Thread: Annealing questions

Where do you get your tempilaq from Zimmer ?

You say there maybe inconsistency with no machine, most likely. but how long does it take for you to register the temilaq paint is up to temp and stop the timer?more to the point you need to know why case annealing is effective and in yoyr personal situation whether its beneficial to the reloading process yiu use. Can any of you tell what a work hardened case feels like going thru the die?

ive annealed some 500 cases or more of various calibre and never had an issue with overheated brass, I have the tools although a crude method is the outlay of such machines worth the 5 % ( random figure) benefit in utmost consistency?... and as ebf pointed out unless each and every case is dimensionally the same then this might as well be a 308 vs 708 discussion

Originally Posted by ebf

Where do you get your tempilaq from Zimmer ?

Heh @ebf post #69 :-)

Originally Posted by ebf

Breyt, I think you misunderstand what I said. Each case IS slightly different - so having a consistent amount of time in the flame is exactly what I do not like about machines... Let's face it, brass cases are extruded from material that is not exactly consistent.

If you have a bunch of cases that have all been neck turned extremely carefully, a machine may well get reasonably close. Take those same cases on a different day and run the machine with the same settings and you could be cooking your brass... So to be safe, each time you use the machine you need to tune the timing cycle using tempilaq or something similar.

i have to disagree with your statement! Doing it by hand has a far beter change cooking your cases than a machine. Its like building a car by hand it takes ages and you make far more mistakes that the machine ever can unless your set up was wrong; You don't need any skills to set up Auto annealing Machine

Originally Posted by ebf

Hamish, extended brass life is a side-benefit for me. The primary reason I do it is to get consistent neck tension. But I shoot a LOT and get thru my brass reasonably quickly. After about 4-5 firings I can start to feel a difference in the force required to seat projectiles. It's a bit hard to explain, but I do seating by feel - my brass is extremely carefully turned and prepped. K&N make a great little arbor press with a force gauge on it - very high on my wish list. That would be a lot more scientific way of measuring when the necks become case hardened.

If you need constant accuracy you need to anneal those cases every 1-2 shots

I anneal after every firing, then go harvest deer.

Originally Posted by HNTMAD

But really how much xtra life are you getting?? Say a bag of brass costs lets say $200 for 100 rnds, therefore $2 each and after using them 10 times without annealing that works out to 20cents, is that such a bad thing. Seams a whole lot if work for little fain.

Ok so I can see the target shooters rolling their eyes already, but I am a hunter and max distance for me is 500-600m, it's s whole lot of time and pain that could be better used filling the freezer. Which is full BTW

Just my 10cents

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Good point but for target shooters they want to hit the bull every time which is much smaller that the kill zone on deer.
Normally cases will last about 10 shots maybe more before they start splitting.
annealing your cases regularly will make them last about 30 shots each so if you make that same calculation its a totally different story

Guys all i'm trying to say is by annealing your cases more regularly is not a bad thing does not matter what your application is or how you do it.

ebf if you are interested i want to send you my Demo model to use next time you do annealing and give us feed back (You cant keep it you have to send it back when you are finished )

Originally Posted by 7mmsaum

I anneal after every firing, then go harvest deer.

Maybe i need to start annealing then lol

Hamish

Originally Posted by R93

Youre right. Best results you size after annealing.

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So do I need to FL size after annealing or can I just neck size?

Originally Posted by Gibo

So do I need to FL size after annealing or can I just neck size?

Just neck unless you needed to bump the shoulder anyway.

Originally Posted by veitnamcam

Just neck unless you needed to bump the shoulder anyway.

Nah will neck cheers mate. Checked in chamber so was going to go ahead and neck em

Originally Posted by Gibo

So do I need to FL size after annealing or can I just neck size?

If they chamber easily I just neck size.
If they don't I bump the shoulder a smidge until they do.
Normally only have to bump them around the 5th firing and then they need the body die a few firings after that.

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I only bother annealing after 3rd firing. They 'feel' pretty similar when seating projectiles within that cycle so why bother doing it every time?