When to anneal new brass

[hardy]

Hi All,at what stage do you anneal new brass? Before 1st loading,after fireforming or after how many reloads............? Cheers Mike

[atr]

I anneal after fire forming and after about 5 loadings....5 is just an average as brass is different by manuf.....when you size the brass you can feel it "working" and that my tip-off as to whether or not I should anneal...when the brass gets stiff and hard to work its time to anneal

[zomby woof]

Being somewhat new to annealing, I had a bunch of brass I kept neck sizing. After while, they became hard to chamber. It was time to anneal and FL size. It's best to keep track of firings and anneal after 5 like atr suggests.

[MtGun44]

Be careful and understand what you are doing with annealing. If you anneal the whole
case, it is ruin and not fixable.

Bill

[eljefeoz]

I'm a newbie to CB and am sitting here, looking at a whole bunch of 7 and 404 CB sent by 2 friends... been reading up the past few weeks. Its great being here-lurking, actually
Annealing- new brass comes 'discoloured' at the neck? thats the factory annealing.
so you size it, prime, seat a boolit, fire . Come home, wash/sonic clean/tumble them.
should be good for 3-5 firings. Remember brass hardens with mechaical work-FL or neck sizing. I suggest you anneal 5 cases after 3 firings,see how they do. another batch after 5 firings.
Technique:
Should suffice if you hold it at mid body and rotate it over an ordinary candle flame. when your finger gets warm, drop it onto a towel. I know, people use every thing from tempastick paints and rotating devices and 1/2 inch sockets in the cordless. The candle technique should hold you good, so that you dont soften the ENTIRE case.When you do a few, read some more and want to speed up technique or feel confident, think of searching for the myriad other methods...
Cheers

[L1A1Rocker]

I've read that the hard core bechrest shooters anneal on every reloading. They do this to insure that neck tension is the same on every case.

[felix]

Nope, shoot the cases until the groups open beyond tweaking using powder charges in tenths, and then PITCH the cases. Usually within ten rounds. BR guns don't change the brass enough to worry about. Match cases are selected by the groups presented. Barrels are expensive, cases are not. Match barrels are used during matches only. A typical condom round produces 65K cup. ... felix

[flounderman]

I have some 284s that were sized to 6.5 and a lot of the necks cracked on the first fireing. those cases need to be annealed before anything else is done to them.

[John Boy]

An Excellent Read ... The Art of Annealing

[3006guns]

[QUOTE=eljefeoz;
Technique:
Should suffice if you hold it at mid body and rotate it over an ordinary candle flame. when your finger gets warm, drop it onto a towel.
[/QUOTE]

Uh, the idea is to stop the heat from travelling any further along the case towards the base. Dropping it on a towel won't do that......drop it in a can of cold water, which will stop the softening (annealing) at that point.

I use a propane torch and the "hot finger" techinique and I seriously doubt that a candle would get the brass hot enough, quick enough. It should be obviously discolored at the neck/shoulder when let it fall into the water.

[barkerwc4362]

I anneal my 358 Winchester brass after I have formed it from LC 7.62. I anneal with a small propane torch, the one with the disposable bottles used for cooking stoves. I keep a coffee can of water and drop the case in it once I get the neck and shoulder area hot enough. A candle ain't gonna cut it! This is the only brass I anneal. Anneal a case improperly and you can ruin it. Also if you don't get the shoulder and neck area hot enough you are just wasting your time.

Bill

[MtGun44]

"a candle ain't gonna cut it" --

A candle will work just fine, the temp needed to soften the brass is far lower than
the flame temp of a candle. Clearly you have never tried it. Water quenching does
nothing except get the brass wet.

Bill

[jonk]

For reasons mentioned in the excellent article above, I'm no fan of annealing. Sans special gear to ensure even and reliable and consistent heating of each case, you end up with some cases harder than others, leading to inconsistent neck tension and poor accuracy. I DO bother with some of the more expensive custom cases (for instance, 8X52 Siamese) as losing brass just isn't an option, but I can't say I am satisfied with the results.

I have some brass that I have loaded 30 times with only 1 or 2 failures due to neck cracks out of a batch of 100. In other cases, I've lost half the batch after only 10 firings. All depends on the initial quality and how much you work the brass. So there's no magic answer. If I were inclined and set up to anneal well, I'd do it after I saw 5% of the cases develop neck cracks.