How often to anneal?

[dddddmorgan]

I'm going to get into annealing brass and I'm wondering how often you all do it?

Is it necessary every time to avoid work-hardening? I can't imagine.

I'm mostly interested in keeping my cases lasting as long as possible and going for accuracy is a couple of centerfire rifles.

Thanks

[slim1836]

Some competition shooters anneal each time, others less. I anneal after 4-5 reloads. There is no set rules I'm aware of.

Slim

[Winger Ed.]

every 4-5 reloads is about the favorite from what I've seen.

I load common calibers that the cases are easy to scrounge, and don't anneal at all.
For example: On .30-06s, I neck size down about 90% of the way down the neck, and load on the milder side, rather than the wild side.
Some cases I don't know how many times they've been reloaded, but its several.
I've had a few neck splits, but its pretty rare.

As cheap & easy as .223s are to get-- I toss them after I see more than 3-4 ejector marks on the rear of the case.
Or if the head stamp is fading from being reloaded & polished a bunch.
Of the few neck splits I've seen, the head stamps always looked pretty 'worn'.

Unless you've got some cases that are expensive & hard to scrounge, like for a Weatherby or something-
its too easy to not have to do it.

[country gent]

center fire rifle brass ( smokeless calibers ) I anneal as I feel I need it. On my BPCR brass its every third loading. Depending on your set up annealing can be a chore to do, what amount of brass are you talking. At first it will be every piece you have but at some point it may dwindle down. Another is the life of brass isn't just affected by hardness. Wear on primer pocket, heads being out of square, separation rings, and multiple trimmings Then there is also the pressure levels they are loaded to.

Take 10 cases and load chrongraphing, watch the Extreme spreads and accuracy. keep notes and when one or the other fall off anneal these 10 cases and start over if the ES and accuracy comes back subtract 2 from the number for a cushion. Light low pressure rounds will go longer than than full bore high pressure rounds. I find cases used in semi auto rifles tend to have shorter life also.

I will anneal new rifle cases to start them out at the same point. Starline recommends all their BPCR brass be anneal first before loading with black powder. I then anneal as above. You want to watch for the line inside the cases firming to avoid head separations. Ive never annealed hand gun ammo

[dddddmorgan]

Thanks for the input.

I'm looking at annealing for the .223 Remington, I have lots of brass but if anything this situation has taught me is hoarding is the way to go.

I'd also be interested in annealing for my old thutty-thutty bolt gun and the '06.

Guess I'm not too worried about the time consumption as I'm not going to be doing a high volume of cases.

[Mk42gunner]

I think the correct answer is: It depends.

In a non panic world, commonly available cases get annealed when the necks start splitting. Accepting that a few cases from that lot will be lost due to the splits.

High dollar or lots of effort to make cases get annealed about every third loading.

Now when everything is just about unavailable? I might bump the frequency up a notch or two.

When modifying cases, I like to do all the steps of converting it before annealing.

I think that to be effective you have to have a consistent way to anneal brass. I have never liked the stand it up in a pan of water then heat it red with a propane torch method. My red probably isn't the same as yours, leading to variations in temperature and softness.

Robert

[dddddmorgan]

Had a new neighbor move in across the street a while ago, finally met him the other day. He was building something and struggling so I went over to introduce myself and offer help. A bit of work with the table saw and some other stuff we got his reloading bench done. Well that's when the conversation really started; turns out he is a big varmint shooter, many guns, many wildcat calibers. We talked for quite a bit, I shared that I have virtually no experience with wildcats except the 19 Calhoon and I didn't like trying to reload those itsy bitsy pills.

Anyway, I will talk to him next I see him and find out what he does for annealing brass. Might be that I can just piggyback a few of my cases.

[GARD72977]

I have just bought an annealing machine. I plan to anneal everytime as part of my reloading process.

I'm doing it by hand now. I dont anneal very often....

[Rcmaveric]

I only anneal when I see problems. Like a batch gets a cracked neck. I also anneal when fireforming or case converting.

