Any tips for annealing cases?

by bmize, Thursday, October 09, 2014, 10:52 (3703 days ago) @ Hoot

Buy a Bench Source annealer???
Send to DJ's brass service. I'll find a link and post shortly. He does good work at a reasonable price.

If you want to do it yourself and then have a setup for future use,
Get a Variable speed drill that can be locked in a slow speed with a deepwell socket just big enough for the case to slide in and out freely. Build an "A" frame jig to lay drill in on one side and the torch on the other. You need to be able to adjust the drill and torch up/down to get it the correct distance from the brass.
You want the inter blue flame 1/4-1/2" away from the neck/shoulder junction.

You want to do this in an almost dark room. Just enough light to see what you are doing.
Start drill, apply heat till the case mouth just starts to change color. You don't want glowing red!!!! Just starting to turn red.
Just as it starts to turn red, dump case out in a tray or something so it dosen't roll away. DON'T DUMP IN WATER, you case will bend like a bananna.
Your looking at somewhere around 5-6 seconds in the flame with a large case. If it takes much longer, get tip closer. If you get in to the 8-9 second range you can heat the base of the case to high. The quicker it heats up the better. You don't want the base to get over 400*. Thats what Bench Source says anyway.
You can buy some Templaque(sp) if you want to, but for me it was a waste of $45.

Now you have a setup and can do most any brass in the future for you and all of your friends.................

You could send them to me, but I don't know if they will get here and I can get them done and back out before I leave headed west in 10 days.

After typing the above, I would say send it to DJ's if it's not something you think you will be doing often.