Brass annealing -- humbling experience

[earlmck]

Happens that fellow levergunner "Bill in Oregon" and I both recently acquired 25 Remingtons. These being decidedly not leverguns, we did a little back-channel communicating. He directed me to a "Pet Loads" article on 25 Rem in the Nov '73 issue of "Handloader". Fascinating the good info to be found in the old mags: and there on the next page after the "25 Rem Pet Loads" was this great article on "Measuring Case Anneal" by Fred Whitlock.

So here's the deal: the harder your case necks get the more they resist deforming when squeezed. So Whitlock's technique is to take a steel mandrel about .02" smaller than the inside of the case neck (so if you have .222 inside diameter you'd be wanting about a .200 to .202 mandrel) He suggests that drill bits make good mandrels, and I got a nice set of bits in a great number of different sizes a couple years ago when browsing through Costco's tool area. You take the mandrel, put it inside the neck, squeeze the case neck closed in a vise, creating an oval-shaped case neck. So the more oval the shape, the softer was the neck. You get the idea -- wonderfully simple. You measure the small dimension, the large dimension, and get the difference. He has a nice graph showing the results on a variety of 223 necks getting different treatments. Whitlock says this works on any case with about a .012 neck-wall thickness as long as you find a mandrel about .02 smaller than the inside case neck diameter. For his batch of different treatments, some cases where he made 222's out of 223's were the hardest and had a large dimension of .252, a small of .242, for a difference of .01. His soft cases were flame annealed until danged hot and water quenched. These had large dimensions about .254, small of about .234 for a difference of .02 which he thought was maybe too soft. New brass came out about .018 difference and had dropped to .015 after 3 resizings.

Now for years I have occasionally annealed case necks on certain cases that I don't want to loose to neck splits. Somewhere along the line I read something that got me thinking about 7 seconds in the gas flame on the girl's kitchen stove was "about right". So I measured some cases, did my anneal deal, and discovered it had made NO DIFFERENCE. Took about 11 seconds, at which point the fingers were getting quite warm, before I had done enough heating to make a measurable difference in the softness of my cases.

This is great information for a fellow to have. I may be slightly embarrassed that my practice for many years was not doing anything to the anneal status of my brass. But thanks to Mr. Whitlock I now have a technique that lets me kinda' get a feel for where a batch of brass is, and lets me soften it up a bit so the necks last longer. So now I understand why I lost some cases to neck splits that I thought I shouldn't have lost: I thought I just hadn't done the anneal early enough. Nope, I hadn't done the anneal at all!

And I found out why Whitlock talks about his specific measurements working on cases of the right brass thickness. I tried some brand new 25-20 cases and these thin-necked critters don't hardly get out-of-round much when squeezed. Now 25-20 is not one I have neck-split troubles with: it was just one of the only ones I had handy where neck thickness was different than Whitlocks test specified, and where I happened to have new brass. I imagine you can make your own tests and figure it out if you have different brass neck thicknesses: you are just trying to compare what you have now with what new brass gives you, and also checking to see that your anneal job has actually made a measurable difference. Anyway, a very interesting idea and one we reloaders can put to good use. I'm sure I looked at this article back in '73 and blew it off as not of interest. Oh well, better late than never to discover this good info.

[AJMD429]

Fascinating info and thanks for sharing the experience.

Who knows, your treatment may still have helped - sounds like each cartridge and each neck-thickness will behave differently. The only way to know for sure would be to anneal some and not anneal others, and reload both lots for many times, tracking your results.

[M. M. Wright]

Annealing cases must be an art, I usually manage to ruin several cases every time I try it. Gotta find me a better process.

