doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Annealing brass

I am going to try that method of annealing, AGS. I'm getting very uneven expansion after the "finger twirling" method. And, I can't heat the cases near enough to the head that way, anyhow.

Thanks for your thoughtful and helpful post. Stan

Stan,
You have so many people giving advice it must seem very complicated. This is your project, you should use the advice you are comfortable with and fits the equipment and components you have; if this is someone else's advice, my feelings won't be hurt. Different powders will work, you just have to adjust the charge weight required for the particular case being formed. I suggest you load a couple cases with 4 or 5 grains of powder and the grits, fire them and adjust the charge until you are satisfied or decide it is safer to anneal and fireform more than once rather than add more powder after noticing pressure signs.
With regard to reduced loads causing detonations, the reports were with slow burning rate powders, the classic case was with 4831 in the 270 Win. I have a 5.6X61R vom Hofe Super Express and did pretty extensive research trying to find a firsthand account of detonations (the .227" bullets I had required less velocity than the load data I had in order to shoot acceptable groups) but could not verify they actually occurred. I switched to a medium rather than slow burning powder, anyway. You don't need to worry about reduced charges of fast burning powders.
Mike

Mike, I appreciate your, and other's, advice here. The catch is taking that advice and figuring out how to apply it. I may not be doing something quite the way the poster does it, and makes it work for them. When I annealed five cases by turning them with my thumb and finger, in the flame, I tried as hard as I could to do the top third of the case. By the time I got what I thought was an acceptable color change the head of the case would begin heating up to the point that I'd have to quickly drop in in a loading block to keep from being burned. This morning I cleaned the 5 cases of the black powder residue in my ultrasonic cleaner, annealed them again, reprimed them, and loaded them with 8 grs. of Longshot, a 1/4 sheet of toilet paper wad, filled the case almost to the top with grits, then used a plug from a styrofoam cup on top. This was the result.



As all can see the only thing that expanded was the neck, even though I attempted to anneal a good ways below that. It's no fault of anyone's. It's just incomplete results. I'm learning, and I'm making progress. I'm reading all I can and, as you say, figuring it out for myself with the gracious help of yourself and others. Tomorrow morning I will use the cake pan and water method on five cases, heat until reddish, and quench. Then I will load only one with the Bullseye load AGS suggested and see what happens. Tomorrow I will seal the mouth of the case with a plug of 2mm wax I had ordered and that came today.

I'm putting all this on here in the hope that someday someone else can skip the things I have tried that gave incomplete, or inconsistent, results and go straight to a successful procedure. Again, and I really mean this, thanks to all who have taken of their valuable time to offer suggestions and help. What fun!!!

To be continued ........

Stan,

I have been watching this thread with interest as I was given some 9.3x74R brass with a view to reloading it as 3” .410.

If you are concerned about pressure spikes in fire-forming the answer may be to find an old single shot .410, as long as it has a clean chamber, and use that for the fire-forming.

Most of those single shots have relatively massive chamber walls and the ideal would something like a .410 Baikal single which is almost indestructible.

Stan,
When annealing by hand I put a coffee can with water directly under the torch, which is standing on the edge of a bench/table, so all I have to do is open my fingers and the case falls into the water. Off and on I dip my fingers into the water if I feel too much heat. It is not really necessary to heat until the case turns red, in fact with a necked case, over heating is what causes the shoulders to buckle. Some people fireform using a bullet instead of filler, but with the filler, you can't create excess pressure and you save bullets. If you have a single shot 410 with no choke, you could take Parabola's advice but load cast bullets. My cousin's final fireforming for his double rifle was with cast bullets while working up acceptable loads. I don't have anything against using a machine to help in the process. You may find an easy to build one on You Tube.
Mike

In rifles with much high pressures, I moved years ago to fire forming with a starting load for whatever cartridge it is. I would consider experimenting on just two of those cases. Maybe, anneal again, put a 410 starting powder charge in, probably have to hand seat a fiber, maybe have to trim it, probably a little less shot, and possibly qlue in as mentioned earlier an overshot card. Build a little safe back pressure, and it'll blow out. Pattern it just for grins?

Your brass may be pretty hard, just back of the point it didn't expand, or it may have acted like there was a bit of an air gap. Maybe it doesn't need annealing. I wouldn't worry about cleaning the annealing colors, until you have it humming along like you want it, and even then it might look neater, lol. Anyway, hang in there, it'll work.

This morning I made a huge step forward in this process. I put about 1/2", maybe a bit less, water in a cake pan and set five cases in it, base down of course. I then heated each until the neck/shoulder area was briefly reddish in color, but played the torch flame down the cases all around until they were annealed to the water line, then tipped them over. Primed and loaded each with 4 gr. Bullseye, a small toilet paper wad, then grits, finished off with a 2mm wax plug. Firing gave a great deal of expansion, but not 100%. Re-annealed same way, and reloaded same way. Next firing gave 96+% full fire-forming.

They're good enough now for a medium load of powder and shot. No signs of splitting anywhere. I know it's better to be safe than sorry, but the 4 gr. Bullseye seems so light that I wonder what the results would be on the first firing if I upped it to 6 gr.

As Mike told me a couple days ago, this has turned out to be a two or three step/firing process. I had previously thought it could be accomplished with one firing. If I had known the effort required to do this with 48 cases I may not have ever taken the plunge. Probably better that I didn't know up front. Anyway, I'll load up the five cases with a lighter than normal hunting load and see if we complete the "smoothing out" of the case walls. If I get the time to mess with them tomorrow morning I may have some pics. I must say, it is looking promising, if not economical (in terms of time and effort).

The goal from the outset was to have .410 cases that had more case capacity than anything you could buy. I am cautiously optimistic that we will, indeed. Oh, BTW, I am using a Yildiz double barrel to do the fire-forming.

Stan,
Now that you know 4 grains of bullseye is too small a load, I think you can increase the second fireforming load to 6 or more grains. Craig's suggestion to load a starting load of shot after the initial forming is worth a try. The case walls not being straight would not prevent using shot as it might prevent seating a bullet. You might have to use a toilet paper wad as an overshot load, though. This could reduce the number of loads needed to blow the cases out.
Mike

The issue would be if the single-shot's chamber was oversize in comparison to the chambers Stan intends to shoot the ammo in. If smaller, no problem. This is based on my experience with .410s and brass hulls. Gil

I have successfully fireformed some cases now. The last load used in the process was 15 grs. H110, two 7/16" card wads punched out of old shell box cardboard, 450 grs. no. 9 shot, and a 7/16" overshot card wad. This load finished fireforming the cases well. I doubt the lower 1" of the case will ever enlarge to full chamber diameter, but the rest of the case out to the mouth is nice and straight with no splits. (Yes, that 450 grs. of no. 9 shot is over one ounce, but that was without nitro and cushion wads).

Now, I move to the load development stage. Goal is to develop an efficient non-tox load of no. 6 Nice Shot for woodies ........ all the case can hold. I'm hoping for a bit over 3/4 oz. at a velocity somewhere between 1150 and 1200 fps.