Is some annealing better than none?

@ Metal God did you ever see a piece of Lapua or lake City brass straight from the box that did not have thermal oxidation marks ?
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Yes I have hundreds of Lapua brass .

If you do not have any annealing marks on your brass after annealing it is because you either did not get the brass hot enough to oxidize or there was no oxygen present in the room. It is a simple chemical process
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That does not seem to be true in my test . I used tempilaq of 750* inside the necks and 450* below the shoulder .

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This pic of the 450* tempilaq melting was taking when I saw the 750 melt inside the neck . I just got lucky and had the 450 melting in the pic as well

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All I can say is we both can't be right . I do know based on the temp indicators I used the brass I heated up reached the temps you claim require annealing marks to be present and they were not . At least nothing like you see in Lapua or new LC brass .

Also there is less then .5% of of copper in steel and they add zinc to steel for many reasons . This would lead me to believe there is basically no steel in brass . Not sure how steel reacts to heat is a good comparison .
 
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When bottleneck begins to "squeak!" upon withdrawing
the neck expander -- time to anneal.
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When mine do that, give a "squeak" and perhaps a bit of a "crunch", its time to clean the crud off the expander and lube the case necks a little better. :D
 
Anneal of the Neck:

Flash: ALL NEW brass is annealed at the neck/shoulder.

When Lapua says it shows you we did it, that is about as pure BS as anything I have even seen. It makes a politician look honest. And I have seen a lot (pun intended)

All it means is they are too lazy to polish the discoloration off (or they make more money) - hey guys, I have this great idea...............

As there is oxidation involved, the longer it sits around the more corroded it gets (not in a bad way, just the nature of the beast)

If you leave a piece of brass alone for a few years, it does the same thing.

Now Lapua is good brass, over rated in my view but up there with the good stuff.

Also keep in mind that there are two forms of annealing, torch and induction (electric coils energized in a focused way for those who are not familiar with induction - its an efficient way of heating up metal objects like brass or interference fit bearings to slide on a shaft)

From what I can gather the brass mfgs use flame which I believe (opinion not tested) causes more oxidation than inductive.

Why flame? Maybe easier to manage a process when you are turning out millions of cases.

That is called Industrialization of a process. You go from hand done to mass production.
Yes its a school of engineering by itself as what is easily done by one guy making 100k you can't afford hundreds or thousands of.

GE is an example of the shift to industrial gone wrong.

On their 787 engines, they shifted to produion from the hand built (yes they only make 100 -200 of those a year but jet engines are complex beasts.

For the hand built they had a coating process that was not suited to the larger numbers, so they changed it.

The result was turbine blades spitting out the back of an engine (fortunately on a test taxi not in flight) ooops. Nice process but it corrodes the shaft, uhhh sorry sir. Maybe we should try something else?

In the gun world making barrels on a large scale is lower cost if they are hammer forged.

Down side is you have to make a LOT of barrels to justify the expense of a hammer forge op. Investment up front is really costly.

Savage uses button rifling, Ruger (known for their using advanced processes) uses hammer forged (I believe Remington does as well).
 
As said in earlier posts, I use a lot of range pickup and have attempted to form a process that allows for some degree of uniform SD. And I did that
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Nothing wrong with having a process that satisfies you. And if it has no downside other than your time, then annealing, case trim etc has no downside.

I like clean primer pockets, I know its not needed but I do a quick cleaning of them. It makes me feel better.

Its also good to have the facts of what is necessary.

Once every 5 firings is about right to anneal.

I also pick up range brass. I check to see if its once fired as best I can (FC is nice as it has the color seal ring on the primer).

RP you can check to see if the primer is brass (not a given but an indicator). You get to know the MO. If its an even 20, they bought a box at the store. Sometimes people will give you brass as they see you are a reloader.

Mostly they are not reloaders if its on the ground.

I did score some Lapua one time. I thought it pretty iffy? Not sure how they managed it, but about 20% of it had loose primer pockets. No wipe or ejector marks.
 
all I know is that science says heat +oxygen+metal = thermal oxidation which messes with the light so you get the rainbow effect. Craftsmen have been using it for 100's of years for decorative purposes as well as to determine proper tempering of tool steel. I first learned of it as a apprentice toolmaker and it is well established as far as steel what the temperature is needed to get the steel to turn various colors. Brass I have no clues as to what exact temperature it needs to reach to show what color is. I would wager however that using the color changes on Lapua or LC brass as a guide is a safe bet

All Templaq tells me when it changes was that the templaq got hot enough to indicate. Whether that was because of conduction from the metal or from convection due to a downdraft. However when the metal starts to change color it is a 100% positive indicator that the metal was hot enough to react with oxygen.
 
