Thread: Blow torch for annealing

Hey team, does anybody do annealing of cases?

I'm looking into doing it and was wondering if the canister attached blow torches from bunnings etc get hot enough to do it?

Any tips and tricks would be appreciated

Plenty of vids on youtube about it, I reckon they would.
I'll be giving it a crack when I get my WSM back from the shop.

I use one of those blow torches powered by a blue ‘camping gas’ cylinder
Same one as the cookers use
Works for me.
I’m highly unscientific, anneal every 4 reloads, hold the case in the flame, rotating it, until I start to feel the heat
through my fingers, then drop it in water.
Seems to improve neck tension.
Then again, maybe I’m fooling myself !
It’s part of the reloading procedure I’ve ended up doing, anyway.

They get plenty hot enough. The problem is moderating the heat so you don’t over anneal and ruin the brass.

What's everyone's thoughts about dropping them in water ? I've read that dropping them in water can create inconsistencies and better off dropping them in a tray to cool down, also best to do in a slightly darkened rooms you can see when they turn to a dark cherry red which is apparently all they need.

When the case area being heated starts to develop the blue tint, it’s around the correct temp.
Any more and you are overheating it.
You can get technical and apply templaq which turns colour, but I can’t be fussed.
I do what Frogfeatures does, hold by hand in a camp cooker flame.
Dropping in water isn’t really needed, air cooling is fine.
The net has instructions on how to make an automated annealing set.

Originally Posted by dannyb

................I've read that dropping them in water can create inconsistencies and better off dropping them in a tray to cool down, also best to do in a slightly darkened rooms you can see when they turn to a dark cherry red which is apparently all they need.

I haven't read that and I do darken the room to aid my failing peepers do their work.

Originally Posted by Frogfeatures

I use one of those blow torches powered by a blue ‘camping gas’ cylinder
Same one as the cookers use
Works for me.
I’m highly unscientific, anneal every 4 reloads, hold the case in the flame, rotating it, until I start to feel the heat
through my fingers, then drop it in water.
Seems to improve neck tension.
Then again, maybe I’m fooling myself !
It’s part of the reloading procedure I’ve ended up doing, anyway.

Cheers, that's the type I was looking at

Thanks for all the info team. Might do a bit of experimenting over the break. 10 reloads out of my 303 brass so far.

Neck tension is a bit loose after resizing so must be time to anneal.

Head thickness is fine after I cut a case lengthwise

I just use my single burner little camping stove. Works fine.

Yeah I use one from bunnings, but I brought a hose to connect it to my 9Kg LPG bottle for a more consistent pressure and economically it makes annealing way cheaper!

Originally Posted by Danger Mouse

Hey team, does anybody do annealing of cases?

I'm looking into doing it and was wondering if the canister attached blow torches from bunnings etc get hot enough to do it?

Any tips and tricks would be appreciated

Built one of these with parts off AliExpress. Costs about $50 and a couple of hours of assemble time. Used tempilaq (from Servotech in AKL) to get the correct heat level.

https://youtu.be/Y2TbYhYKsys


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@janleroux Nice! Really simple, I opted to add the hopper using Skippy’s YouTube videos to allow me to do other processes as they anneal, such as decapping another batch

Originally Posted by Oli1102

@janleroux Nice! Really simple, I opted to add the hopper using Skippy’s YouTube videos to allow me to do other processes as they anneal, such as decapping another batch

@Oli1102 you are a step or so ahead of me, but that is on my todo list. As is I have annealed about 500 cases with this setup. Takes me about 10min to do 100 cases, so not too much drama. Use the standard blue gas torches - I just bought another (the cheaper) torch tip from Mitre10. The fancy one that has the lighter built in did not give a nice pencil flame.



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Yeah I have found it doesn’t give a nice pencil flame with the one I have, so had reservations about it when I started. I have found it to work fine and heat evenly though and the width of the flame when centred on the neck/shoulder junction covers the shoulder and most of the neck. I think it might actually heat more evenly the whole annealing area rather than focusing on one point and relying on the heat to transfer up the neck and down the shoulder... but in reality they all work.

Also, I would say the hopper hasn’t saved me anytime yet as I’m still working on getting it 100% reliable so I usually end up watching it anyway to catch the 1 in 50 cases that bounces off or stops halfway down the ramp. I have only done maybe 250cases total so far on it.