another? bout anealing

[dombra]

when is it best to aneal -before or after sizng and if i put the whole shell into my wood burning stove and ater 5 min of it being red hot would you gents consider this an acceptible way to aneal a brass shell?
lookin forward to your replies

[John-n-va]

After 5 minutes in a woodburning stove I would consider your brass junk. All you want to anneal is the neck of your case.

I set up my propane bottle on my workbench with a pan of cold water next to it. I take the appropriate shell holder and stick a 1/4" wooden dowel in the hole and chuck it in a variable speed cordless drill. Turn the lights out and spin the case neck, just the neck, in the flame until I can BARELY see it starting to turn orange and then quickly dump the case in the cold water.

Thats the way I do it and it works for me....I feel very uniform pressure when seating my boolits.

[1Shirt]

I deprime the cases, set them in a pan of water up to a level that is about a quarter inch below the shoulder. In a dark/dim light area, I use a propane torch to heat to a point where it barely changes color, kind of a dull orange. As soon as it reaches that point, I knock the case over with a pencil into the water. It is easy to do a fairly large number of cases this way in a fairly short period of time. I usually do this when I get the first neck crack or split in a batch of brass. Depending on the case and pressures, this for me averages someplace around 6 to 8 loadings.
1Shirt!:coffee:

[Parson]

Another way is to hold the case at the rim, dunk it into your lead pot just past the shoulder or neck only depending how much you want anealed, hang on till it is too hot to hold and your done

[Nueces]

Dombra, just to be sure everybody's meaning is taken, you would be placing yourself at great risk by annealing a case head, thus reducing it's ability to contain firing pressures. All the techniques herein are designed to keep significant heat from the head area.

Now, if you could induce a gun grabber to soften his brass heads to match his own head, then please post pics. :drinks:

Mark

[grumpy one]

After having some Remington case necks crack after 2-3 firings, I now anneal all case necks after the first or second firing. After that I don't do it again until one or two of that batch crack. I put the decapping rod from an old Lee Loader into the flash hole from the base side, hold the neck just outside the flame cone of a propane torch, and twirl until it starts to get an extremely dull red or I can see the neck discolouring to a little below the shoulder, then I tilt the decapping rod forward until the case slides off into a bucket of water. It only takes perhaps five seconds of heating for each case. Be careful not to let the discolouration flow more than halfway down the case - ideally, stop with it 1/4" below the shoulder.

With 30-06 brass, mine always fail by cracking on the shoulder, not the neck, so annealing the shoulder is important. For 30-30 brass, so far it is always the neck that cracks but I anneal the shoulder anyway. Usually the first sign of cracking is a tiny black mark on the outside of the case, visible after wiping the fired cases and inspecting carefully. Toss them immediately - the hot gas leakage through the tiny crack on subsequent firing is bad for your chamber.

[eka]

I set the base of my propane torch on my bench. I hold the brass by the base and twist it while the flame from the torch enters the case mouth. I have a bucket of cold water sitting on the floor below my bench. I can see the color change progress down the neck and across the shoulder. This happens pretty quickly. When you feel the heat in your fingers, you just let go of the case and it falls into the water and stops the heating progression. You will not be able to hold onto the case long enough to anneal more than the neck and shoulder. This seems to work well for me, but there are lots of other ways that work very well also.
Keith

[versifier]

I used to do it with the cases in water to just below the shoulder, now I do it like eka does. It's fine for everything from .223 to .30-06. But, I don't shoot anything with a larger capacity than .30-06. I don't know if it would soften magnum cases too much. Probably safer to do the big ones the old way.

[kodiak1]

Torch and Fingers man. Some burn't fingers but a lot of annealed brass.
Ken