Thread: Do you need a fancy machine to anneal?

Weather has been not good for much the last couple days so I spent most of my time reloading.
I biffed all my flash Lapua brass a while ago and started mucking around with cheap Rem brass. For some reason everything improved markedly.

I have around 50 cases Rem brass that have 2 firings.
I normally sent my brass to a mate to get annealed but after reading some articles on the benefit of annealing after every firing I thought there may be some merit to it.
Being a gear freak I was fully intending to buy a flash machine to achieve this.
With the weather being as it was, I had to occupy myself somehow so I did some experimenting.
I prepped 10 cases and got out the old propane torch.
Secured my cases in my battery drill with a Sinclair case holder.


Held the case neck with the drill full noise at the tip of the inner blue flame for 7 seconds as steady as possible.

And dropped it into an ice cream container full of water.

Dried them out. Necksized and loaded them up.
While seating the projectiles I normally use graphite powder. I still used it but noted how consistent, seating felt thru my press despite it.
I went out and shot some groups and tested velocity. Results were good and I repeated the process a couple times.

The following results are from the 6th firing of the tested cases and 3 times annealed in the most scientific fashion😆

A combination of things could be at play regarding accuracy of the rifle but I normally could group 5 rnds around .8"
ES was usually between 10 - 20 fps but most of the variation was evident on the 4th and 5th shots.
My new barrel could have also settled a little as it has fired 136 rnds.
Barrel has not been cleaned for 20+ rounds and projectiles are HBN coated.

I normally only fire 3 rnd groups to test zero and accuracy as it is hunting rifle not a target rifle, besides shooting paper bores the hell out of me all be it necessary.

ES was pretty good. I took the pic after deleting everything on my chrony by accident. The first 2 shots were 2974 and 2980.


Group was shot at 109 yrds. MPI needs to be at 1.4" for 200yrd zero.
Bottom hole has 2 in it.


Back of box sort of shows the key holed shot.


Early days yet but I think I will hold of on a flash annealing machine.

With the weather mending, my son will hopefully put one of my flash harry bullets into a Haast spiker in the next couple days.

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk