Case Neck Annealing Part II
Editor’s note: This article is in reference and review of result of Rod Green’s first article posted in March, 2010. It can be found here.
Back in March 2010, I wrote an article about Hornady’s Case Neck Annealing Kit. I took 100 pieces of Nosler Custom .308 Winchester brass with four firings and annealed 50 of those for a side by side comparison with the 50 I left unannealed. So for the last nine months these one hundred cases were used in my Remington 700 at the range and at three local varmint matches. In March’s article I promised that I would get back with you on the results, so here they are!
The rifle I used was a 1990’s vintage Remington 700 PSS with 6,000+ rounds down the tube (well broken in!) The factory trigger has been adjusted to a crisp two-pound pull and it wears a Leupold FX-3 30X target scope mounted in Burris 1″ Z- rings on top of Farrell bases. For the rifles age and round count, it has been well maintained and still shoots well.
First of all, being a novice at annealing cases, I felt some extra torch time deemed necessary for both safety and confidence. When manually annealing, it is critical to spin the cases at the same speed for even heat dispersion. With the help of a Sinclair timer, I settled on 100 RPMs for six to eight seconds. This time frame proved just right for viewing the color change in the case necks without over heating the cases. After polishing up some Winchester cases, I purposely over-annealed a few cases to see what to look for. If the necks have lost their shine and you can squeeze them with your fingers to an oval shape…they are over-annealed!
WARNING: TAKE CAUTION TO NOT OVERHEAT THE LOWER PORTION OF THE CASE INCLUDING THE HEAD AND WEB OF THE CASE. OVERHEATING THIS AREA CAN CAUSE CASE FAILURE.
The chosen load for testing was comprised of 43.0 grains of Hodgdon Varget with CCI primers and 175 grain Sierra Match Kings. So, for the next nine months two fifty round ammo boxes went with me to each range session and a few matches. As early spring turned into early summer, there were twelve firings on each case. The fifty non-annealed cases still had tight primer pockers and no split necks, but they were getting thinner from the combined twelve previous firings and re-sizing (work hardening). Each full length resizing was getting noisier and required extra effort to run the brass through the die. The die was also adjusted down more to help with casings that were now starting to chamber hard. As for the annealed cases (every 2 firings), they showed no sign of potential problems that I could detect. They all sized easy and bullet seating seemed uniform from round to round.
It was at the VHA Regional Midwest Match in May that the first non-annealed casualty occurred! While shooting a twenty-round match, one of my non-annealed cases experienced a split case neck (firing #14). From then on, case failures started to become more and more frequent during sizing and when seating bullets. After the sixteenth firing I decided that the non-annealed brass was unsafe to shoot in its present condition and continued on with just the annealed cases.
From an accuracy standpoint in the beginning both groups shot virtually the same. As time went on the non-annealed loads went from grouping just under 1″ groups to as large as 2.75″ shotgun patterns before going into early retirement. The annealed cases on the other hand, routinely shot 1″or less groups from start to finish !
After the smoke cleared nine months later I have a total of 84 cartridge casings still standing. There were 38 non-annealed that survived sixteen firings and 46 annealed cases that went the distance with twenty-three loadings on the odometer and ready for more! The four annealed cases that were lost were due to one loose primer pocket, two that were over annealed, and one that somehow ran away at the range! All eighty-four cases have had a long season and will get a good cleaning and put away until next spring. Just out of curiosity, I may try to anneal a few of the out of service cases to see what happens! I’ll also continue working with the forty-six annealed cases, but at a much easier pace.
So, how long will properly annealed cartridge cases last a shooter? Since I am new at case annealing, I really don’t know. I have heard that some shooter’s can get as many as 50 or more firings per case! That seems unbelievable, but after the last nine months, I can see it happening. A deer hunter may start with fifty pieces of brass and be set for the rest of his hunting days, while a varmint hunter or precision shooter could start with a pre-determined number of cases to last him the life of his barrel. The bottom line is that no matter how you do it, case annealing, whether performed in a manual operation or a more automated manner, is worth the time and effort!
Keep ‘ Em in the Ten Ring!
Rod Green
Reloading Technician, Sinclair International
NRA Life Member
VHA Life Member
NRA Certified Metallic Reloading Instructor and RSO
January 19th, 2011 at 2:26 pm
I have thought about doing this for quite sometime, I have a question about rpm’s you said it was approx 100 rpm’s at 6-8 secs I understand using the timer for the 6-8 secs but how did you count the rpm’s ? did you mark the drill shank in some way
Thanks
January 19th, 2011 at 4:41 pm
Wonderful read and very informative. I read an article many years ago about annealing in a kitchen oven. Cases were set in a cake pan, water poured in to about 2/3 up the length of the case. (poured into the pan not the cases) I don’t remember the heat setting, but the cases appeared to get a uniform heat, plus the heat didn’t travel below the water line. What do you think of a process such as this? Could this process be considered appropriate?
January 19th, 2011 at 6:09 pm
How many times did you anneal each case? If I read it right, you annealed each case after each second firing. Please comment on this aspect further.
January 19th, 2011 at 8:34 pm
How often should you anneal your cases?
January 19th, 2011 at 9:00 pm
Thanks for the information/experience…. confirms my limited findings.
January 19th, 2011 at 9:20 pm
I have been looking into anneeling and there are so many different opinions. Since I shoot rifles with expensive casings this is a very interesting process. I’ll check out the Hornady anneeler kit . and thanks !
January 19th, 2011 at 9:45 pm
Thanks for the valued information. I can appreciate the real world field testing that you shared with us. I do a lot of my own. I recently tested over fiften various rust inhibitors to see which ones performed to the average person’s level of expectations. There are numerous variables in the “real” world enviornment but my testing showed the clear winner.
keep ‘em coming!
