temperature to anneal Hornady .44 gas checks

[jimb.]

FYI - I have a friend who is a glass artisan, and has kilns to make glass products. I've used her kilns a couple times to heat (anneal) my gas checks so that they would resize more easily, without spring-back, onto my Lyman Devastator & NOE moulds. Without annealing, it would be VERY difficult to resize the hard gas-checked bullets in my Lyman 45 lubrisizers. To anneal, I put the entire 1,000 checks into a pipe "nipple", about 2" inside diameter, 6" long, capped at both ends, loosely enough so that I could easily remove the caps with bare hands after cooling. I included about 1/2 sheet of crumpled up 8 1/2" x 14" piece of paper (to take up the oxygen in the air inside the nipple, as it burns - this prevents any black oxide coating on the checks). I let the work sit @ 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit about 1/2 hour, then let it cool naturally. I may not need to heat it up that high for proper annealing. I'm not sure, but 800-900 degrees may be hot enough.

Jimb.

[JWNathan]

I've never annealed gas checks before, but doing copper gaskets I heat them up , usually a dull red, then quench in water. Is there a way you can heat them all up in the pipe with a cap off and dump them in a bucket?

Just an idea, don't know if slowly heating and cooling them does the same thing.
-Jesse

[DougGuy]

Dull red sir, but your pipe nipple will heat to cherry red before the copper gas checks will, -unless- the nipple and caps are also copper.. Once you got it dull red it's annealed, it doesn't really matter if you dump them in water or not.

[popper]

I've been dumping them in a pan, hit with MAPP torch till they change color, let them cool. I can tell the difference in seating and shooting. No black oxide to remove. Maybe not fully annealed but enough to work fine.