On 1/29/2014 6:43 PM, John B. wrote:
On Wed, 29 Jan 2014 15:24:10 -0500, Tom Gardner Mars@Tacks wrote:

On 1/28/2014 10:38 PM, Richard wrote:
On 1/28/2014 9:29 PM, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 1/27/2014 9:46 PM, Richard 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".



What lube was used"? The neck looks way overheated to me. What was
misaligned to rip the side?


Hi Tom. I was waiting to hear from you.

I'm using Lee case lube, but that wasn't the problem here.
I did that tear with a pair of needle nose pliers.
Just poking at it to see what it was.
It was just really soft pliable metal around the neck.
It's not as dark in real life as the photos look.

A day or so later (after being deformed) it had become quite a bit
stiffer.

Annealing is the wrong term to use when talking about this kind of heat
treatment.

I suspect it was you said that a while back?

In the annealed state the case is ruined.
Will it age harden back to any useful temper?
Assuming one doesn't poke at it before hand?





We call it "roomalating"; that period of time that metal just sits (in a
room) and normalizes. Why do you think it got so soft? I used to
anneal my .223's by standing them up in a cookie trey with 1/2" of water
in it then heat the neck with a torch and tip them into the water. I
didn't heat them red, just guessed. (dead soft???) That seemed to work
for me an I used the cases at least 5 times. I kept to the conservative
end of the powder chart.

I'm not sure how often it is necessary to "neck anneal" but I had,
probably 50 22-250 wildcat cases I annealed once, after initially
necking down and fire-forming, and never had any problems with them -
loaded to about 3,000 FPS.

Used the same technique as you, pan of water, heat them up, tip them
over.



Did you also use the "intuitive" method for heating? I once had a .240
Gibbs that was a .30-06 case necked down and fire formed and did nothing
different for annealing and that worked. I'm guessing that it's not
that critical or I've just been lucky. When this comes to light, let me
know the story. It's something simple or complex or somewhere in between.