I use a candle. I don't shoot much bottle neck anything so I don't need to anneal much. This works for me.
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By John Barsness <--- not me. Argue with him or Fred Barker
I use a method perfected by my friend Fred Barker, who writes for some gun magazines, including Precion Shooting. Fred found that the normal annealing methods used for years made the necks too soft, as they normally involved heating the brass to red-hot then quenching in water.
Fred is a retired metallurgist and developed the following:
1) Light a standard wax candle.
2) Hold the case halfway up the body with the tips of your fingers.
3) Heat the neck in the tip of the candle flame until the case is too hot to hold.
4) Wipe the front end of the ecase with a wet towel (paper towel will do) which finishes the annealing process AND cleans off the candle-flame soot.
I do it with any lot of brass as soon as the necks start feeling stiffer when resizing, or if one cracks. It also helps after making wildcat rounds after necking up or down.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oqt4FTk3Ac