Salt Bath Annealing Doesn't Work! by AMP

[kyron]

I'll check when I get home post which book on Tuesday

Modern Advancements In Long Range Shooting volume II
part 2 chapter 6

Also, now that I have looked over it again I was partly mistaken he did not discuss the effect on the target. We can guess why he does not but we would only be guessing. I think the only accurate take away is that the effect on the target is simply not what he was testing.

 

[TwoMore]

Ok I have been watching this thread since the beginning. I built a salt bath system about a month ago, the rifle I an shooting right now is a 26 wssm with an improved shoulder. One problem with it is the thick brass especially in the shoulder( I turn the necks down) but with no annealing i get a heavy bolt from the shoulder and not a real good fireforming. I am well pleased with the salt bath method, I have loaded a couple hundered rounds and I can really tell the difference in the bullet seating and fireforming -bolt lift, I almost never have to adjust my micro seater and the press feels the same round after round. I wonder why my brass doesnt look like AMP's this as at 550c 7 seconds in my salt

 

[Don A Parsons]

I wasn't planning on annealing my self,,, pretty much held off on this for many years...

My lead coach "shooter" Basically he walks his walk, I walk my mine and others get to choose what works for them... Just like JE mentioned...

Do or don't do what ever a person wants,,, I pack my little chunk of tarp to sit down along the way normally since walking to far at any given time is to much for me you know... Ha... Sitting down along the way is nice since it gives me time to take in part of the day...

Any-who,,, I got schooled on the old way of working with brass,,, then got re-schooled last Saterday on what """might""" be going on with the limited access to ideas and tools that we have...

I've noticed constancy in pressure needed to seat boolitz using the Arbour Press with hydro gauge as the dial indicator stays between the numbers of 35 to 40,,, that's my leads magic number,,, mine was way off the charts,,, LOL. More like 22 on past 80... Ha...

The next thing I noticed off the get go is a bit tighter vertical at 11 to 1450 yards,,, that's not saying that annealing did this since we plan on trying other things in our walk to see if its worth the distance...

I don't know this since I haven't got there yet,,, one thing that I've noticed is,,, the pressure on the boolit seating handle feels smooth and consistant...

Maybe this is all I'll learn on this. Ha...

How far or fast we walk depends on the effort each of us choose to put into things,,, mostly unknowns since I'm planning on drinking 2 or 4 cups of coffee to start the day... Now that is a given.

Yo Yo Yo

 

[TwoMore]

the target is my lab

 

[TwoMore]

one other thing that I have noticed is that I jam the lands .010 fireforming and when I tried the flame method I must have been getting to hot because if I pulled a loaded round out of the rifle it would keep the bullet even with a .003 neck tension, but that doesn't happen with the salt brass so that tells me my brass is not quite as easy to move but still I feel a very consistent feel to the press

 

[ntsqd]

I do not think that you can get the neck area too hot to anneal it. Assuming, of course, that you don't heat it until it loses it's shape. Obviously you can get other areas too hot, but not the neck. Not if your goal is a total annealing of the neck. If your goal is a tempering, then you can get it too hot.

It would be interesting to find out what the average install force is in seating the bullets in TwoMore's two different annealing processes. From this simple description I will speculate that the salt bath is only tempering the neck while the flame annealed it. Can think of Tempering as a Partial Anneal. Both reduced the work hardening in the neck, but only the flame totally removed it. So long as you're consistently getting your desired performance from the brass (life-span, low ES/SD, etc.) then I don't think it matters whether it is a total Anneal or a Tempering. Over a long term test it would not surprise me if tempering didn't result in longer brass life than annealing does. Not sure about its impact on the other performance criteria.

 

[Wedgy]

I wasn't planning on annealing my self,,,

I'm not going to anneal myself either LOL

 

[tbrice23]

I'm not going to anneal myself either LOL

Please don't.

 

[EagerNoSkill]

Good day all

Please find an independent study of brass annealing. This papers were worth reading!
Ryan Stevenson - Technical Paper.pdf (short 23 pages)
Ryan Stevenson - Dissertation.pdf (longer 71 pages)

-----------------------------------
I am the "Tim Stewart" referred to in the 2 papers and I will happily explain the parameters, ambit and certain limitations of an ANNEALING study exercise that we ran in 2013.

1. WHY
A fellow shooter requested help for a young student studying metallurgy that needed a decent project and I saw a chance to gain some knowledge that either confirmed, validated or caused me to question the various methods etc. of brass annealing processes.

