Second Hand Krag Brass

[Cat Man]

For years, I scrounged 30-40 brass from gun show tables and yard sales. Even questionable old hand loads would be disassembled to salvage the brass.
This was all before new brass became available a few years ago.
Yesterday I was at the local club gun show and a guy brought me some brass. He remembered me from a conversation a year ago when I helped him buy a Krag.
Holy smokes, he pulled out a bag with 350 Pieces of Remington UMC and Winchester Super X mixed brass. Some once fired, some reloaded and some that look unused.
He wanted to give it all to me and I said I couldn't do that. Gave him a couple $20's and he made me take the two boxes of hunting bullets and a vintage Lyman FL resizing die with it.
It pays to make new Krag friends when we can.

Cat Man Jeff

[butlersrangers]

Jeff - Looks like you will be doing some case-neck annealing.

What is your method?

[Cat Man]

I have used the old Rem UMC and Win commercial brass for quite a few years. That is what we find most. I have not had to do much annealing for these. Most of my experience with annealing is with military 30-06 and 7.62 National Match cases. They are thicker and work harden. Those I just stand up in a cake pan with water to just below the shoulder. Use a propane torch to heat the neck and watch for visual color change. Then tip them over to quench. Old school but it works with enough consistency for me. I have watched the demonstration of the fancy modern automatic feed annealing machines. I don't load in that volume these days.

The vintage 30-40 gets sorted by brand and I tend to keep them in lots of about 80 cases. Full length resizing so they run in different rifles. The Remington always seems to be softer than the Win. About six or seven reloads before they approach case head separation. I really don't see a neck or shoulder split very often. Of coarse they can last longer with low pressure low speed cast bullets.

I always wanted to experiment with neck sizing a small lot of brass and fire it only in one rifle to see how far it would last. Just never got to that experiment yet.

Jeff

[butlersrangers]

The old 'standing-up in water' and heating with a propane torch & knocking cases over to quench is the technique, I used.

I've annealed, mainly, cases for other calibers that were being 'necked-down' or 'expanded-up'. I probably got the necks 'hotter' than really necessary.

On another forum, I read several pages of explanation, that poorly described "a better way".
IIRC - It involved some type of 'temperature crayon'. I remember little else of the method.

I believe 'Parashooter' has an excellent method. I'll have to look for it on the KCA 'back pages'. I've been very lazy about annealing .30-40 Brass! Split necks have not been a problem ... 'knock wood'.

[FredC]

I got some of the Tempil material, I think it came in a bottle with a brush applicator. I got the bright idea of marking a bunch of them ahead of time then doing them another day. Days went by and by the time I tried to do it the necks were badly corroded. Scrapped many. Some kind of cheating is necessary for the extremely color blind. I am going to keep using the liquid salt method that was recommended a year or 2 back. After annealing and quenching in water the salts were dissolved and no damage occurred. I did wash the cases in soap and water and rinsed again just to be sure the salts were removed, but I think that was a little over kill. The molten salt gives a consistent anneal temperature.
I did a hundred or more cases at one time that had been expanded to 35 caliber, for someone with good color perception and doing 20 or 30 cases at a time probably more trouble than it is worth to set up and do it.

[Parashooter]

It's fashionable now to "over-engineer" occasional small-batch case annealing. All that's really needed (for medium military rifle brass) is a propane torch, bare fingers, and a metal pan for cooling. Quick and simple.

Direct flame at shoulder (not mouth). When surface color change reaches ~3/8" below shoulder, put case in pan to air cool. No water or drying needed. Cooked fingers mean you're doing it wrong.

AnnealAni.gif (268.23 KiB) Viewed 1661 times

[Whig]

I've always just done the torch and finger method. Watch for the color change and drop them in a metal container to cool. Hit the shoulder, not down the neck. Never seem to have a problem, simple, and they don't need drying off.

I'm amazed at those automatic process machines for high volume annealing. Cost hundreds or over a thousand dollars for some. I have put my moolah in other areas of shooting enjoyment.

Keep it simple might be the best approach for this chore.

[butlersrangers]

Thank you 'Parashooter' and 'Whig' .... you have both made it nice and simple, (and more likely to be performed)!