I would like information on the steps to annealing rifle brass. The pros and cons. What equipment is needed, how often annealing should be done.

With brass being expensive and scares I need to get the most out of what I have.



Thanks for any help

Cheapest way is to stand the brass on a tray of water to the max limit you wish to anneal.
get a propane or butane torch heat the neck to glowing red and knock the brass down into the water.

there are a lot of other fancy stuff out there tho.. some of them are awesome.

Well now, a subject that is near and dear to my heart.

I have recently finished building a motorised annealer, and it works a treat.

Here is a You Tube video of the machine built by the designer...

Skippy's Annealer

My mate ordered four low rev electric motors, four digital readouts, two transformers (240v to 12v) and the relevant control knobs and start buttons from China for a very reasonable price.

I built the pan that revolves out of a piece of 4 inch channel, and the small feeder "drum" is actually a piece of wood from a broken shovel handle (chiselled a groove for the case and drilled it to be a snug fit on the drive shaft). The green button is the on/off switch for each motor and the knob controls the speed 0 - 100 rpm. The metal shaft etc on the bottom right is actually the mount for the gas torch.

Quite the ingenious home project. Do you set the speed of the case roller with an infared temperature gun to get thr case necks to the right temperature.?

supposedly, it can be done for less than $100

MacD wrote:

Quite the ingenious home project. Do you set the speed of the case roller with an infared temperature gun to get thr case necks to the right temperature.?

No Mac...used the old Mk 1 Eyeball. I heat the necks up to a straw colour and that's enough. It takes maybe 8 seconds for the drum to rotate one full circle and I find that works out perfectly for the case to be annealed. If I see the discolouration moving down the case beyond the shoulder I can either speed up the rotation or ease off the gas flame a bit.

Slim wrote:

...supposedly, it can be done for less than $100

Well under $100 Slim

gelandangan wrote:

Cheapest way is to stand the brass on a tray of water to the max limit you wish to anneal. get a propane or butane torch heat the neck to glowing red and knock the brass down into the water. there are a lot of other fancy stuff out there tho.. some of them are awesome.

Darwin,
heating brass to red hot will ruin it, make it too soft.
This bloke has a simple system and a good explaination of the heat range required;
youtu.be/fiIrLvAUh6o

But being the king of gadgets, I'm betting you'll opt for an up market version of Vinces, that will probably dispense cold beer while it anneals cases

Designing a loading gate to feed the cases would dispense with one motor and switch/reo. That would reduce cost. I am thinking it would actuated by an edge on the drum that caused the gate to open and allow only one case to drop into the drum. Also if the drum was lined with felt or some other material that would wick water and still give the required friction to spin the case you could prevent the heat from traveling down the case. This is fun!

Have a look on You Tube Mac...there are a number of different ideas along the same vein as this one, some that only require one motor and rheostat.

Here's one off of YouTube that is cool.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uPlbB6LHKE

You can use Templaq or a Tempil stick that melts at a specific temperature to set the heating time too. I believe 750 Fahrenheit is about the right temperature.

Is quenching critical? I have seen some do it and some not.

To answer Winterhawks question - You can anneal every loading but I do it after every third loading. In addition to reducing neck splits and giving prolonged case life I get more consistent neck tension that improves precision and accuracy as well.

If you have a limited supply of brass make sure you are setting the sizer die to work the brass only the minimum amount to reliably load into the chamber. In my Autoloaders that is about 0.003" set back on the Datum line at the shoulder. On bolt rifles.. neck size only. maybe 0.001" shoulder setback if it is going into the same rifle again. If you have multiple rifles of the same caliber - you either size to the smallest chamber or keep it separate for each rifle. I have some Win 223 on its 12th loading and some 30-06 on #9.

You have to get brass to at least 650F to anneal it but temperatures up to 1200F will continue to make the metal softer. The problem you face with cartridges, as we all know, is that you don't want to anneal the case below the shoulder. That is why it was common practice to use a cold water bath to set the cartridges in while heating the necks.

Quenching isn't necessary when the metal is as thin as the neck of a case. It air cools very quickly so as to set the annealing process.