Annealing

[Tikkamike]

I dont anneal most of my cases but there are a few that I do like my 338. I dont know that it is actually doing me any good because the rifle shoots unbelievably good however, I know some people have seen accuracy increase from the process. I do it to stress relieve my brass even though i only neck size with a bushing die. and occasionally bump the shoulder back but mostly to help keep a level of uniformity throughout a lot (usually 50 at a time) of ammo I have loaded. I have not proven any of this but it is my understanding and makes sense in theory that if you anneal your cases every X amount of reloads that you will maintain a more even amount of neck tension on the bullet which will obviously should lead to a smaller ES in velocity and a more uniform result from round to round. I was just wondering what some of you guys think about this. Also if it were possible to measure neck tension of a given case would it make sense that if you were to sort by neck tension along with your weight sorting and everything else you may or may not do when choosing brass that those sorted groups would be more accurate than the non sorted groups? The question how is tension measured?mathematically by projectile diameter and sized case mouth diameter and wall thickness and material hardness or ducktability? Or am I over thinking this?

I am pretty sure that choosing premium brass like lapua and sorting by weight and neck thickness then sizing with a bushing die along with annealing is probably about as uniform as you can get short of neck turning?

 

[diriel]

Uniform Neck Tension. How many different "lot sort's" of brass do you care to attempt to deal with? What I am getting at, is one of the reasons to either Outside Neck Turn, or Inside neck turn is to get all your brass to the same actual neck thickness for the sake of uniform neck tension. With Neck turning, for the most part, LESS IS MORE.... do not turn them down too far, just far enough to create uniformity.

Annealing every 3-4 firings helps with uniform neck tension as well.

Weight Sorting is less important than sorting by internal case volume. The Case Head and extractor groove can actually make up quite a bit of "Weight" that has nothing to do with actual case volume.

Trim to length, this goes hand in hand with your Neck Turning.

Flash Hole, IF you want to "uniform it" *LESS IS MORE* !!!!!!! use a good tool, do your Trim to length first, then set the tool up to just barely, barely touch flash hole. The fastest way to completely ruing otherwise excellent brass is to over do it on the flash hole uniform step. When in doubt, DON'T!!

Hope this did not come off "preachy",
Good shooting,
Gary

 

[Tikkamike]

No were on the same page I know there are seemingly endless steps that can be taken in handloading I'm just trying to find out some opinions on neck tension

 

[diriel]

If you intend to shoot out past 700 yards, then Neck Tension becomes pretty important to Vertical dispersion / es / sd. Really, out past 600 and it can begin to stack up. So, if you shoot 600 and under, it may not be worth your while to get Mid-evil and / or drastic on your brass prep.

Have a good one,
Gary