 
you sure like to talk in riddles... makes you feel superior?
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I would like to thank you for that but I see nothing I can thank you for, in my opinion we have reloaders jumping into annealing without understanding the problem. I believe we have annealers that are talking if lofty terms a few of them remind me of the big rooster bulling the little chicken hawk; they start out with something like "I say, I say there you pesky little rascal.

I have no ideal how practice it is to start out with rules and factors, I do know one lead melting and shooting site out west changed at least one factor by inserting it into their copy written material. It is possible they assumed all reloaders understood their were factors.

And then? Without factors there is no reason for why.

F. Guffey
 
I have to say I cannot recommend the videos by TiborasaurusRex. He may be a good shot, but I'm afraid his understanding of physics seems mostly to be how he tries to explain things to himself and he winds up pretty far afield of what an actual physicist would say. I watched the video in which he attempted to explain bullet stability and he got it wrong in almost every detail. I was actually sort of amazed by that, as there's plenty available to read on the subject. In this case, I watched far enough to learn he doesn't appear to know what a standing wave actually is nor what it takes to form one. Suffice it to say, most bullets will be out of the barrel before there would be time for one to form. I will make myself watch the rest later, but I'm not anticipating a better result than he got with bullet stability. Perhaps his practical shooting videos are more useful than those attempting physics.

If you want to learn about what actually happens to a barrel, look at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories engineer Varmint Al's work that I linked to in my earlier post. It is spot on.
 
Well stated. I did not watch the video more than a few minutes myself. That's saying something given I am easily entertained.
 
did not watch the entire video but I have to dosagree with the part about the standing wave. Varmit Al's own site states that sound travels through stainless at about 14,500 FPS. Plenty of time for a standing wave to form.

check out Varmint Al's animation of barrel harmonics

http://www.varmintal.com/atune.htm

it sure looks more like he is describing a standing wave than a traveling wave

https://physics.info/waves-standing/

but then once again we are discussing a "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin" point
 
T O'Heir wrote;

"...stop any debate whatsoever..." HAHAHAHAHA. That's funny.
Annealing has one purpose and only one purpose. It extends case life. It does nothing for accuracy. Isn't necessary for any case except bottle necked cases or every time a case is loaded. And is very much not rocket science or magic.
It's trying to mechanize the process that causes most issues. That and heating the case too hot. As in red hot is too hot.
"..."lost in the weeds"..." Range tax and/or a sacrifice to the hunting/shooting deities. Works the same with arrows.


Respectfully, if your neck tension is inconsistent, it affects accuracy.
 
"Respectfully, if your neck tension is inconsistent, it affects accuracy."

Interesting statement. Would it be more correct to say - If your neck tension is inconsistent, it affects repeat-ability.

If all neck tensions were the same at either extreme of inconsistency you would have uniformity in your loads and the possibility for good accuracy.
 
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