2. WHO WAS INVOLVED
1. Tim Stewart - FTR shooter for Great Britain
2. Ryan Stephenson was a Master Student attaining a degree in "MENG Mechanical Engineering With Financial Management"
3. Project Supervisor: Dr Alexander Galloway :University of Glasgow (UK)
4. Stephen Cater, a researcher at TWI Technology Centre at the Advanced Manufacturing Park, Sheffield
"TWI is one of the world’s foremost independent research and technology organisations, with expertise in materials joining and engineering processes as applied in industry. TWI specialises in innovation, knowledge transfer and in solving problems across all aspects of manufacturing, fabrication and whole-life integrity management.
Established in Cambridge, the UK in 1946, the organization has gained a first-class reputation for service through its teams of respected consultants, scientists, engineers and support staff. Now, approaching 1000 employees, it works with over 1800 Industrial Member companies in 70 countries."
http://www.twi-global.com/

3. WHO FUNDED IT
The cost of cases, bullets, powder, primers, barrel and range cost for target sessions was funded by Tim Stewart - It was my own initiative as a shooter.
The actual and extensive lab work was funded by Univ of Glasgow and TWI.

 

[Wedgy]

Summation;
"The results suggest that if annealing is to be included as part of a reloading procedure it should be done regularly. If there is a requirement for highly consistent cartridge properties it may be beneficial to sacrifice case lifespan and not undertake any annealing procedure during the firing-reloading cycles. This would remove any inconsistencies caused by the relatively crude annealing process in use. Despite this; the cartridge neck annealing procedure was shown to effectively reduce the hardness of the brass. Thus the use of annealing in a reloading procedure can help to extend the case lifespan but it would be beneficial if a more controllable annealing process could be used."

 

[LongProng]

Fascinating research! Maybe another Masters student is looking for a thesis topic - Induction vs. Salt Bath annealing

 

[EagerNoSkill]

Some additional comments

extending the summary extract re "Wedgy"

The FIRST ANNEALING
- using templiaq was effectively 9 seconds for my flame / setup ...
- and frankly in the cold winter (-5 celcius) of my garage with 300 plus cases
- under time pressures I worked like a shooter just "chunking through"
Was a "replication" of typical rough variations you see on the internet regardless of process.

The SECOND ANNEALING process
- was set at 11 seconds and
- there was a specific attempt to "tighten up" - so I was much more diligent in both the timing consistency and the flame placement

This was an original objective of the exercise AND based on the discussions with Ryan on the interim findings of Annealing Step 1....... You can see the difference in the quality of results - the 2nd Annealing showed a much uniform outcome.

See graphic on Page 43 of the Dissertation paper!

There is NO doubt the "Bench/Giraud" option is superior ...
BUT some focus and minor effort by a reloader can achieve a valid, valuable, viable and consistent annealing outcome with a $40 dollar setup!

As an aside it was pure chance that the Small Vickers test on the new brass happened to start off at +- 100 pts. And in my gas/flame setup - it effectively transpired that 10 Small Vickers points was 1 second

Here is an example of the process as per the FIRST ANNEAL attitude (more casual)


NOTE this was done in 2013 - the AMP option did not exist.
These papers did have not commercial/product intent or bias.

 

[EagerNoSkill]

Page 43

"The above figure shows the increase in hardness of the brass at the cartridge neck through use. It is interesting to note that the largest increases in hardness are caused by the firing stages of the process. This suggests that the working of the cartridge to prepare it for firing has little impact in comparison to the work hardening produced by the pressure exerted on the cartridge during firing.
The figure also shows that the material hardness at the neck is very similar for sample sets A and C. This suggests that the neck turning process, included in the preparation procedure of sample set C (and DCA) does not significantly affect the hardening of the cartridges throughout their lifespan."

Page 65 bottom
" The results also suggest that if cartridge neck annealing is to be used it should be performed on a regular basis. This is due to the fact that after annealing the hardness of the material was seen to quickly increase towards where it would have been if annealing had not taken place"

 

[raider1v1]

Page 43
Page 65 bottom
" The results also suggest that if cartridge neck annealing is to be used it should be performed on a regular basis. This is due to the fact that after annealing the hardness of the material was seen to quickly increase towards where it would have been if annealing had not taken place"

that doesnt match up with what i have seen. i have seen a case get 'work hardened' after a few times being fired, not just after one. and by that i mean the neck splits or its hard to resize.

or am i missing something?