How to ruin brass

S

Stats Shooter

New member
I'm relatively new to annealing. So far I have adhered strictly to what the Tempilaq, the books, and the brass was telling me. However, yesterday I got lazy and ruined 50 pieces of brass.

Instead of setting everything up and getting the timing down using Tempilaq, I just eyeballed the torch distance to be around where it was last time and assumed the machine was still set where I left it.

And then, I over annealed the neck so much that my mandrel neck die smashed the shoulders....Which happens when the shoulders are too soft.

I will keep annealing because it has improved accuracy and helps maintain a consistent bullet hold . But shortcuts will bite you in the butt .I guess some dense folks need to experience what the books warn against before they listen .

:rolleyes:
 
Yea, the stove is hot thing but you really get convinced when you touch it.

Not to beat a dead horse, that's why I am going with the Annie.

It simplifies that part completely.

Part of the problem with a torch is unless as you note, you temple it each time there can be variable's that are there.


I threw all my first efforts out some time ago. Over annealed and not a problem, just too soft. Ok for hunting, neck tension was never going to be what I needed for target.
 
If you can still load them the neck and shoulder will get hard again in a number of reloads. If the shoulders collapse then you can get junk price for them.
Using a flame without some kind of measure of the heat is always a bad idea.
I have also seen brass come out of an induction annealer glowing red hot and that is way to high a temperature too. You should always calibrate your process with Tempilaq or something similar.
 
ShootistPRS If you can still load them the neck and shoulder will get hard again in a number of reloads. If the shoulders collapse then you can get junk price for them.
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I was able to get most of the necks sized by running them into the mandrel a little at a time. I then was able to seat bullets. I hope they harden back up without splitting. But, lesson learned on using the Tempilaq every single time I set the machine up.
 
Soft brass rarely splits - it can refuse to spring back, making extraction a little harder but it will work harden over time.
 
How could anyone do that :rolleyes:
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Darnest thing I have seen. I have been annealing for years. All done by hand (literally holding my brass with my fingers) with a propane torch, without any of those fancy wingy dings. Never have anything like this happened to my brass. I routinely get 15 to 20 firings out of each batch of brass.

BTW, it is a fired brass. Shouldn't the inner diameter of neck be larger than the neck die's mandrel?

-TL
 
When forming .577-450 brass from the most available "parent", one must anneal 28 ga shot shells before even attempting the first step. Then, generally, one to two more annealings are necessary during the forming process.

Heating until the cases glow just shy of red is not the correct method. :p






(Don't ask me how I know. It should be apparent. ;) And 28 ga brass shot shell cases aren't, exactly, cheap. :rolleyes:)
...But I did end up with a 60% success rate from the "idiot" batch.
 
My understanding is that no it will not harden over time again.

It only does that if you don't get it too soft.

Once you have over softened it , it never gets harder again as you have permanently altered the grain structure.

How much actual affect that has is ??

Not a clue if it takes a 1/4 load to 5/8 or 3/4, but it does have an affect and I believe I am correct on no going back.
 
How could anyone do that
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Well I was setting up the seating die for my 7.5 and got it all wrong.

I crunched a couple of shoulders before I realized what I was doing.

It turns out that while it is 30 caliber, the case does not fit in a 308/30-06 seating die.

So it goes.
 
In response to RC 20 and ShootistPRS,

I didn't get to "dead soft"

I know this because the necks still have some spring back, and I was able to seat a bullet without the neck splitting. That is what happens if you go to dead soft..No spring back at all, and when you seat a bullet, the case necks will split or crack.

But I did get them too soft, no doubt about it. I will shoot them and see what happens.

Because I know that I didn't do the catastrophic mistake and heat the casehead....I know this because I can pick them up right off the annealer with my fingers by the casehead and it isn't very hot.

I did some experiments a while back to see what it took to get the casehead above 450 degrees using my annealing machine, and to get to that point the neck and below the shoulder has to be glowing read hot... . At least on .308 or longer bottle neck cartridges. Mainly because my annealer is done in about 4-5 seconds.
 
