On 1/28/2014 5:46 AM, John B. wrote:
On Mon, 27 Jan 2014 20:46:54 -0600,
wrote:

Refer back to the Cowboy Assault Rifle thread for details.
Winchester 1894 - and some reloading and cast lead boolits.


When I was first getting started reloading, one of our self-professed
experts said that annealing cases to a dead soft condition was
perfectly acceptable.

Well now...

I suggest that we not necessarily believe everything we read on the net!
Just for grins and giggles I cooked one 30-30 case to dead soft and
tried to press a lead bullet into it.

http://www.home.earthlink.net/~cave-...s/deadsoft.jpg

As Spock would say, "Fascinating".

Well, I see that you discovered that all the experts aren't :-)
A particularly important fact to learn if one messes about on the
Internet :-)

But on the other side of the question, why did you ever think that the
whole case needed to be annealed? The neck gets squeezed and then
stretched and then squeezed and then... and it work hardens but the
rest of the case?


Neck only.
I built a small rotisserie for heat treat the cases.
This one was just an extreme example to see what would happen if the
case were annealed to dead soft.

And yes,. it's still brass - not copper.

This one just didn't get polished again.