Has my annealing failed and has it banjaxed my accuracy test?

Today was the day.

Got to the range first thing this morning and had 300m to myself. I'd zero'd at 100m, then raise POI but about 5MOA which should have put me on paper at 300m, and it did.

So my plan had been to compare 4 10-shot groups. All with Amax 155n bullets, all Norma cases whose neck ODs were as close to identical as possible, all with my best charge weight to date of 40.55gn of N135 (read 40.6gn).

The first 10shot group had been metered with the Lee as I have always done, the second was metered with a Lyman Gen 6. Groups 3 and 4 were exactly the same as 1 and 2, only they were fired suppressed. The was a moderate, gusty breeze.

Firstly, my groups were not brilliant, even by my standards and did not get very close to my best ever 0.9MOA at 100m

In each group there were one or two flyers so I calculated groups sizes with and without those. Without was never less than 8 or 9 shots, so not too great an omission.

So max spreads as follows-
Lee safety loaded (minus 2 flyers): 1.46MOA
Lee safety loaded (full group): 2.2MOA

Lee safety loaded suppressed (minus 1 flyer): 1.2MOA
Lee safety loaded suppressed (full group): 2.3MOA

Lyman loaded (minus 2 flyers): 1.2MOA
Lyman loaded (full group): 1.9MOA

Lyman loaded suppressed (minus 1 flyer): 1.1MOA
Lyman loaded suppressed (full group): 1.8MOA

So I can see from this that the Lyman loaded ammo was more accurate, be it full group, but even more so with obvious flyers eliminated. Great news and exactly what I wanted to see. It means that I can now load via the Gen 6 in confidence, rather than worrying that my charge weight accuracy would suffer.

POI did change also with unsuppressed impacts landing by and large in the vertical plane of the POA, whilst POI when suppressed was grouped perhaps 0.5MOA right of the POA vertical plane.

I hope that would not exacerbate over great distances, requiring constant windage adjustment regardless of wind conditions, not least because I looooove shooting suppressed! It makes morning of .308 feel like a morning of hot-ish .223!

Anyway, a nice way to start the day and now, having a couple of bachelor days to myself, I shall do some case prep over numerous hops-based beverages and DVDs, surrounded by empty pizza boxes! :D
 
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I'll give you a couple of suggestions and a comment as well and I sincerely hope you don't find any of this offensive. It's easy to hurt feelings when critiquing somebody's shooting results. That is not my intent.

Accurately measuring a good 5-shot group (where they're all touching) is difficult but usually possible. Not so with a good 10-shot group because all you have is a big hole with no idea where the bullets actually impacted. I would recommend you shoot 5-shot groups and evaluate them. Plus, when most folks talk about precision, they often talk about 5-shot groups so if you do the same, you can compare apples to apples.

Second, you have to count flyers if you are serious about precision shooting. Otherwise, you run the risk of getting off into the area of "bar talk", which is something quite different. Flyers are real shots just like the ones which group together unless you somehow thought you were doing a dry firing exercise and the gun accidentally went off. Otherwise, count your flyers................ every one of them. A high percentage of my "pretty good" 5 shot groups have flyers where four bullets touch each other and one is separated from the other four by some measurable distance; some worse than others. If I ignore them, I might think I should start packing for the Olympics.

I imagine your .308 should shoot as well as a typical .223 at 100 yards and perhaps do better at longer ranges. In any case, if you are not shooting 5 shot groups approaching .5 MOA at 100 yards with some regularity, you will find it hard to notice differences caused by annealing, flash hole de-burring, neck size measuring, primer pocket uniforming, and all the other tiny improvements we try to make to our brass.

Expecting to filter out changes related to neck size measurements when you're shooting up around 2 MOA just isn't going to work. If you can't get your 5 shot groups to average around .800 MOA with the good ones down around .500 MOA or below, then you're wasting your time and should look elsewhere for answers to get you to that level of precision before you even start measuring neck size.

Moderately priced factory ammo should shoot below 1 MOA with ease assuming your rifle is good and if you also do your part. If you're not willing to slap a five dollar bill down on the bench and say "Watch me shoot a sub MOA group and pick up this five dollar bill if I don't.", then talk to someone at the range who can do that and ask him for some advice.