"...happens when the shoulders are too soft..." Cases don't have to be annealed to wreck 'em if you smash 'em with something hard. And annealing has nothing whatever to do with accuracy.
"...glowing read hot..." Red hot is far too hot. Brass anneals at approximately 650-700 degrees Fahrenheit. 450F is too low. Mind you, if the case body gets anywhere near 700F it's toast. Literally and figuratively.
 
I've only done it once in my life, with some case's for my 30-06 and cast bullet's. I'm sure I did a lousy job, it's a strange thing to me. I have never felt the need to anneal. I get five loads out of a case I'm good with that. I load rather hot most the time too so after five loads, my primer pocket's are getting loose. At some point the cost of case's get's down to almost zero, how much can you really save? And if you do anneal, the gas just add's to the cost of the case.

I recently got some 308 case's , once fire mil surplus they were selling, to make 243 case's from. I don't recall what they cost but just looked and don't know what kind of case's they were selling were $38 per 100. I get five reloads from them and it come's out $38 per 500, that is about .075 each! How inexpensive do you need?

As for better accuracy, I suspect that is in your head! I've seen people do different things that could effect accuracy some but you'd have to be a benchrest shooter to be able to use it. I don't do many of those secret little tricks to make my rifles shoot better but then I've got a couple 1/2" inch rifles, several 3/4" rifles and a 1 1/4 inch rifle I simply haven't worked with enough. I think it would be really hard to deal with if you found out the process only gave you .003" better accuracy! Most of us couldn't hold as close as we'd need to, even off sand bags, to do that!

It may have been on here, don't remember, a guy had a video of a auto annealing machine. Now if I could afford and find one of those, my feeling's might change. "Ah, yes I do have an auto annealing machine. Cost me $1500 but I get .003 inch's improved accuracy and I can shoot my $.075 case's longer, saving a lot of money"!
 
I've only done it once in my life, with some case's for my 30-06 and cast bullet's. I'm sure I did a lousy job, it's a strange thing to me. I have never felt the need to anneal. I get five loads out of a case I'm good with that. I load rather hot most the time too so after five loads, my primer pocket's are getting loose. At some point the cost of case's get's down to almost zero, how much can you really save? And if you do anneal, the gas just add's to the cost of the case.

I recently got some 308 case's , once fire mil surplus they were selling, to make 243 case's from. I don't recall what they cost but just looked and don't know what kind of case's they were selling were $38 per 100. I get five reloads from them and it come's out $38 per 500, that is about .075 each! How inexpensive do you need?

As for better accuracy, I suspect that is in your head! I've seen people do different things that could effect accuracy some but you'd have to be a benchrest shooter to be able to use it. I don't do many of those secret little tricks to make my rifles shoot better but then I've got a couple 1/2" inch rifles, several 3/4" rifles and a 1 1/4 inch rifle I simply haven't worked with enough. I think it would be really hard to deal with if you found out the process only gave you .003" better accuracy! Most of us couldn't hold as close as we'd need to, even off sand bags, to do that!
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Don,
I have seen first hand how much annealing helps my loads. Let me first say, that in your case, annealing may not help much. If the loads are opening up the primer pockets after 5 loads, then annealing to prolong brass life isn't practical. In my AR and AK loads, I do not anneal either because they beat the brass up so badly that after 5-6 loads, I have to junk them anyway...dents, dings, chewedup caseheads, destroyed necks etc.

But in my F-Class rifle, which is a 1/4 MOA rifle, Annealing has reduced my extreme spreads on my velocities, and it prolongs case life of cases that I have uniformed the primer pockets, turned the necks, deburred the flashholes, and sorted by case volume...That is a lot of work, and there are several culled cases once I am done. That, plus sorting bullets now, is what I have done to help ensure it is always 1/4 MOA with no flyers. I shoot F-Open so I use a front rest and rear doctor bag. At 600 or 1000 yards I can tell the difference between volume sorted cases, and consistent neck-bullet hold.
On these cartridges I anneal every single load.

Then there is lake city brass I use in my AR-10, this is the only gasser I anneal for because Lake City brass is tough stuff. It will handle hot loads for several re-loads, but the neck gets stiff. The neck will crack on full power loads before the primer pockets open up....If I anneal them every 3rd load or so, they will last for quite a while.

