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Effects of Annealing your brass.

C-130 Dude

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Apr 6, 2022
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I found this on YouTube. It answered a few questions I've had for a while about repeated annealing of your brass. The folks at AMP made this. Take a look and decide if this matters to your process.
 
a lot of black magic surrounding annealing

I recently read an engineering doc that states the method of quenching does indeed affect brass annealing

Who knows?

BUT: it has been proven that factory brass occasionally enters the market fully annealed (dead soft necks)

and no one seems to really notice. Perhaps the first use... but the second has work hardened it enough to get by anyone's notice.

I have read enough now to know that if I heat a neck beyond 800F for any length of time, the case is NOT ruined

an oft quoted site on annealing: The Art and Science of Annealing
they state:
"If brass is allowed to reach temperatures higher than (800F or so: I add this temp from their site) this (regardless of the time), it will be made irretrievably and irrevocably too soft.
Brass will begin to glow a faint orange at about 950 degrees (F). Even if the heating is stopped at a couple of hundred degrees below this temperature, the damage has been done--it will be too soft."

now we KNOW these statements are not completely accurate.
1) no brass is irretrievably and irrevocably too soft after annealing
2) brass is not "Damaged" by faint orange glowing heat. After all, billions of cases have been annealed to glowing as recommended by MANY MANY so called knowledgable pundits.

bottom line, that company in the video is in the business of selling stuff for profit, and need to spin their narrative to support their equipment.

but reality refutes a lot of claims

the best way to tell, is to do you own experiments
1) heat brass necks to differing temps
2) seat bullets and try to move them about, and pull them out, with your fingers
3) remove them with a puller, and repeat #2
4) relax, knowing you did not ruin your brass
5) IF you have concerns, run your brass through a few cycles of sizing with a button in place, with your dies.
according to one fellow on here who previously posted an excellent treatise on annealing, reduce the neck one caliber down, the open them back to your regular size and you will be good to go
6) do like THOUSANDS of basement annealers, heat them to a dim glow, cool them, and just load them and shoot them!

personally I like the lead dip method for ease of control of heat, but I am not worried if I have to do some quickly and only have my torch handy
 
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