Range Report: Annealed Cases [Finished]
Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2012 9:11 pm
As of the time I'm writing this, there is a thread in progress regarding annealing. Not wishing to send yet another thread off on a tangent, I have posted this separately. This will consist of two parts. The first is a brief visitation about how I anneal my brass, including a brief video. The second part is what I achieved at the range today using annealed cases.
Part 1: Annealing
I'm self taught WRT annealing, but not before reading how a lot of other folks do it and then trying it on my own. My roots go back to metal shop in the 9th grade, but that was with steel, not brass. There is such a thing as too much where heating the brass is concerned. Some pretty ingenious people have crafted automated processes and they're poetry in motion to observe. I went for cheap and dirty without regard to touch labor content. As sure as there is more than one way to skin a cat, annealing is also open to personalization.
I own a handful of torches and each has it's place depending upon the task at hand. Since annealing requires both precision and consistency, the last thing you need to add to the process is the burden of split second timing. So you do not want to use a hot hot MAPP gas torch appropriate for sweating large pipes like this one:
with a wide, hot flame like this:
That is, unless you have Kung-Fu Lightning reflexes!
Here's my favorite, economical torch:
with a more manageable flame like this:
As for how to hold the cases, you can use a 3/8" screwdriver to socket adapter and a 1/2" socket like this:
Remember "Cheap and Dirty"
In the following video, I use a Lee Case Trimmer Lock-stud to hold my case. I use them a lot for different steps preparing my cases for reloading, cutting down parent cases, etc. and this is just another use. It also allows you to lay some 0000 steel wool to the case while it's cooling to remove the annealing discoloration.
Forgive the brevity, but it's only intended to give you an idea WRT time on the torch and color indication:
YouTube Link
Yeah yeah, everyone's a critic...
In case the before and after image in the video was too fleeting, here it is again:
So armed with a couple a dozen stab crimp scarred, 2 to 5-fired annealed brass, I embarked on loading them up.
Part 2: At the Range
One of the dissuasion's for me WRT stab crimps by whatever name you prefer is the fact that it leaves scars, both inside and outside the case. You've tried soaking them out, scrubbing them out and you still come up with Ring around the Case Mouth! Older guys, help the younger guys out...
Those rings range from inconsequential to significant depending upon how crazy you were with the Modded Lee FCD. I for one do not like seating a bullet and running into one of the significant ones and having to squeeze past it to continue the seat. It can compromise the heel of the bullet. If you don't sort your stab crimp cases by crimp type and severity, or segregate them from your non-scarred cases, then your neck tension will be all over the place when you load a batch for the range. So part of my endeavor was to attempt to iron out the stab crimps somewhat when resizing as a benefit from annealing and more importantly get more consistent neck tension using brass of mixed number of times reloaded as well.
-Continuing-
I did not believe that simply annealing the cases would allow the internal stab rings to magically melt away from resizing on the outside of the case. I needed to push them out from the inside and then resize. I hunted around the shop (junk room) but could not find just the right size dowel or rod that was the right diameter to drive out the rings while not overly stretching the case. My salvation came from of all places, a spent .30-06 case. With it cut down about half way, the diameter perfect and at that point the walls were thick enough not to buckle themselves instead of pushing out the rings. Now, I needed a means to hold it while plunging the 450b cases up into it. That came from my RCBS bullet pulling collet die. I clamped the end on the .30-06 case in it, allowing it to register straight and ran each case up into it as far as I could go without really forcing things. Upon retracting the .30-06 case, "Look ma, no rings! Again help the younger guys out... Hey, you gotta have fun at this right?
After ironing out the internal rings to the point that I could barely feel them with a dental pick, I did a final sizing and trimmed them all to the same length since I would be testing for consistency using the taper crimp.
For my test loads, I decided to put bullet weight into perspective by using the same charge of 38gr of Lil Gun ahead of 200, 225 and 250gr FTX bullets, along with a run of the 250gr Blue Tipped Blems Midway was selling. I assume they were Thompson Center Shockwave bullets since I just had to see if they flew as well for me as others had experienced. Bet you're all getting hungry for some visuals by now.
