I enjoyed the info and appreciate your sharing. I reload some wildcat cartridges and have tried to anneal with a pencil torch and it was a miserable fail.
I am presently using salt bath annealing. I use a Lee lead melting pot and a thermal couple attached to my Fluke meter to maintain a temperature of between 800 and 825*/F and I
I anneal each case a timed 3 seconds. As this is my first attempt at annealing I did a test sampling of 25 each of 300WSM that had been fired 4x each and 35 Remington that have
been reloaded 5x.
I am going to reload them and see how they perform. I will chrono every round and compare my findings to past data to see if my SD's improve as I hope they will. I chose salt bath as it was and is all I can afford in DIY annealing. I am also going to give coating my bullets with HBN as well as my rifle barrels a try and see if that improves my over all accuracy.
Lastly I would love to give the stainless media you suggested a try. Could you please post a link to the source from which you buy your .045" sized media?
Thank you,
Arthur.
I live in south central part of Indiana. I really just intended to be a thank you post. I load multiple older cartridges that are made from 308 and 30/06 brass and during the shortage I hoarded up some old military brass. trying to use different aged brass was to inconsistent. I thought if I annealed the neck and shoulders it would help with life and varying bullet grip.Where do you live.....? And what case or cases are you forming...?
I live in south central part of Indiana. I really just intended to be a thank you post. I load multiple older cartridges that are made from 308 and 30/06 brass and during the shortage I hoarded up some old military brass. trying to use different aged brass was to inconsistent. I thought if I annealed the neck and shoulders it would help with life and varying bullet grip.
I find old military brass the most frustrating!
When General Dynamics/ATK/Federal took over Lake City the first thing they did was update the brass alloys, so from 2012 forward LC brass improved greatly.
It's very nearly Winchester premium in alloy and I have zero issues with it.
Function being the last word, and when you get SDs in single digits, one hole groups that's VERY hard to argue with, and let's face it, when milbrass will run with Lupua for 8¢ a case, it's YOU that wins!
I mostly shoot 'Minute Of Groundhog' or 'Minute Of Coyote'...
Most rounds fired at my range are by friends & family that shoot 'Minute Of Paper Plate' @ 100 yds.
Round sponge & ink pad make for quick/cheap paper plate targets, and the natives don't seem to complain!
I find it a pain in the butt to drag all the bench rifle gear down to the range, set up & tear down, age & weather being the biggest factors... We just don't seem to get those perfect spring & fall days anymore...
Since no one just sits and 'Visits' anymore, less & less people mess with everything they come across (more specialized & constantly busy) I figure this is as close as we'll come to passing experience along...
A guy suggested I write a book, I'm not a writer, my wife would buy 12 copies to make me feel better, I'd give away 12 copies, 10 of which would wind up leveling table legs, and the other two that sold would be a mystery, probably bought by mistake ...
Better to throw it out someplace it might be used by the 18 people remotely interested!
I hope it helps someone understand what's going on with the brass, since a reloader is interested in the brass, if for no other reason making it live longer.