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There is really no need for it IMO once you get it figured out, just take some junk brass and practice, Once again there are a thousand ways to do it but with a drill this is my SOP, Dark room, count however suits you best, soft glow on the neck and if your flame changes color its been in to long
There is no generalized time. It depends on several factors like brass thickness, flame temp, flame distance etc. To do it right you have to set up an annealing session everytime starting with tempilaq applied to a few sacrificial cases to set the in-flame time. With the setup I use Hornady cases take about 3 seconds. Nosler case seem to take about 4-5 seconds. This is using Tempilaq to fine tune the time. Below are some directions on using Tempilaq.
Once again, Thats one way to do it and just because it's rite for don't make " The Right Way" ' I'm assuming the OP is just getting started and as I said Earlier " Dark room, count however suits you best, soft glow on the neck and if your flame changes color its been in to long " Will work just fine, No disrespect intended
Not telling anyone this is the correct way to anneal but after a lot of questions with many different conflicting answers, I found a method that seemed to give me a satisfying result. There were many conflicting ideas on the best temperature to anneal. I tried templar and determined not a good method. Then I started experimenting by using the button method. The button on your sizing recapping pin. If you size a case,and as the button comes up through the neck, it will screech and be somewhat hard to pull button through the neck. I started with low temp anneal and button screeched. I increased temp and screech was minimal but there. Then I took the advice of an engineer of a major brass manufacturer. He said anneal in dark room and use torch and put heat on shoulder and let necks get cherry red and knock over in water. When going with this method no, screech and button pulls up smoothly. I anneal every other time and with big weatherby brass it has not burned up and ruined the brass. Have reloaded same brass 7 times and accuracy is increased when all the necks are soft and elastic. I did not eliminate screech until neck completely orange. Just my experience, but you will hear all kinds of different opinions but this works for me on a 338-378, 30-378, 338 ultra mag, 308 40x, 22-250 AI and others.
It's not that hard to use a drill and a socket, this subject always turns into this, The OP asked about time under flame, not what annealing machine to buy Once again, Dark room, count however suits you best, soft glow on the neck and if your flame changes color its been in to long, its not that hard to do at all ,Y'all make it sound like you've gotta have a room full of engineers building a Frankenstein Lab to do the simplest of thingsAs member Rardoin stated - time, temperature and material are the parameters to be considered when annealing.
You must have the patience of a Monk using a drill, socket and torch method.
My brass costs over $1.00 ea. I'm not in the mood to ruin several and not certain of the final result when doing a couple hundred with the torch method.
Another tip- keep a couple spanking new cases aside for comparison. I use Lapua and note the degree of blued (annealed) area on the unfired, spanking new cases and try to anneal the used cases to mimic the new unfired cases.
Do yourself a favor and buy one of the fine annealers on the market. Buy junk cry twice, buy quality and smile.
Time, temperature and material, time, temperature and material.
I know its working for you and I'm not telling you what to do but Brass should be air cooled not quenched, with that being said any annealing method is better than no annealing provided you don't over heat you brass, once again this is just a suggestion,
I never could understand why folks suggest air cooled, because by all metallurgical journals I have read air cooled or quenching does not harden brass. Am I missing somethin?
Well that answers the OP's question with some great information, Can you toast bread or on that thing, I like my bagels lightly toasted with cream cheese and honey and Rye toast almost burnt with butter, not margarine mind you but real butter, salted of course because unsalted butter just doesn't spread rite on toast but its okay for corn on the cob, if its boiled, if the corn is grilled I like mayonnaise on it with salt, of course thats using a charcoal grill cause a gas grill is to hard to regulate for corn unless you but a really expensive one ( like I have ) where you can control the burners
Water cooling works but it changes the metallurgy somewhat, in all the HVAC courses I have taken and the business that I am in water cooling Brass is a No Go
Understand your statement, but I have not seen anything scientifically published that states differently from my original comment. Just saying.