Perhaps ask the local hot-shot to give your rifle a work-out to see if it might be you rather than the rifle. Perhaps someone will let you shoot a rifle and ammo combination which is pretty much guaranteed to shoot sub MOA. See how you do with it.

No matter the reason, I would say you have issues other than neck size which need to be addressed first. Get your average group group size down below 1 MOA by using decent factory ammo (to eliminate one unknown) and by addressing the big things like bedding, scope, stock, rest, trigger, the action and barrel, technique, and yes......... the shooter himself.

After that start working on improving even further before you start working on all the tiny stuff which keeps this game so interesting (and frustrating), like the condition of your case necks.
 
Thanks for the review Mozella.

My shooting is by no means perfect, but I saw no reason in making it knowingly worse, if my neck tension in a set of cartridges was allover the place. After all, the whole point of these cartridges was to check on the accuracy of my rifle and suppressor combo as well as to see if my Lyman Gen 6 could generate the same charge weight accuracy as doing so with my Lee Safety Scale from which I tend to add/remove single granules to get it dead on....

When I first loaded them there was tangible difference in the ease with which bullets seated. I didn't think that would help matters, rather than being the source of all my shooting woes.

Re the flyers. Knowing that I could not reject them outright, I included measurements with and without, partly because I knew that one some shots I just flinched before the shot went but could say which they were as I could only see the target once I got back down the trench to pick it up. Remember this test was to see how accurate the rifle remained with a can added, so leaving in known mistakes on my part would not help with that.

This load has produced a sub-MOA 10-shot group at 100m, which for me is bordering on divine intervention, so the rifle and load can perform.

Unfortunately, there is no such thing as moderately priced ammo where I live but my handloads have given me some encouraging results.

At 300m, there were several factor at play. A little bit of wind, my inexperience at that range and a scope whose 12x was starting to work against me with the target I had. A more suitable target, next time would help. Of that I am sure!

It is a work in progress, but I think I will try my 170gn and 146gn loads next and see how those fair!
 
"Accurately measuring a good 5-shot group (where they're all touching) is difficult but usually possible. Not so with a good 10-shot group because all you have is a big hole with no idea where the bullets actually impacted."

We don't need accuracy to 3 decimal places - one is plenty. And if you measure outside-edge to outside-edge (and subtract one caliber) will give a valid measurement, on any group.
 
James,

After getting the neck size variation, did you still feel a seating force difference?

You are reporting a 0.08 mm outside diameter (OD) range (about 0.003 inches) in neck OD, and that's knocking on the reality check door for me. Assuming uniform neck wall thickness, a case 0.08 mm bigger than another is more than the amount by which the Lee mandrel is under the diameter of the bullet (about 0.002" or 0.051 mm on my copies) so a bullet should just fall into a case mouth 0.08" larger than the smallest one. If that didn't happen, I expect there is a measuring method issue here. It's pretty easy to fool a caliper at these difference levels if you don't have a delicate touch with one. I would try slowly closing the jaws until turning the case neck around between them just barely scuffs the jaws at the widest point. Note the measurement. Then turn the case 90° and move the jaws in until, turning the case back and forth just a couple of degrees you feel the jaws start to scuff the narrowest point. Note this smaller measurement. Use the average of the two as your number for the neck. You may have to repeat this ten times and take an average until you get used to doing it and develop a touch for same.

If it turns out the cases really do come off the collet die with different ID's, then the uniformity of the annealing job seems in doubt. Do you, by any chance. own any bullet casting equipment or know of someone who does? A method that pretty well guarantees uniformity is to heat a melt to the 385-400°C range, dip the case necks in powdered graphite (so prevent soldering) then hold the necks down in the melt and turn it back and forth a little (so you can angle it just enough to avoid the melt overheating your fingers directly) until the case gets too hot to hold, as before with the candle. If you time this you can switch to using the watch so you can wear a glove to set the cases more vertically into the melt, and go by the time you expose the neck.
 
