My long winded thoughts on annealing

Another engineer, here.

Two engineers meet coming from opposite directions on a campus path. One is on foot, while the other is on the most amazing bicycle the pedestrian engineer has ever seen. It has a carbon composition frame, hydraulically controlled gears, built-in heads-up navigation, physiology monitors, seats that adjust from recumbent to stand-up positions, aerodynamic wheel hub covers, and several features the pedestrian engineer cannot immediately discern the purpose of. So he waves the rider down and says: "That is the most amazing bicycle I've ever seen! Where did you get it?"

"Well," the bicycling engineer responds, "that's a funny story. The other day, I was walking down this same path just the way you are, when I saw the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen riding toward me on this bicycle. She was dressed in the most amazing set of bicycling clothes, with moisture-wicking sun-reflecting material, aerodynamic filler pads to control airflow over her body, pumped coolant for neck and underarms, and built-in LED safety light strings along the edges. As she drew near, she suddenly veered off the path and dumped the bike on the lawn, jumped aside and pulled off the suit and all her underclothes, and threw her arms wide open and said "take what you want".

The pedestrian engineer observed, "good choice. The suit would never have fit you anyway."


Petey308,

Several annealing questions come to mind. I some time ago read the John Klein paper linked to in an earlier post. One of the observations from reading it is the energy required to initiate and complete the stages of annealing decreases as the potential energy stored in dislocations in the brass crystal structure increases. Thus, the same time and temperature needed to anneal a 50%-hard piece of cartridge brass would also anneal a 90%-hard piece of brass but would do the latter, IIRC, about 6 times faster. In other words, achieved annealing doesn't depend only on time and temperature, but also on how hard the brass is when at the start of the annealing process. Presumably, that starting hardness is fairly consistent if you anneal every load cycle. But I would be interested to hear, have you compared the hardness of a neck annealed every load cycle with one annealed using the same time and temperature protocol but only after multiple reloadings when it is harder? Does the harder piece come out softer?

Another question has to do with the purpose for annealing, which I think you mentioned briefly. The manufacturer does it to prevent season cracking. The thrifty shooter may do it just to prevent neck splits, for which getting through recovery is all that is required to get adequate stress relief. Then we come to the AMP maker's assertion that getting down to around HV100 is needed to get precision improvements in group size. I know Bryan Litz borrowed and used an AMP annealer and could find no difference between the performance of a set of cases fired ten times and annealed every time as compared to a set fired ten times without annealing. Indeed, he reported a small, but not statistically significant superior performance of the unannealed cases. I am thinking the difference in results may lie in resizing methods. Brass, regardless of hardness, has a constant modulus of elasticity. But for that to keep performance the same, the amount of stretch has to be the same, and necks that are getting harder spring back more after either resizing or expanding tend to throw that off. I am wondering if you are aware of anyone having tried adjusting resizing with mandrels to keep neck ID constant for seating as hardness is increased and if that might not produce the same improvements credited to annealing? It would be a lot harder to do, but might be interesting to try out to satisfy curiosity.


Quiet Texan,

In post #100 you referred to the SD being a sixth of the ES. This would require a sample size of around 400. The statisticζ(n) value, is the number you divide the extreme spread by to get an estimate of SD of a normal distribution. It grows with sample size because the larger the sample, the more opportunities you are giving for less probable random values to show up, and they do show up and are farther from the mean than more probable samples. For a sample size of ten, the zeta of n value is 3.078 (follow the link). A plot of the value vs. sample size of up to 100 for an SD of 1 is below.

View attachment 324496
There's more to accuracy then just neck tension. Like shooting new brass that's short on headspace. I find a huge difference in accuracy in weatherby cartridges with a lot of freebore vs something that Bryan Litz was using for his experiment where the bullet is shoved into the lands or very close and the custom reamer/chamber that needs very little sizing.
 
Hold on, I didn't say that SD is a sixth of ES. I said that ES will approach six times population standard deviation. There's a very critical difference there.

