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I just warmed them slowly and held them by the head with finger and thumb. As soon as I felt the heat coming I put them down to air cool. Just warmed the neck. It would take a silver hue to the colour in the flame.

I only did it a few times, personally I would sooner just get some new brass!

 

U.

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First question is “do I need to?”. If you are getting a lot of neck splitting and the brass is expensive or hard to come by then I would certainly consider. I make my brass from other calibres because of cost and annealing is part of that process particularly if the donner brass is commercial. Generally if the brass is military stamped then I don’t bother because it is softer than commercial to start with.

 

 

You only need to anneal the neck and shoulder and with brass being a good conductor of heat the heating source needs to be hot! Normal blowlamps from hardware stores do not produce the localised heat necessary for a good job. I use either MAPP gas or Oxy Propane. Keep the brass rotating whilst heating. Heat to dull read (no more and no lower than the shoulder) and then quench in water. Please note no matter how much tumbling after annealing you will still see a different colour in the brass. After many reloads this colouring does disappear but by that time you might want to consider repeating the exercise or even discarding.

 

You can avoid this by being much gentler of the brass by keeping case pressure down (no visible flattening of the primer) and only neck resizing. Neck sizing only is the best method as it only deforms the brass once in the resizing process whilst full length sizing deforms it twice and causes another annoyance case stretching and weakening of the case wall.

Edited by rem708
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Hi lads thanks to you all for advice I have not aneald any yet looking at all the trouble it is not worth it.it was just an ideal I used to be a tin smith years a go we had to aneal some material ie copper brass aluminium but it has been 50 plus years and your mind cannot remember some of the tricks one we used was to rub soap on aluminium then put flame of gas welder on it when it turn black it was workable.thanks again for replys.snow white

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Hi lads thanks to you all for advice I have not aneald any yet looking at all the trouble it is not worth it.it was just an ideal I used to be a tin smith years a go we had to aneal some material ie copper brass aluminium but it has been 50 plus years and your mind cannot remember some of the tricks one we used was to rub soap on aluminium then put flame of gas welder on it when it turn black it was workable.thanks again for replys.snow white

As Rem708 has put, unless its expensive brass at £1 a case (approx) or you have had over work the case for a odd ball calibre ie either necking up or necking down it's not really worth messing with. You could get a decent amount of loads per case 1/2 a dozen wouldn't be over estimated. So if you lok at Remmington cases at £60 for 100 and you get 5 loads out of a case it's not too bad.

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I have to aneal my .17 akley hornet brass when I neck it down from .22 hornet. I find if you give it too much heat it will crush the case while loading a bullet in the press. I have to do this before fire forming the brass so it doesn't split.

 

I just gently heat the brass round the neck with a blow torch while turning it gently in a drill as soon as I see it start to change colour that's enough usually about 3 seconds....I just put it in a bowl to cool down.... I learnt this method from the guys of saubier forum and it works well for small hornet rounds.

 

Martyn

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Back in the early 80’s in South Africa where due to the embargos everything got recycled a shooting friend, in order to prolong case life annealed his cases by standing them in a tray of cold water and heating the mouths and necks of the cases with an oxy torch, when they came up to the correct heat he knocked them over into the cold water to quench them.

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just send them to someone with an annealing machine and some temperlac

 

not worth the bother unless you are benchrest or target shooting or having neck tension issues with work hardening (too many firings, too hot firings, overworking through FL sizing etc etc)

 

it cost me £10 for 100 the last time and that was on some work hardened lapua

 

I now use Norma brass exclusively

It is softer and this is a good thing.

lapua, RWS and some other brass is much harder

 

10+ firings of .270 never had any tension issues, certainly never had a split. if it splits you have bigger issues

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I agree with bewsher .I think the reason I had a separation is I think that case had missed a annealing session or two from being loaded when the others went. and the brass was starting to flow at the neck and needing to be trimmed a lot .so I retired them all and started again with new.

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