I have spent the morning lost in the archives getting more and more confused on a simple question , so I'm just going to ask . I generally shoot rifles that the brass is pretty easily replaced when the neck starts hardening so I have always just scraped it and started on a new batch , even my simple case conversions don't require any special treatment , so I haven't really done anything more than play around with case annealing on scrap brass .
Now I have recently started playing around with a 7x57 and ordered up a 100 new R-P cases to start with knowing that the R-P brass seams to harden in the neck faster than some other brands but it is what was available at the time .
Well a few days ago a friend sent me a few 7x57 cases he has had for years , left over from his loading experience with a old mauser . In this batch there were 40 PMC , 10 FC ,and 12 RP full length resized ,trimmed , and primed ready to load . I decided since I just put a scope back on the rifle to try it out , I would use a few of the odd ball brass . With a light charge of Unique trying to get on paper I loaded up the dozen RP + 10 FC after firing I discovered that 6 of the RP brass had a slight crack ' a small hole ' in the neck while the FC brass was fine .
This brings me back to my question - considering I'm going to be using a 100 round batch of RP brass , I have decided I'm going to try my hand at annealing brass , to extend its life .
When annealing brass how far down on the case do you go ? Chasing the blue line just to the bottom of the neck , on the shoulder , or a 1/4 inch lower than the shoulder .