Everyone has their methods, and reasons they do what they do. In my opinion, there is not "accuracy enhancing" or "longevity increasing" activities that always a waste of time. It all depends on application.
 
Don,

Norma says one of their QC tests for their brass is that they pull samples and make sure they can get 10 reloads without splitting a neck. If the brass is good, and unless it has unusual growth each firing cycle, as can happen with belted magnum cases due to how their tolerances are handled, then you should be able to go past five. Indeed, having to anneal every five times or fewer to prevent cracking is one of the indications you are over-annealing. Over-annealing makes brass split sooner.

The confusion is that "annealing" isn't really desired. Stress relief is what is desired. That's all you need to gain consistent bullet pull and to prevent neck splits. Stress relief completes just below the annealing temperatures that soften brass and cause grain growth. For that reason, stress relief is sometimes called "partial annealing", but it is all the further we really want to go.

Fred Barker came up with two idiot-proof, but slow, methods of doing this in his July, 1996 article in Precision Shooting Magazine (RIP):

"(1) Lead Pot Method: heat lead to 725°-750°F; dip neck into powdered graphite and then holding body of case in fingertips into molten lead: when case body becomes too hot to hold slap case into wet towel; or

(2) Candle-flame method: Hold case body in fingertips, place case neck in flame and twirl case back & forth until case body is too hot to hold, then slap case into wet towel; wipe soot off neck % shoulder with dry paper towel or 0000 steel wool."​


These are patience trying methods, but before you give up on annealing, try one of those just to see what happens to your velocity SD and group sizes at long range. In a few instances, this has made all the difference needed to become competitive.


Metal god,

Is that a case or a circumcision gone wrong?
 
Is that a case or a circumcision gone wrong?
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That actually made me lol . That was the very first case I tried to neck size with the Lee collet neck die . It closed on the neck to early and the fact I had never felt what the press should feel like when using the die . I just kept going with a full stroke . When I pulled the case out I was quite surprised .

Since then I've gotten much better at using that collet die
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I have read in the past about guy's getting up to 20 reloads out of rifle brass, don't recall if they annealed. My bet is they were shooting cast bullet's to do it. With Norma's 10 reloads per case, did they anneal the case's? I think I could get quite a bit more reloads from a case if I didn't push it like I do. I suspect Norma used lighter loads than max to get 10 reloads. All my reloads are not at max but one's not there are close. One of the thing's I think of is I don't want to load a 30-06 down to 308. I'd rather have the 308. Actually I have both. Funny thing about my loose primer pocket's, a long range shooter from Penn wrote me while I was getting my 6.5x06 going. I was shooting pocket's loose much to soon and asked the guy for some info. He told me not to worry about loose pocket's, he glue's in his primer's! I haven't gone that far!
 
If your using propane it's pretty easy, don't let the flame turn from blue to orange and you won't ruin anymore.
 
I have always used a deep well 1/4 inch drive socket on a 2 inch extension chucked into a cordless drill. A 1/2 " socket is good for .308 Win and .260 Rem, I use a 7/16 for .204 and .223. I have a tub of water on the bench and a propane torch. Light the torch and dim the lights in the room. Drop a case into the socket and spin just the neck of the case in the flame until it just starts to glow. Tip it out of the socket into the water and it's done, you can do 50 cases in less than 1/2 and hour easily including setup.

However I am sometimes wonder if annealing is worth the hassle. I read a story yesterday on .30 BR case forming tips where Randy Robinett is quoted and he stated during development he fired 30 cases 6400 times. He said the cases were never annealed and he had no neck separations or splits occur.

link - http://bulletin.accurateshooter.com...orming-tips-from-randy-robinett-and-al-nyhus/

I have some Lapua .308 small primer brass that are in the teens now, annealed twice. Only neck separation I have ever had was on some .204 that was on it's 3rd reload and never annealed. Never did figure out why, did not even realize I had a issue till I ejected and saw the neck was missing. The neck came out easily with a cleaning patch and non of the other brass in that batch ever failed.
 
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