Cases are an unusual aspect as they are thin, very thin.

So yes I can see a color change, but its subtle (inductive). I could not time to that, I can set the timer and see it occur.

I have hardened chisels (or re-hardened them after grinding). A lot more meat to work with.

At least to me its bringing all the tools to the table to confirm you achieved what is desired.

If there is good news is that you overdo it and you may never know. As long as the base is ok the neck and shoulder is not dangerous. It won't re-temper if you over do it, so its permanently soft.

If you look at military brass (some maybe not all) annealing is not polished off either.

I have no issue with not polishing off, I do have an issue with Lapua essentially lying via implications that others are not annealed.

I would be fine if they said it was a signature of their not to polish off the anneal.

Keeping in mind, I did not worship at the alter of Snap On or Mac Tools either. I have some snap on, some Mac, but only because those particular tools were good. Many of their tools while the quality was excellent, did not work well or right for me.

Most of mine we Proto and the like (Armstrong , Craftsman that were good fill in tools) .

Lapua without question is good quality, but while Proto was not as glitzy as Snap On or Mac, they did the job just as well at a much better cost.

Lapua has been some on sale, some a test, some they have what I want. Well I digress here.
 
I find it easy to set using the oxidation ring with my Annealeeze. I removed the stock potentiometer and replaced it with a PWM digital readout speed control so I repeat the timing to a gnats behind. I start with half a dozen cases when looking for a setting and start on the fast side run one through a cycle, examine how far down the case the ring extends, slow down the machine a notch then repeat until the ring resembles those on the Lapua /LC cases. About 1/4 - 3/8 ths inch down from the shoulder body junction

Lately I have been scrambling to get that last 2% on my scores in the quest for HM so I have been revisiting all the little tweaks I tried and abandoned in the last few years looking for the magic pixie dust to eliminate the occasional wild a** flier
 
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Interesting on the wild ass flyer.

I got a Lab Radar to get the feedback on velocity (selling stuff of as needed to pay for stuff).

Replacing the failed screen Chrono and the pain of setting it up vs the LR being easy (build a plate to mount it on the bench). ie, not a random setup thing or the annoyance to myself and others.

Velocity variance may not be the answer but will be interesting to see what occurs for those shots.
 
Once you learn the minor idiosyncrasies of the LR . . .
It's the Cat's Meow.
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those 197's and 198's are elusive

back to topic ...an interesting experiment by Cortina

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HfjRKrbYbo

looks like he is going to give the AMP a test soon. I trust Cortina he seems to be a pretty straight up guy. There are some bloggers out there that have never reviewed a product they did not love. As long as they can get a couple of click throughs they would do a review on a piece of dog feces glued to a screwdriver and insist it is a must have tool for every reloader
 
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As always, the issue with anneal is not honesty of the reporter, the actual evidence requires (as I recall) slicing and or staining sections to see where you are really at on the microscopic level change wise.

Hardness per AMP is an indicator but its not the definitive test.

The 1903 Hardness was that same sort of issue, yes color change use is possible for tempering, but when you have different eyes and no ref, not to mention light difference, then it becomes an issue.

The solution was pyrometers, but as some of us know, tool use requires both training and a sense of the tool and repeating it accurately.

I don't know what accuracy torch gas is made to. The Annie Induction shifts as it warms up so you have to watch for that (run 10 cases through is their take).

Correct annealing ain't easy.
 
there is no doubt hardness is affected by annealing, the question is does hardness affect the accuracy. So far I have never seen any solid evidence it does.

AMPs own testing convinced me that it does not. Only a single one of the graphs on this "test" shows anything close to the behaviour that I would expect from annealing affecting accuracy or velocity. The linear slope lines should start off even and rise on the unannealed cases while maintaining steady on the annealed.

Look at Dennis Dean's Velocity extreme spread chart (the top one) that is what I would expect to see on every other chart. Both lines starting off even then the unannealed getting higher while the blue line should remain steady throughout the test


they twiddle the numbers to make it appear the annealed is better but numbers can lie. Those linear slope lines do not

Fairly sure Cortina will not be slicing the brass up and oohing and ahhing over a microscopes. The big question for me is will the test be conducted blind or double blind like any good scientific study need to be

Of course the real test for me is the ones that I conduct on my own targets. Even if annealing would affect my cases enough in theory, would it show through the own noise of my wind reading/ hold errors
 
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The first and only video I viewed of Cortina's was his chasing the lands video which IMHO was a joke and caused me never to click on another one of his videos . In the video he said one thing , shortly after he contradicts him self then later contradicts his contradiction . In short what he said was this does not work unless it works for you .

