Annealing

[John]

Brownells had a nice sale so I picked up a Bench Source annealing machine. When you anneal a bottle neck like the 44-77, do you anneal the mouth down past the shoulder or just the mouth and neck? Been reloading for a while but this will be my first time annealing. John

[Don McDowell]

I would keep most of the heat on the neck. I don't think getting the shoulder softened up would be a good thing.

[Lumpy Grits]

On BN cases-Annealing the case mouth takes care of the 'shoulder'.
I anneal modern BN cases all the time. Great way to maintain case headspace and to uniform case neck tension.
Gary

[Kurt]

I go about a 1/4 inch past the shoulder when I do my .44-77 and .44-90 cases. So far I have not had a case pull apart since Jamison started making the brass for those two calibers.
But I seldom resize my cases.

[Fogman01]

While we are on the topic of annealing: I want to hook up my two BBQ grill sized propane tanks to my two Benzomatic nozzles that fire the cases. And/or I would like to fill up the Benzomatic bottles that the nozzles go onto. The nozzles are the standard 1" connections that fit onto the bottles. I have a hose that connects the propane tank to the nozzle but in cold weather or when the tank isn't 100% full there is not enough pressure to light the nozzle or fill the bottles. I had already tried the direct connect from propane tank to bottle and there's not enough pressure to get more than a tiny bit into the bottle even if the tank is full. I bought a hose with a high pressure regulator and the connection of course did not fit the nozzle. I bought enough brass pieces at Home Depot to make the connection with the nozzle but the regulator did not work. What kind of regulator do I need to make this work? The only regulator I saw on Amazon that was different from one I already tried has a 1/4" connection and I already tried cobbling stuff together to make that work and it didn't. I have a lot to anneal and can't keep buying the bottles.

[Gunner500]

I haven't annealed my 44-77 cases yet, will do so after four firings, then never again for the life of the case, I anneal with a propane torch on a bench top, turning with my fingers about three quarters of an inch in front of the casehead, when hot to the touch, drop in a 5 gal bucket of water.

set out to dry, full length re-size, trim to uniform length, debur, tumble clean, then load.

Have done smokeless cases like this for decades, and black powder cases for the last six or seven years, no problems.

[mikeg]

I have a setup I bought 30+ yrs ago that has a small propane fitting on one end of section of 1/4" brass tubing and a fitting that fits grill size tanks on the other. The instructions were to screw the bottles to the right ends of the tubing, invert the large tank, so that when you open the valve you fill with mostly liquid compressed propane, not the vapor. It helped that the small bottles had an extra fitting with a tire stem in to vent when you were filling.
But I also anneal like Gunner 500 using my fingers or if I have a lot to do use a small cordless drill with fixture I made to loosely hold the cases that I tilt into the bucket of water.

[Gunner500]

Mike, I have all my annealing done for my Sharps rifle cartridges, save a few that were already loaded and have to be shot, then give them the treatment, and re-load.

They are 750 grain grease groove bullets for my 50-90, they leave the 11 pound rifle at 1365 fps, it may take awhile to shoot 100 of those rounds, not the funnest rifle I have.

[38-72]

While we are on the topic of annealing: I want to hook up my two BBQ grill sized propane tanks to my two Benzomatic nozzles that fire the cases. And/or I would like to fill up the Benzomatic bottles that the nozzles go onto. The nozzles are the standard 1" connections that fit onto the bottles. I have a hose that connects the propane tank to the nozzle but in cold weather or when the tank isn't 100% full there is not enough pressure to light the nozzle or fill the bottles. I had already tried the direct connect from propane tank to bottle and there's not enough pressure to get more than a tiny bit into the bottle even if the tank is full. I bought a hose with a high pressure regulator and the connection of course did not fit the nozzle. I bought enough brass pieces at Home Depot to make the connection with the nozzle but the regulator did not work. What kind of regulator do I need to make this work? The only regulator I saw on Amazon that was different from one I already tried has a 1/4" connection and I already tried cobbling stuff together to make that work and it didn't. I have a lot to anneal and can't keep buying the bottles.

I talked with Bernzomatic about the psi to run their torches. They said no regulator needed, the torches are designed to run directly of tank pressure.