After getting the neck size variation, did you still feel a seating force difference?
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No. After collet sizing the lot before re-re-reloading them, the pressure needed for seating bullets was very uniform. Not particularly stiff, but all uniform.

Regrettably, I have no access to any casting gear locally so that method is a no-no.

On the plus side, I have recently started "recalibrating" some Brazilian milspec ammo (spec, not surp as I think it is made to military spec, but is not actually old militiary stock) that is far cheaper to buy: CBC cased. This means that I am quickly amassing a sizeable stock of once fired brass that, whilst not Norma quality, is seemingly OK. Therefore, aside from a few recipe rechecks with new brass, the Norma's that have served me for 4 years now can be retired soon!
 
I think if your seating feel is uniform, the OD's are some kind of measuring glitch and your cases are actually fine. It would seem to eliminate annealing as the source of the problem. Let us know how the shooting goes.
 
I think if your seating feel is uniform, the OD's are some kind of measuring glitch and your cases are actually fine. It would seem to eliminate annealing as the source of the problem. Let us know how the shooting goes.
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The seating felt uneven before I pulled them all and re-neck-sized them. After that it felt much better.

Details of the shooting are in post #41 above. Not massively impressive given this was the same load that managed 0.8MOA at 100m some months back, but for other reasons, I am not too disappointed, and at least I have useable results to work with.
 
The change in bullet pull can still have some effect. It's not impossible you'll see a change in the second post-anneal reloading. This is part of why some folks have gone over to the automatic annealing machines and anneal for every load cycle on them. They wind up with a different load developed, but it's consistent.

BTW, have you read through Bugholes from a Bipod? The loading method is interesting. He applies what he calls Froggy's Lube inside each case after brushing as a method of keeping bullet pull constant. It's no longer sold, but I got second hand that it was just graphite powder in alcohol. So that's another approach you could take. It will likely mean your charge weight will go up a little if you are lightening the bullet pull like that. Perhaps as much as half a grain or so to tune it back in.

Training methods in that article are good, too. A number of fellows are taking a worn case and filling the primer pocket with hot melt glue to act as a snap cap that cushions the firing pin impact for extended dry firing practice. Squirt enough in to make a retaining bulb on the far side of the flash hole.
 
I think I have to be realistic about how deep I go with annealing. Yes I want to extend case life, but not to the point that I have to buy €100's of kit!! I will see if I can have a go with a blow torch and see how my cases turn out that way, but full annealing machines are not going to happen.

As for the link.... I've not read beyond the intro for now, but looks interesting because the set-up described is exactly what I have: .308 and a Harris bipod, so there's hope for me yet!!

The training methods will be of interest.
Any reason a snap cap won't do to protect the firing pin instead of the glue and case?
 
Annealing with a torch is very easy to do. practice with a few junk cases and your off and running. Use a socket and cordless drill and they turn out very nice,uniform and perfect. You will know if you did it right when you go to trim and Chamfer. You get the feeling when you Chamfer like your cutting butter almost. Smooth and easy to work with.
 
Use a socket and cordless drill and they turn out very nice,uniform and perfect.
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I can use my Lee case trimmer case holder that has a hex base to fit a drill chuck.

However, to have an idea of how to do it well, are we talking neck and mouth on top of the blue cone of the flame (hottest), inside the blue cone (cooler), elsewhere?
Should I count to 5, 10 or 20 etc?
Dunk in water afterwards?
 
i hold mine in the Blue, I have found slow count to 8 or 9 seems to work the best. While many that know way more than me say-No cold water is needed, I still drop in a bucket of ice water. I get about 24 reloads from my 6BR brass. I stop at 12 with the 308. They are still good to go, but I don't want to take a chance
 
If the color change does not come off when you polish (tumble or however clean) the brass you have gone too far.
 
RC20- That all depends on how long you tumble them. When you buy new Lapua Brass, It will run through the tumbler 4 times at least and the annealing line is still there. Which is the most I have gone before annealing again. I get ( with the 6BR) about 24 reloads before I discard. At that point in time,I still have no neck splits and no Case head separations.
 
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