holescreek wrote:What ever happened to setting them up in a pan of water and using a torch then tipping them over to cool?
For annealing brass to run through an AR or other plinking gun or just 200 yard hunting guns that is a just fine way of annealing brass. But for top accuracy and long range shooting it's nearly impossible to get a consistent enough anneal. Each piece of brass needs to reach a similar temperature in order to be annealed to a reasonably consistent hardness. If you anneal by hand you end up with a lot of brass that is spread over a wide range on the scale for brass hardness. Again I'll say, at close range, 200 yards or less, it won't make a huge difference. But where it does come into play is shooting at distance
Here is why. Harder brass has more "spring" to it. So when you size your brass the harder brass will spring back more so it's not sized to the same size as softer brass that takes form much easier when sized. Which will effect your neck tension on the bullet. The harder brass also can hold your bullet tighter than softer brass. Which effects the neck tension. Which is all important. If your tension is different in different cases then the bullet does not release from the cases neck at the same amount of case pressure. This has a huge effect on MAX pressure that your load will reach. The harder cases will also spring back more in the shoulder which changes the case volume. This also effects your MAX pressure.
So to sum up, brass that is not annealed consistently in time and temperature of the heat source will reach different temps and anneal to different points of hardness which will cause your MAX case pressures to wander all over the place which in turn gives you a very wide deviation in muzzle velocities which makes being able to accurately calculate the I,pact of your bullet at long range VERY hard.
Consistency is the key to accuracy. From every aspect of the loaded Round right up through how you hold the gun, shoulder pressure on the stock, even how you hold your trigger finger. Error is inevitable but keeping it to a minimum will greatly improve accuracy.
I mostly put forth the extra effort because I love long range hunting as much as target shooting and in order to take a 800 yard shot at a deer I need full confidence that when I pull the trigger I have the highest odds that the the bullet will find my mark and make a nice clean kill.