Annealing case necks

[Whitetail Hunter]

How do you when it is time to anneal the necks? I am shooting a 308 and 300 RUM and have noticed that the amount of effort that it takes to resize them using a Redding bushing die varies from case to case. I have checked for uniform neck thickness, which they are. I've also tried using the same amount of case lube on the neck.

 

[Loner]

You may go 5 or even 7 shots on the 308, depending how hot. I like 4. The Rum, 3 to
4, some guys do 1 or 2 firings on big mag brass. There is a guy on the hide "killshot"
that decaps, tumbles in stainless media and anneals for .10 cents a case. 72 hour turn
around.
Your resizing pressure won't be affecting by annealing. At least it better not be.

 

[BillR]

I usually anneal every other firing on my .308 Win. For one reason only and it is not for the resizing force that it takes. I noticed a couple years ago that when I started to seat the bullets I would have differences in the force it took to seat the bullet my groups would start to open up. I was annealing every 5th reloading at that time. I began watching this and doing the annealing more often and noticed that after the second firing I would see differences by the third loading so I finally just settled on every other time. Groups stayed tight after that. My brass is exclusively L.C. brass and I have way more loadings on my casings than I ever did when I was doing the 5th load annealing. Some might disagree with this but its just what I found with my rifle. I have noticed that some rifles don't need it near as often but I think the necks might be tighter on those guns. Mine is a factory Rem 700 VSF and probably has a bit looser chamber than a custom job does and works the brass a bit more.

 

[JeffVN]

For my 7WSM, 338LM, 338LM Improved I anneal every other firinging. They show very consistent neck tension.

Jeffvn

 

[bbutturff]

I anneal every time I reload. It's probably overkill but now I don't have to keep track of how many times a case has been fired. I also figure it's the best way to make sure neck tension is consistent. It's simple, quick and inexpensive so why not?

 

[Bart B]

For my 7WSM, 338LM, 338LM Improved I anneal every other firinging. They show very consistent neck tension.

How do you measure neck tension?

Took a new Federal .308 Win. case, loaded it with a Fed 210 primer, 42 grains of IMR4895 and seated a Sierra 165 SPBT bullet in it. Fired it. Deprimed it, cleaned its outside then lightly lubed it. Full length sized it with a gelded die whose neck was 3 thousandths smaller than the loaded round and setting the fired case shoulder back 2 to 3 thousandths. Reloaded that same case with the same components then fired it again and again and again....46 more times before running out of test powder.

Muzzle velocity spread was 33 fps, standard deviation was 10.

Had to trim it back every 10 reloads as it grew up to my 2.10" limit.

Didn't think any annealing was needed.

Friend of mine did a similar test but ran out of powder at 58 rounds. He didn't anneal his case either.

I've used the same type of full length sizing die on 30 caliber magnums getting 14 reloads per case without annealing.

I guess the reason is the case necks didn't change diameters much when sized down; no expander ball was used to work the case neck about twice as much as it would.

 

[Mikecr]

I don't do it often either(don't size much, turned necks, small clearances).
I cannot measure actual tension (right now). But I do measure pre-seating force with a loadcell built into an expander die. With a Wilson ND I can adjust necks to match seating force in each.
When this get's at all labor intensive, it's time to stress relieve necks.
Let the evil out..

A real downside I can think of in 'annealing' is that it is not what is desired, yet it's very easy to do. What is desired is deep stress relieving, which is a lower temp than annealing.
I use a lead dip, and if I used a flame system it would be a machine(for consistency and convenience).
Considering one of these: New Page 1

 

[Buffalobob]

If your necks are splitting or if you can seat bullets and pull them out with your fingers then you are past the point when you need to anneal.

Brass is an alloy and the composition of the alloy determines the characteristics of each brand of brass. Some brands of brass seem to need to be annealed more frequently than others. A correctly configured bushing die seems to help reduce the need but if your chamber is large then the neck gets worked a lot anyway and the die is not a cureall.

For a 308 I anneal after four firing, for the 7AM after each firing and for the two Weatherbys -never -because the extreme pressure destroys the brass before the neck gets hard.

 

[Mikecr]

the extreme pressure destroys the brass before the neck gets hard

Well, that sounds consistent to me

 

[Whitetail Hunter]

I see I'm at the point where I need to learn to anneal the my cases. I can dip them in lead as was suggested but for how long. What other techniques are used? I have plenty of tourches at work that I can use. Please list in detail what your process is. Thanks for all the responses

 

[Bart B]

I see I'm at the point where I need to learn to anneal the my cases. I can dip them in lead as was suggested but for how long. What other techniques are used? I have plenty of tourches at work that I can use.

The Art and Science of Annealing

 

[Mikecr]

Whitetail, I didn't suggest that you lead dip. It's just what I do.
And the problem with the 'Art and Science of annealing' flyer is that they didn't actually seem to know much about it. They knew NOTHING of lead dipping.

I would suggest that you hold off on annealing all together, until atleast learning about it. It's nothing critical & you have plenty of time to pick up a good book or search shooting forums for info(rather than asking for it all over again).

If you just go to spinning cases under a torch per half the folklore, you'll end up messing up half your brass, and you won't even know which half..

 

[Ankeny]

"If you just go to spinning cases under a torch per half the folklore, you'll end up messing up half your brass, and you won't even know which half.."

That is just about the best statement about annealing I have ever read. I use a Ken Light machine, but only because the new Giraud annealing machine wasn't on the market at the time.

 

[Loner]

Some have been annealing brass for 40 years without any special equipment. Like
everything else, the equipment makes it better but I've never seen my shooting friends
or myself ruin any brass. Pitch black room, when it first starts to glow it's done. And when
I say a black room I mean I even put a towel across the basement door threshold. Only
the light from the torch is in the room. It's certainly not hard to look at the shoulders afterwards and tell if they are even. A .002 pinch in your calipers of the neck and it should
spring right back to it's size. I've never bothered quenching myself, don't see a point to
it. Plenty of engineering info on the net about the times and temps that brass anneals
at without trusting anything that's been convoluted by us gunners.