Now, the range results, including a new twist. I measured the case head expansion and shrinkage of all entrants as soon as they cooled after shooting each one. More on that later.
How they flew:
Luck being what it was, I took my range bag out of my air conditioned house, drove to the range where there was a heavy dew on at 9 AM and the humidity being about 85%. Despite stapling the still dry sheets up to the plywood as tight as I could get them, by the time I walked back to the shooting stations, set everything up (15 tortuous minutes) and looked through the scope at the targets downrange, as I've spoken about before, they had sucked up enough moisture so as to pucker away from the boards. Some times I put a staple in the bullseye to reduce the amount of puckering, but it make them hard to get off intact without a plier to pull the staples first. Anyway, what results is the bullets tend to really tear all around where they inpact and if you're fortunate to put a lot of your shots into the same area on the thin plywood, it tends to bust out a big chunk and the paper just flops through the open air of the hole, leaving hard to distinguish bullet marks. It's the one disadvantage to getting out there early, while it's still cool. By afternoon, when the sun burns off the dew and is shining on the boards, it's not nearly as bad. The end result is less than perfect bullet holes,or several bullets having gone through the torn out spot. Great for the ego, but hard to photograph. Here's what i got to show for my work:
200 FTX: Better than I'm used to having them shoot
225 FTX: So-So group. Not sure why.
250 FTX: Also better than they usually shoot
250 Shockwave (Blue tip Blems): Very pleased with these newbies
My beloved 225 FTX bullets usually are the leaders of the pack in terms of accuracy, but not today. Given they grouped off to the left for the most part, I wonder if it was a bad COL choice in terms of OBT for that charge weight. All four runs were shot round robin to randomize any hot streaks, so I can't claim lack of one on the 225's. The 200's, with my recoil mitigation add-ons, recoiled like a 5.56 carbine, no lie. Not that any of the loads were remotely close to punishing.
Given they are almost identical bullets save for the bonded core and different color tips, I was surprised by the difference in velocity between the FTX and Shockwave. The one variable in the equation was a tighter taper crimp on the 250 FTX, but who would suspect that kind of change in a silly .001 extra crimp. I mic'd them and they're the same .452 as the FTX's. Your guess is as good as mine on that.
Now, about those case head expansion readings. They're exactly like previous readings I've taken for the past two years and one reason I have issues with that method for predicting pressure. My chamber has always felt loose. Slide a bullet in and there is more sideways wiggle room than other calibers I own. In them, as a bullet slides into position, it snugs up. My resizing die sizes that part of the case to a perfect .5000. Cant blame the die. As I said in the other expansion thread, these are far from hot loads. I did take one additional 200gr FTX loading with me for a quick check on an idea I was interested in pursuing and it was a lot hotter, kicking that 200 out of the muzzle at 2403fps. It was the odd man out, left over case from annealing and I wanted to keep all the annealed cases together. Anyway, it's case head growth measured .5024, right in the middle of the range for the much lighter loads. In case you're wondering, it's the 6th bullet in the .225 target. Was supposed to shoot it at the 200 target to see if it hit higher and got distracted. Luck be a lady, it was the bullseye.
So, to summarize:
Annealing the cases, while seeming to present less resistance to seating, yielded similar velocities for the bullet weight and charge, to what I'm used to seeing, aside from the Blue Tips, which were a new experience.
Annealing the cases did tighten up my SDs somewhat, compared to past experience, but who cares? The only time I've seen velocity variation impact accuracy in this caliber was with the heavier 300gr and up bullets. Their rainbow trajectory seems more vulnerable to velocity variation, again from my experience which is not much compared to some of you Rhino hunters.
Annealing the cases didn't cause what I'd call a significant departure in accuracy either way, again from past experience.
Annealing the cases, which were a mix of 2-fired to 5-fired, seemed to minimize any impact upon performance from varying hardness, but in all honesty, I always kept my cases segregated by how many times they were reloaded. So that observation is subjective.
