time for annealing gas checks

[hiram]

I've read about annealing gas checks in a piece of capped pipe with some wood chips or paper in it to help keep the checks clean. Querstion is, how long do they cook for??? If the check slips onto the bullet base easily before annealing, is there an advantage to annealing?

[NVcurmudgeon]

hiram, I use the capped pipe nipple method, thanks to MT Gianni. My annealing outfit is a 1" X 3" pipe nipple. It holds about 200 .30 GC or 150 .44s, plus one sheet of toilet paper to exhaust the oxygen. After the wood fire gets going good and is making coals I bury the nipple in the coals under the center of the grate where more coals will fall on top of it. Most evenings I go to bed after keeping the fire going for about three hours. The nipple is still quite warm the next morning. with this efficient system, I just anneal all the GC, that way I don't have to keep track of which moulds need annealing and which don't. Most of the time the GC shank of the mould is too small, so we want to anneal to eliminate springback. If the GC shank is too large, the GC will have to be expanded with a punch after annealing. Either way you wind up with a better fit, IMO.

[BruceB]

I've wondered about this from time to time.

Brass is an alloy, with the major component being copper. Commercial cartridge cases are polished after annealing in order to look pretty, but military cases are not. This leaves the obvious color differences of the annealing on the cases, and the neck/shoulder areas are blue. Being able to see the color variation makes inspection of the final product rather easy.

It appears to me (and I could be wrong---it happens once in a long while) that if we heat our gaschecks enough to show that obvious blue coloration seen on military cases, then an annealing process has taken place on those gaschecks. This takes only a very short period, if I fill a big steel spoon with checks and hold the spoon in contact with the molten contents of my furnace. The progressive color change is easily seen. This is best done with a single layer of checks in the big spoon, so that they heat quicker and more consistently.

Am I kidding myself? Have the gaschecks NOT been annealed, once the color change has occurred? Fortunately, I don't have any moulds at this time whose bullets need a softer and less "springy" gascheck, so it's not a critical question for me right now.

I do wonder, though....

[DLCTEX]

It would seem that if color change works for anealing brass cases, and the evidence indicates it does, then the same would be true for checks. IMO. Dale

[arkypete]

I'm lazy i throw the gas checks in a stainless skillet, turn the stove on high and when the lacquer turns black they are done..
I anneal all of my checks, makes life simpler.
Jim

[hiram]

Thanks for the different views and techniques of why and how to anneal. I am familiar with annealing cases as I have done this several times. My method is I hold the case at the head and heat the neck on the gas stove. I see the color change and when my fingers get warm, I either drop it in water or dip it and put it right on newspaper for faster drying.. Easy and fast.

[NVcurmudgeon]

Every way I've tried for annealing GC has worked; heating with a propane torch, heating one layer in a tin can on the electric stove, and heating a full pipe nipple
overnight in the fireplace or all afternoon in the coals of the barbecue. Each method changes the color, and each method eliminates springback when run through the lube-sizer. GC can be rotated, or even removed, on some of my moulds by hand after sizing if not annealed. So far, the pipe nipple method takes the least effort and makes it easy to anneal them all. I tend to agree with BruceB that the color change, no matter how quickly done, is a reliable indicator.