Annealing Cases

[mtelkhntr78]

Right after I anneal I throw them in a bucket of CLR(calcium/rust/lime) for about an hour or so. Then pull them out and rinse with water and brush the necks out good. Follow it up by a shot of air to blast off the water. That works real well for me and boy they look purdy when its all done!

[loaders_loft]

In the past couple weeks I was able to set up and anneal my brass for 7wsm and 35 whelen. I purchased a halo-style torch from woodchuckden.com, which turned out to provide uneven heat on cases standing in a tray of water. So, I attached the holders from the hornady annealing system to my cordless screwgun, to spin cases while heating with the halo torch. It worked pretty good, once I got the "magnum" holder drilled out wider to accept the WSM case. After spinning in the flame, I flipped each case into a coffee can of water, occasionally dunking the holder as well, to keep it cool.

Next, I was able to lightly neck turn the 7wsm brass. Hopefully this freshly annealed and turned brass will yield more uniform groups!

Like most other reloading activities, the annealing and neck turning chores turned out to be fairly simple, with a bit of technique involved...

[johnnyk]

Thanks BuffaloBob, that took alot of mystery out of the process for me. I was just about to attempt it on some Norma 7Mag cases that I have and I saw that video of the annealing machine, boy did that depress me. That's a neat machine but I can't justify it. The video makes it look outta reach for the "Joe the Reloader". You brought it back down to a "doable" level for me. JohnnyK.

[Buffalobob]

I am glad it helped. Like most people, I thought it was a complicated process and avoided doing it for many years.

[LRHWAL]

I started this too a few months ago using a kit similar to the Hornady. I use a plumber's torch (backpacking stove cartridge type).

Results have been generally really great, with the odd loaded round pulling SD wide open. It's quite infrequent, but as I applied the indicator I thought all should be consistent. I realise that reloading has many potential pitfalls, but generally I'm getting it right and annealling seems to be the potential "variable"

Loaders, are you saying that the history of the case may be responsible for this despite my best annealling endeavours?

Thanks.

WAL

[Buffalobob]

The method demonstrated here is not perfect nor uniform but it works pretty well. I have not noticed that there are more fliers after annealing than before. In fact it seems that the scores improve.

What I do with fliers is mark the case and see if that case consistently shoots to a different POI. If it does, then I just throw it away. So many times it is just something about the case (volume I suspect). Even weight sorting does not take care of volume problems. My daughter refuses to shoot a "marked" case because the error is so predictable and recurrent. I do not think it has much to do with sloppy annealing or else there would be more cases thrown away and it would always be the match right after the annealing.

[johnnyk]

Hey BB,
Got a few minutes today to try about 50 cases. Took all of 10 minutes. The first pic is of five annealed cases, one loaded, un-annealed and my annealling tool.


Here is a break-down of the tool for others who wish to make one:


mine consist of a 14mm deep socket (approx $6.00), 4" X 1/4-20 machine screw ($.50), 1/4-20 nut ($.09), 1/4 flat washer ($.09); total: $6.68.

Thanks again. JohnnyK.