It will take a long time before I can comment from experience whether annealing prolongs case life. I tend to give away the brass after five firings to newbies to help get them started. A small payback to those who have helped me in the past. Actually real small by comparison.
Thanks for your patience while it took two days to complete this.
Hoot
Part 1: Annealing
I'm self taught WRT annealing, but not before reading how a lot of other folks do it and then trying it on my own. My roots go back to metal shop in the 9th grade, but that was with steel, not brass. There is such a thing as too much where heating the brass is concerned. Some pretty ingenious people have crafted automated processes and they're poetry in motion to observe. I went for cheap and dirty without regard to touch labor content. As sure as there is more than one way to skin a cat, annealing is also open to personalization.
I own a handful of torches and each has it's place depending upon the task at hand. Since annealing requires both precision and consistency, the last thing you need to add to the process is the burden of split second timing. So you do not want to use a hot hot MAPP gas torch appropriate for sweating large pipes like this one:
with a wide, hot flame like this:
That is, unless you have Kung-Fu Lightning reflexes!
Here's my favorite, economical torch:
with a more manageable flame like this:
As for how to hold the cases, you can use a 3/8" screwdriver to socket adapter and a 1/2" socket like this:
Remember "Cheap and Dirty"
In the following video, I use a Lee Case Trimmer Lock-stud to hold my case. I use them a lot for different steps preparing my cases for reloading, cutting down parent cases, etc. and this is just another use. It also allows you to lay some 0000 steel wool to the case while it's cooling to remove the annealing discoloration.
Forgive the brevity, but it's only intended to give you an idea WRT time on the torch and color indication:
YouTube Link
Yeah yeah, everyone's a critic...
In case the before and after image in the video was too fleeting, here it is again:
So armed with a couple a dozen stab crimp scarred, 2 to 5-fired annealed brass, I embarked on loading them up.
Part 2: At the Range
One of the dissuasion's for me WRT stab crimps by whatever name you prefer is the fact that it leaves scars, both inside and outside the case. You've tried soaking them out, scrubbing them out and you still come up with Ring around the Case Mouth! Older guys, help the younger guys out...
Those rings range from inconsequential to significant depending upon how crazy you were with the Modded Lee FCD. I for one do not like seating a bullet and running into one of the significant ones and having to squeeze past it to continue the seat. It can compromise the heel of the bullet. If you don't sort your stab crimp cases by crimp type and severity, or segregate them from your non-scarred cases, then your neck tension will be all over the place when you load a batch for the range. So part of my endeavor was to attempt to iron out the stab crimps somewhat when resizing as a benefit from annealing and more importantly get more consistent neck tension using brass of mixed number of times reloaded as well.
-Continuing-
I did not believe that simply annealing the cases would allow the internal stab rings to magically melt away from resizing on the outside of the case. I needed to push them out from the inside and then resize. I hunted around the shop (junk room) but could not find just the right size dowel or rod that was the right diameter to drive out the rings while not overly stretching the case. My salvation came from of all places, a spent .30-06 case. With it cut down about half way, the diameter perfect and at that point the walls were thick enough not to buckle themselves instead of pushing out the rings. Now, I needed a means to hold it while plunging the 450b cases up into it. That came from my RCBS bullet pulling collet die. I clamped the end on the .30-06 case in it, allowing it to register straight and ran each case up into it as far as I could go without really forcing things. Upon retracting the .30-06 case, "Look ma, no rings! Again help the younger guys out... Hey, you gotta have fun at this right?
After ironing out the internal rings to the point that I could barely feel them with a dental pick, I did a final sizing and trimmed them all to the same length since I would be testing for consistency using the taper crimp.
For my test loads, I decided to put bullet weight into perspective by using the same charge of 38gr of Lil Gun ahead of 200, 225 and 250gr FTX bullets, along with a run of the 250gr Blue Tipped Blems Midway was selling. I assume they were Thompson Center Shockwave bullets since I just had to see if they flew as well for me as others had experienced. Bet you're all getting hungry for some visuals by now.
Now, the range results, including a new twist. I measured the case head expansion and shrinkage of all entrants as soon as they cooled after shooting each one. More on that later.