Does annealing effect accuracy ? Well aren't there multiple caveats to answer that . First and foremost I'd think is Do we believe consistent bullet hold/release help accuracy . Although I generally don't want my necks dead soft but would think if every case neck is fully annealed to full stress relieved ( dead soft ) that would help accuracy . Not in it self but as it relates and contributes to all parts of internal ballistics .

Not to unlike primer pocket uniforming or flash hole uniforming . Do they help accuracy ? Any one of the three above maybe not , at least hard to see on paper but combine all three and you might see a difference .

I had some 6 time fired WCC cases that were getting harder to size consistently and the force it took when seating the bullet was much harder and inconsistent as well . They shot ok on that 6th firing but I chose to anneal regardless . After annealing as I've shown above and in the past . Bumping the shoulders back was so easy I actually had to adjust my die out some because the setting that bumped the shoulders .002 on 5 time fired cases bumped the freshly annealed cases .004+ . Also seating the bullet was much easier and had a much more consistent force . That all said , I did not shoot those now freshly annealed 7th time fired cases any better then the last time I shot them . Does that mean I wasted my time annealing and proved annealing does not help accuracy ? No not IMO because those case necks were not turned , I used standard Redding dies , flash holes and primer pockets were not uniformed , I did not check case volume and separate accordingly ETC ETC ETC !

My point ? as we all know any one thing may not produce a recordable difference . However making everything you do in case prep as consistent as possible can't hurt and likely does effect accuracy including annealing your case necks .
 
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MG what web page can I go to to see your shooting accomplishments ?

Erik Cortina's competition highlights
https://www.lapua.com/teamshooters/erik-cortina/

2019
Texas State Long Range Championship – 1st
NRA F-Class Long Range Nationals Team – 1st
Berger Southwest Nationals Team – 1st

2018
Texas State Rifle Association Long Range State Championship – 2nd place
Mid-Range F-Open Team Champion, new National Record
F-Class Long Range National Championship – 6th place overall

2017
Texas State Rifle Association Long Range State Championship – Champion

2016
Berger Southwest Nationals – 600 yard Champion
Berger Southwest Nationals – Team Champion
Texas State Rifle Association Long Range State Championship – Champion

2015
Southwest Regional Mid-Range F-Open Champion
Texas State Rifle Association Long Range State F-Open Champion
Berger Southwest Nationals – 600 yard Champion
Set new LR team record Berger SW Nationals – Team Lapua-Brux

2014
Texas State Rifle Association Long Range State Championship – 4th place
Texas State Rifle Association Midrange State Championship – 3rd place
Texas State Rifle Association Long Range State Championship – 4th place

Achieved “High Master” F-Class Open Classification in one year – Mid-Range and Long Range.

Former Member of the USA F-Open Class National Team

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5j7VzBX7GU&feature=emb_logo

ever hear the old saying

Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a good carpenter to build one.

Sam Rayburn
 
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MG what web page can I go to to see your shooting accomplishments ?
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LMAO , just because you can shoot doesn't mean you can teach . I stand by my statement that he talked in circles in his video and is not a good teacher . Maybe in time he will learn to teach as well as he shoots .

Judge for your self
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRXlCG9YZbQ

I'd add why are you comparing me to him . Did he say something that contradicts anything I'm saying in this thread . Please post it so I at least know who and what I'm debating ;)
 
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I simply posted a vid of him discussing annealing and you came out of the blue attacking him MG. I tend to listen and learn from the guys at the range that walk the walk not just talk the talk. Cortina's accomplishments hold more weight in my mind than random internet self proclaimed "experts"
 
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Your right dawg , there was no need for me to ad my opinion on his video that had nothing to do with the topic . Sorry about that .
 
Fair enough.

But the point is, someone that does something well is not given carte blanch for either teaching it.

I had an Algebra teacher that may well have been brilliant he had no place teaching High School algebra . His failure rate was like 75% - I am not dump, I failed out of his class with a 40% average.

The next year I took it under a GOOD high school algebra teacher, I got 3 B+ and an A-.


I was prouder of those Bs that any A I ever got.
 
- Annealing is a metallurgical process subject to the usual scientific method.
- Properly done it results in longer case life and more uniform early ignition/case/bullet release.
- Uniformity is a key element of consistent Internal Ballistics Performance.
- Consistent IBP is part & parcel of External Ballistic Performance.
EBP is base requirement for everything else.

I think I'll stick w/ the metallurgists on this one.




postscript:
Teaching is an art.... which unfortunately now increasingly seems to be populated by those who shouldn't be allowed in a classroom.*

It took me three years to repair the damage done to my daughter by badly-taught high-school physics.

.
 
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