Annealing All Being Equal

[Muley Buck]

I have been researching and reading up on annealing for months and to me it's easily the most debated topic in the reloading process. It seems there is no provable or fact based way to justify any method one uses. One thing that is agreed is consistency, which makes perfect sense and is top of my interest as well. I am results driven and if I am going to anneal (in some people's eyes) the "wrong" way but am getting consistent shoulder bumps and consistent neck size with minimal spring back translating to lower ES, well thenI don't care if it's "wrong".

In what I've read and for my wants and needs I decided to go with a Benchsource annealer. I haven't even used it yet.

I do have a question though that I have not found or have seen addressed. If I have a batch of 4x fired brass that has never been annealed and another batch of 4x fired that has been annealed after every firing. Then if the 4x non annealed was to get annealed and the 4x fired that has always been annealed are they the same softness and become equal? So basically, in terms of shoulder and neck softness/spring back, does annealing the brass no matter how many times fired, in essence "level the playing field" and make them in those terms equal again?

 

[Rutter]

I’m under the understanding that once they are all annealed under the same heat source. That they all become equal. That is one reason for the Annealing.

 

[1moaoff]

The "hardness" would be the same. That does not account for other stresses or degradation of the case that occurs.

 

[Muley Buck]

The "hardness" would be the same. That does not account for other stresses or degradation of the case that occurs.

I understand. I tried to get that across in my original post but I can get wordy so bear with me. Thanx.

 

[wpgk58]

The key to annealing and getting the best results is to develop a process, with whatever annealing equipment you have, that is consistent.
I started out with the Annealeez, which did a great job. The one thing I noted was that if the case did not spin consistently, there would be hot spot on that case. The results for me were SD dropping from 8-15 fps, to 5-8 fps.
Then I went to the AMP, and I anneal each reloading. The results are very consistent and considerably faster than torch method. Net result is SDs are now consistently sub 5 fps.
As for the batch that was not annealed until 4th reload, my thought is that it will be close to the batch annealed each reload after the first annealing and the gap in the difference will diminish with each annealing. I would still keep them separated, not for the annealing factor but for the wear factor.