How they flew:
Luck being what it was, I took my range bag out of my air conditioned house, drove to the range where there was a heavy dew on at 9 AM and the humidity being about 85%. Despite stapling the still dry sheets up to the plywood as tight as I could get them, by the time I walked back to the shooting stations, set everything up (15 tortuous minutes) and looked through the scope at the targets downrange, as I've spoken about before, they had sucked up enough moisture so as to pucker away from the boards. Some times I put a staple in the bullseye to reduce the amount of puckering, but it make them hard to get off intact without a plier to pull the staples first. Anyway, what results is the bullets tend to really tear all around where they inpact and if you're fortunate to put a lot of your shots into the same area on the thin plywood, it tends to bust out a big chunk and the paper just flops through the open air of the hole, leaving hard to distinguish bullet marks. It's the one disadvantage to getting out there early, while it's still cool. By afternoon, when the sun burns off the dew and is shining on the boards, it's not nearly as bad. The end result is less than perfect bullet holes,or several bullets having gone through the torn out spot. Great for the ego, but hard to photograph. Here's what i got to show for my work:
200 FTX: Better than I'm used to having them shoot
225 FTX: So-So group. Not sure why.
250 FTX: Also better than they usually shoot
250 Shockwave (Blue tip Blems): Very pleased with these newbies
My beloved 225 FTX bullets usually are the leaders of the pack in terms of accuracy, but not today. Given they grouped off to the left for the most part, I wonder if it was a bad COL choice in terms of OBT for that charge weight. All four runs were shot round robin to randomize any hot streaks, so I can't claim lack of one on the 225's. The 200's, with my recoil mitigation add-ons, recoiled like a 5.56 carbine, no lie. Not that any of the loads were remotely close to punishing.
Given they are almost identical bullets save for the bonded core and different color tips, I was surprised by the difference in velocity between the FTX and Shockwave. The one variable in the equation was a tighter taper crimp on the 250 FTX, but who would suspect that kind of change in a silly .001 extra crimp. I mic'd them and they're the same .452 as the FTX's. Your guess is as good as mine on that.
Now, about those case head expansion readings. They're exactly like previous readings I've taken for the past two years and one reason I have issues with that method for predicting pressure. My chamber has always felt loose. Slide a bullet in and there is more sideways wiggle room than other calibers I own. In them, as a bullet slides into position, it snugs up. My resizing die sizes that part of the case to a perfect .5000. Cant blame the die. As I said in the other expansion thread, these are far from hot loads. I did take one additional 200gr FTX loading with me for a quick check on an idea I was interested in pursuing and it was a lot hotter, kicking that 200 out of the muzzle at 2403fps. It was the odd man out, left over case from annealing and I wanted to keep all the annealed cases together. Anyway, it's case head growth measured .5024, right in the middle of the range for the much lighter loads. In case you're wondering, it's the 6th bullet in the .225 target. Was supposed to shoot it at the 200 target to see if it hit higher and got distracted. Luck be a lady, it was the bullseye.
So, to summarize:
Annealing the cases, while seeming to present less resistance to seating, yielded similar velocities for the bullet weight and charge, to what I'm used to seeing, aside from the Blue Tips, which were a new experience.
Annealing the cases did tighten up my SDs somewhat, compared to past experience, but who cares? The only time I've seen velocity variation impact accuracy in this caliber was with the heavier 300gr and up bullets. Their rainbow trajectory seems more vulnerable to velocity variation, again from my experience which is not much compared to some of you Rhino hunters.
Annealing the cases didn't cause what I'd call a significant departure in accuracy either way, again from past experience.
Annealing the cases, which were a mix of 2-fired to 5-fired, seemed to minimize any impact upon performance from varying hardness, but in all honesty, I always kept my cases segregated by how many times they were reloaded. So that observation is subjective.
It will take a long time before I can comment from experience whether annealing prolongs case life. I tend to give away the brass after five firings to newbies to help get them started. A small payback to those who have helped me in the past. Actually real small by comparison.
Thanks for your patience while it took two days to complete this.
Hoot