Author: britrifles
Subject: Annealing
Posted: January 09 2020 at 12:15pm
If I was going to anneal on a routine basis, I would do it pretty much exactly as Sham has described. I have annealed cases by holding the case at the head and turning it in the flame until I just see a slight colour change (do this in low light conditions); before the case head gets too hot to hold, then set it down. It's worked OK for me, but using Tempilaq is much more precise. And as Sham said, you can easily get too much heat into the case and permanently alter the brass structure.
Subject: Annealing
Posted: January 09 2020 at 12:15pm
If I was going to anneal on a routine basis, I would do it pretty much exactly as Sham has described. I have annealed cases by holding the case at the head and turning it in the flame until I just see a slight colour change (do this in low light conditions); before the case head gets too hot to hold, then set it down. It's worked OK for me, but using Tempilaq is much more precise. And as Sham said, you can easily get too much heat into the case and permanently alter the brass structure.
I'm not sure why I've been able to get so many reloads without neck cracking. I wonder if part of the reason is using a collet die. With a F/L die, the neck is first squashed down to a smaller diameter, and then expanded with the decapping rod. The collet die squeezes the neck on a mandrel so it's got to be working the brass less.