[earlmck]

Annealing cases must be an art, I usually manage to ruin several cases every time I try it. Gotta find me a better process.

yeah, I ruined a few back when I was trying it with the acetylene welding torch. This technique of grabbing the base with the bare fingers and poking the neck into the gas burner flame hasn't ruined any cases for me. But probably wasn't doing much good, either, the way I was doing it. Now I think I can figure out about how long to hold the case in the flame to get a modest anneal and will be trying this out in the future (might need to wear gloves, though). Of course I was thinking I really needed to anneal the 25 Remingtons I made from necking down 30 Remington, but after checking these with the "squish-on-the-mandrel" technique it looks like it doesn't make them terribly hard and annealing may not be that vital a step to take. I'll do it anyway, but if the chamber of the rifle is pretty tight I'd bet it isn't badly needed. Making 7X57s out of 30-06 for an old sloppy chambered model 93 Mauser? yeah, you better anneal those babys. (Voice of experience).

[piller]

Good info for me, even if I am relatively inexperienced at reloading. I mean relatively as compared to a large number on this forum. Among the masses often found firing verbal shots at the proverbial male of the cattle species in your hometown gun store, I am a little more knowledgeable than many of the more vocal and opinionated of the group which tend to have their sensory organ cluster inserted in their fourth point of contact. I have some brass for a .44 Magnum which seems to be in need of a little care. We don't have a gas stove, but I have a nice little dual fuel, single burner Coleman stove which should do very well as a substitute. I like the idea of deforming the brass to determine whether or not it is soft enough. I would think that if it splits at a deformation of .02 or less, then it might split under the pressure of firing it. I am looking forward to hearing from some of the more knowledgeable and experienced members here.

[Sixgun]

Now thats a post of substance! I learn something new everyday. Thanks Earl.

Those 25, 30, and 32 Rem. case are some of the hardest to get. I got mine by shooting up 5 boxes of factory ammo, of which about 20% of them split. Yea, I know, I should have just pulled the bullets, decapped, and annealed before I shot them.

Being of a redneck nature, I have found the old way of just propane torching them ---standing halfway up in water seems to work. A few years back a buddy gave me a couple of hundred 30-40 Krag empties that were Frankford Arsenal dated from 1905-1909 that I use in a pair of 1895's. I annealed them the only way I knew and surprisingly, most are still being used, some with more than 20 firings---cast @ 1800-----------------------Sixgun

[pdawg.shooter]

7 seconds in 750º lead works well for me.

[gimdandy]

tempilac (lots of other brands available ) is a crayon like chalk that when up to prescribed temp will show you that it is up to temp . Draw line of it on neck of casing , put deprimed case on top of LEE depriming punch and twirl above a small propane torch usually 1 1/2 turns and drop in small amount of water / or not. Since the amount of flame varies so much the timing changes so l chalk 3 and have timing down have 2 more already chalked and after 5 unchalked l run a chalked. The Tempilac 's come in lots of temps so make sure you're gettin what you want. 1 stick will last 8 lifetimes of annealing

[earlmck]

I would think that if it splits at a deformation of .02 or less, then it might split under the pressure of firing it.

I don't think it's going to split at that little .02 deformation, piller, unless it was already dead. No, that just gives you some "feel" for where your brass is in the hardness category and should let you see if your favored anneal method is really doing anything. I'll confess here that instead of using the vise to squeeze the case necks on the mandrel I ground off the gripping-grooves from a cheapo pair of pliers and used those because I could sit in my comfy chair by the wood stove and do my brass testing .

I've used Sixgun's method and didn't stick with it long enough to perfect the timing -- I melted a few case mouths and got a bunch more just totally dead soft. Then I went to pdawg.shooter's lead pot method, which was probably effective and reliable but I kept having to scrape off little splashes of lead that stuck to the case. And that was when I went to the gas burner (I use an old Colman camp stove if the wife is occupying her kitchen, her kitchen stove if she isn't guarding it). And I know I should have taken gimdandy's advice long ago and got some of that tempilac to check my timing. I'd just been assuming I was getting the job done. You know how that goes!

For anybody who wants to get more scientific with this, get hold of that article in the '73 "Handloader". Fred Whitlock shows construction details for a homemade factory-style annealer he built.

[Bill in Oregon]

Very interesting stuff Earl. I haven't lost many cases to neck splits over the years. In fact, I've probably melted more cases with a torch! Tempilac sounds like the answer.