I couldn't duplicate the graph, but if you run your simulation out to 1,000 shots, what's the Z(n) value?

To be fair I get where you're coming from and you're correct, just maybe not going in the direction I was headed towards. I think you actually somewhat proved my point in that for 100 rounds the true SD can be estimated as ES/5.1(ish), so using SD*6 for a maximum projected spread is more conservative.


Here's where I'm coming from: I'm not trying to estimate a population SD from ES of a sample (I think that's what you were showing? "divide the extreme spread by to get an estimate of SD of a normal distribution") - I'm trying to take the SD of a sample, use a confidence interval to predict the worst-case population SD, then from that estimate the maximum extreme spread for that population to plug into a ballistics solver for a projected vertical dispersion due to muzzle velocity variation for the rest of that loaded batch.

If I shoot a 10-shot SD of 8, then I can use 15 FPS as a projected worst-case population SD (95% CI), multiply that by 6 and project an ES of 90 FPS, and assume that I'll throw at least 5 shots outside of that 90FPS range. I'll run my ballistics on a 100 FPS spread around my average velocity, and I should shoot inside that predicted vertical dispersion because I've made a series of conservative estimates. There's 0.7 mil of difference at 1000 yards from 100 FPS decrease in the first 6.5CM load I pulled up in AB, that's 25" of vertical, meaning worst-case I should be able to hit an IPSC consistently with all 90 of my remained loaded rounds. Best case is I really do have an SD of 8, actual ES of 48, 0.3 mil difference, and I should be hitting the A Zone consistently with all 90 rounds. If I can really crush the loading of a batch and get a 10-shot ES of 3.5, I'm looking at a 0.2 mil variation - I'm crushing an 8" gong and my loads could shoot a 100-5X or better on an F-Class target (if I could do it.... statistics say 0% chance of that).

None of this accounts for wind, which is the real variable for hitting x-rings at 1000 yards, and why your loads need to minimize vertical dispersion to give you the most leeway possible for wind.
 
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Things are only as complicated as you want to make it. And making things complicated wouldn't be a way I personally would find as a way to make myself feel better lol. I'm I guy that appreciates diving into the intricacies of things. I find it interesting. It actually makes things LESS complicated since I understand it more by doing so.

Equipment like the AMP literally takes out any guesswork and complexity out of the process lol. It's expensive, sure, and it's 100% not for everyone.

I made this post simply to share some thoughts and experiences. If it was too complex for some, it maybe should have been ignored 🤷🏼‍♂️. If comments made here got complicated, that's just the direction it went I guess.

Annealing, in general, is definitely not a complicated process and depending on the particular person and their particular needs, it's not even something they need to even concern themselves with. For others, it's something they may really want to do and they may want to get the very most from it they can. To each their own. It takes all kinds to make the world go 'round, right?

I'm sorry if I offended anyone with any of my statements made. I only intended on sharing some thoughts and sparking some good conversation. I think there was definitely some of that mixed in here. That said, maybe this post has run its course. If I knew how to turn off commenting, I would.

I've definitely learned annealing and copper bullets are two touchy subject in this forum 😂. Any others I should avoid 😉?

Happy new year all!
 
This thread has made annealing confusing and complicated. To technical for the average Joe. I'd prefer taking that 1500 and getting a new rifle or scope.
Naw man, either pick something and run with it, or just don't do it. If that works for you go for it. Stand by what you do and why it works for you. We're not all trying to do the exact same thing, and half the arguments come from applying our personal logic to other people's different situations instead of looking at what they're doing.

If look at enough of what I say, some of it seems contradictory - weight sorting sucks and doesn't matter, hey weight sort your cases, seems like it doesn't make any sense right? But it's because the person asking the question is in a different situation and what works for him won't work for someone else.

We can buy 87 types of hot sauce at the Wal Mart for a reason... because when something is important we all get to have opinions about it.

I've definitely learned annealing and copper bullets are two touchy subject in this forum 😂. Any others I should avoid 😉?
Sherman cases and primer seating tools tend to inflame the passions as well 🤣
 
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