I used to anneal often but I noticed neck tension was different and light. I didnt like that. It would take about 5 or 6 reloads to be back to normal.

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[RU shooter]

When it's needed , I've got most of my 35 Rem brass in the last century a good bit of it in the 70's and 80's and am now finally annealing the necks as I was seeing a crack now and then, I size using a Lee collet neck die and can tell when there's way too much spring back . That's when I know they need annealed

[1hole]

More cases are effectively destroyed for quality reloading due to poor annealing (i.e., getting them red hot) than is lost to neck splits.

I want my cases to last a long time too. That means the least amount of working they get the better but there's nothing we can do about body splits; split one, toss the whole batch.

Normally, neck size with a Lee collet neck die until they need full sizing and then going back to necking will allow most cases to last a long time.

I keep my fired cases separated; when one mouth cracks or neck splits is early enough to anneal the whole batch for me. And, contrary to popular web guru wisdom, neck sizing (again, with the Lee die) for .30-30 and .35 Rem in lever guns works exceptionally well. (Ditto Lee's excellent FCD crimpers.)

[rmantoo]

OP, what is your primary shooting activity?

Are you a 3 gunner, shooting 1000s of rounds a month, a hunter, shooting maybe a 100 rounds a year, or an F-Class novice or PRS sponsored professional?

If you're an F-Class or PRS shooter, looking for that last little % of consistency and lowest SD possible, then anneal every time you shoot it.

If you're a 3 gunner, maybe anneal every 3-4 times...

For the 30-30 and 30-06, my guess is you shoot low volume? If so, my personal philosophy is since they're low volume I anneal every time. You will get much longer brass life- IF you work your annealing process to to it right and not over-heat your brass.

[1eyedjack]

Have a .223 WSSM that became nearly impossible to close the bolt on reloaded ammo -after 2nd or 3rd firing. Broke it down resized ( again ) reassembled and same o same o with EXTREMLY difficult opening of the bolt - without firing !!! Broke down again ( btw WSSM doesn't fit a kinetic bullet puller ), annealed the neck & shoulder then resized with my 200 lbs applied with gusto reassembled again & problem solved for now.....annealing does fix some things & may need to be done more often with high pressure calibers!!

[JWFilips]

I usually anneal after the 6th firing in my rifles ( with light loads of cast bullets) I always anneal after the last firing then resize! This seems to sort of average out any irregularities in the anneal process! Then After resizing I fire once to Get them back to fitting my chamber... then after that I can shoot accurate target loads

[Win94ae]

I anneal every 7th shot. I anneal for longevity of the cases.

[blackthorn]

Over annealing destroys the ability of the case mouth to hold the bullet sufficiently tightly. In a perfect world we would only “temper” our cases (as opposed to fully annealing them). To illustrate; take a piece of brass and heat the neck red hot. Let it cool, gently apply pressure with your fingers to the case mouth. The brass will be forced out of round and it will stay that way. Now, take a new, unprocessed case and repeat the gentle pressure. You will see the case mouth be forced out of round, but when the pressure is released, it will spring-back to its normal shape. What we should be trying to accomplish is to achieve that same “spring-back” in our brass at the end of the annealing process. “Tempering” the brass in this way allows retention of very much needed tension when we seat a bullet. “Tempering” can be achieved by experimenting with varied amounts of temperature and time that a specific temperature is applied to our brass.

"Temper" may not be the proper descriptive word to use here, but I hope you all can make sense of what I have written.

[Mk42gunner]

I remember reading that one of the better BPCR shooters anneals after every shot, then runs the case through his sizing die and neck expander twice to get even, repeatable neck tension on his match loads.

Robert

[dddddmorgan]

Oh I'm a "three gunner" all right!

Wait, make that (counts on his finger) oh more than three ;-)

Getting back to more gun sports I will probably put a couple of hundred rounds down range with the deer range rifles. The goal is since I have a 223 now to do double that and the rimfire, well as much as I can.

Thanks for all the good advice