John R. Swerda
January 20th, 2011 at 12:09 am
Dear Sirs:
I have been reloading now for over 60 years, casting and swaging my own bullets, even building a short but extremely useful range in my basement to test loads and bullets just 3 meters from my extended reloading bench.
Recently, I have been carrying on my own personal crusade to get adults, children, neighbors, Stanford University Physics, Computer Science and Robotics Lab students with a few Professors, and anyone else I could get to explore reloading and then shooting. Sadly, being in the heart of what is now “Silicon Valley” (Silly Valley, California??), all of the ranches, farms, horses, stables, trails, etc. are all long gone, replaced only by a truly pathologically abjectly insane fear of anything with the word “gun” in it.
Articles such as the above, if made and kept freely available, would do wonders to help break down this incredibly widespread irrational fear, especially by school administrators from the very earliest of ages. The same intense, continued propaganda and hysterical attitudes and wildly extreme, irrational actions and reactions by teachers and administrators instills a nearly hopelessly negative attitude that cannot be overcome directly — because the fear is too deeply intrenched.
Just getting some to do something such as annealing necks of cases but not the heads, provided that there was a goodly amount more technical detail included, can be presented in a non-engineering level physics discussion, thereby introducing the subject in a physics, general interest problem solving discussion. From there, my foot is in the door to at least getting the entire idea of understanding a firearm to finally the idea of actually handling them.
To see even world renowned Physics and Engineering Professors, some Nobel Laureates, react with unmitigated horror is so disturbing as to sicken me. Please, if such articles can be put together with a more explicitly detailed description, or at least a hyperlink to such, it would be of the greatest of use.
Then we, as the entire pro-Second Amendment establishment, could aggressively seek to remove all such mentally and emotionally defective Administrators from obtaining these positions of power at the schools at all levels, we shall have gone vastly farther to ensure our Freedoms than if we fail to do so.
Gary Gerlach, PhD, USMC Colonel – resigned
NRA Patron Member
CRPA Life Member
Many Academy of Sciences Life Member, Plasma Physics and Quantum Field Theory
January 20th, 2011 at 11:05 am
Dr. Gerlach,
I can only add my firm support for your statements. It may be a well hackneyed
expression but, truly, the lunatics are running the asylum. I have been a gunsmith over 35
years, with a strong technical background, and emotions rule, not intelligence.
Heat rises. I can heat the end of a screwdriver and not melt the handle as long as the tip is upright. Simple physics. We’re not trying to determine the speed of gravity. Instantaneous?
Best regards, Pat
January 20th, 2011 at 2:05 pm
I attended Colorado School of Trades in the early ’50s, taking basic gunsmithing courses. We were taught to anneal brass cases in a pan of water, similar to that described by Mr. Anderson above, a maximum of 10 cases at a time, in a line, so that we could equally and evenly distribute the propane torch around the necks. We did this slowly, with the torch nozzle held about 4 – 6 inches away, and applied heat until the cas suddenly changed from the brass to a gray-blue metallic color. These were 219 Donaldson Wasp and 220 Swift cartridges. I annealed every 4th firing.
I carried this on to when I was stationed at Colorado Springs in the mid-60s, wherein I got involved in benchrest shooting, varmint class with my Remington 40XB, 244 Remington. I made my own bullets, using B & A dies, but annealed the cases the using the same method. I very seldom had a work-hardened or split neck. Those I had, I attributed to poor annealing on my part.
In my ’70s now, the Hornady’s kit sounds attractive to me, making my shooting prreparation workload possibly easier. I don’t make my bullets any longer; I can buy from Sierra and Hornady more accurate lots than I can make. Here in Texas, the 40XB and Rem 244 (6mm Rem) still rule over prairie dogs.
January 20th, 2011 at 5:26 pm
I started annealing when I became frustrated by not being able to count on a single sizing die depth setting / bushing combination to produce consistent dimensional results or neck tension on fired & sized cases.
By much the same practice (single propane torch, electric drill on an adjustable speed control to throttle back to about 90 – 100 rpm) I first used the 1/2″ drill chuck as a case holder (adjusted to allow a case to be dropped in and out but not held tightly) then migrated to a couple of 1/4″ square drive deep sockets that allow the same procedure but without heating up the drill chuck. Case walls and heads are well protected from overheating & if the socket warms too much, brief contact with an ice cube returns it to a comfortable & safe temperature.
Case surface appearance at the neck / shoulder was my initial temperature tell-tale. I hold each case just at the tip of the inner blue flame, while it spins for a count of 6 to 8 seconds depending on cartridge size & neck wall thickness (turned vs. un-turned) until I can see the same color change take place as seen on new Lapua brass when the case is dropped free of the socket.
I anneal now at least every other firing, sometimes every firing if I have the time & inclination. I can process 110-120 cases an hour by this method, dropping the annealed cases into an 8″ stainless steel sieve to cool. Water quench is unnecessary with brass & may even be undesirable from a metallurgical perspective. Air cooling works fine for the temps involved.
SP Clark
NRA Life Member
January 22nd, 2011 at 8:56 am
I have a number of batches of Lapua 6.5 brass at various load counts if I anneal them all, is it the equivalent of re-setting the counter t this brass will be used for hunting practice and general plinking.
Thanks
April 24th, 2011 at 12:15 pm
i have used hornady annealing kit on 6.5 x 55 lapua brass turning on a drill inner blue flame centred on case neck and waiting for tempilaq to melt took 18 to 20 seconds. Tempilaq was painted on about 5mm below case shoulder. Then dropped into water to cool. So i do not know how 6 to 8 seconds can be enough to fully anneal a large case – see my blog on http://www.matthewcanning.net and look at annealing category.