Annealing pot

[contender1]

My lovely wife is keen on taking care of me.

For my birthday,, knowing I was trying to anneal .22 RF brass to make my swaged bullets,, bought me the Lee 20 lb dipper pot just for my annealing purposes.
Oh, it was my Birthday. And it was just one of my gifts. (But SHE'S the best gift daily!)

[Renofish]

Let me know how it goes.

I have about 30,000 22 cases that have been formed into jackets for sale. I use the kiln to stress relief the brass in volume, which saves time and gives me quality control over the whole process.

Best regards
Richard

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[sukivel]

What temperature are you trying to get to?


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[wilecoyote]

My lovely wife is keen on taking care of me.

For my birthday,, knowing I was trying to anneal .22 RF brass to make my swaged bullets,, bought me the Lee 20 lb dipper pot just for my annealing purposes.
Oh, it was my Birthday. And it was just one of my gifts. (But SHE'S the best gift daily!)

...well..Happy Birthday and congratulations for your Lady!

[Three44s]

Congrats and belated happy birthday!

Three44s

[contender1]

Thanks all.

I do have a wonderful lady here. Plus,, she's an honest to goodness REAL gun girl. She can hold her own in most firearm discussions. She likes to say; "Well, I have a small gun collection,, then I have a REAL gun collection," as she smiles sweetly at me! I have NO trouble telling her what I paid for a gun or whatever. I don't want her to get taken advantage of if she does inherit my goodies.

The annealing part of doing .22 RF brass is interesting.
I don't plan on huge amounts at a time,, so I figured this will work quite well. I have some steel plate I can lay on top to contain the heat,, and if necessary, I can use a PID controller too.
I'm going to start with a plain thermometer and see how it goes.

[wilecoyote]

I hope I don't offend anyone :smile: by remembering that (I learned here that) a little lead in a case is a good indicator of the optimal temperature when it melts. this has allowed me to avoid thermometers workin'on .40/.44mag. in the Lee pot, until today.

[contender1]

Yes,, that can work for cases where you can stand up & add lead to. But the .22 de-rimmed cases aren't that easy to do that with.

[wilecoyote]

...I understand. what I wonder is if a single brass, of different shape/dimensions from a derimmed .22, is in this case able to act as a sufficient temperature indicator for annealing all the surrounding empty/derimmed .22s, in case we see the lead melt in inside this single, different brass.

[contender1]

I see what you are thinking about.

But,, to get all the brass to properly anneal,,, the folks who've already been using the casting pot method,, stir the brass a few times to evenly distribute the brass enough to where it gets properly annealed.
I'll be trying this set-up here shortly today.

[wilecoyote]

...thank you 'bout the patient answer.
(good luck !)

[contender1]

Well, today I put my new pot/annealer to it's first use. I had some 1/8" round steel plate. I found the center, and drilled a hole to insert my thermometer through.
Plugged it up & cranked it up.
Added a few hundred de-rimmed brass cases,, and in short order,, I had a pot full of brass ready to be removed & cleaned. I did (4) batches,, which allowed me to check on them, and stir them as necessary to evenly anneal them.
Then, into the wet SS pin tumbler.
They went through a pour off of dirty liquid,, followed by (2) different rinse tubs. First tub,, removed the pins & allowed the small amount of leftover dirty water to be removed. A good shaking to remove most of the water bath,, and into a fresh, clean tub of water for a second rinse. After that bath,, only (1) SS pin made it into the second tub.
They are bright & shiny clean now,, as well as soft enough to swage with.
I took a magnet to the brass cases as they laid on a towel drying. Not one was attracted to the magnet so it's safe to assume no SS pins are still trapped in any cases.

Cutting cores comes next. :D