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July 7, 2026
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Hopefully this topic hasn’t been exhausted! I’ve been producing 32-40 brass from new 38-55 brass for a few months and generally it goes fairly well. However, this morning I did a batch and yielded about 50% success. What the heck? Then a light bulb came on and realized I had had not annealed the new brass. I have no great method for this. I simply run a propane torch on low and rotate the case in the main blue flame covering about the top 1/3 of the brass. I do it bare fingered and it takes 8-10 seconds. Much longer than that and my fingers get pretty dang warm. You’ll know if it’s too long. I have dropped the brass into water but I’m not sure that is necessary. I still get a dented case once in a while but I’d say less than 1 in 10.
Honest Jon
November 7, 2015
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I’m trying to learn how to anneal. I ruined most of my first batch of 38-55 brass trying to get two torches and a simple tittle machine to work as a team. Seems one torch is defective and it’s too hot around here to try out the replacement. I made some 32-40 cases out of new 38-55 brass with fair results awhile back but I try very hard to use correct head stamp cases when possible. I don’t think water quenching is necessary or even helpful but a pile of freshly annealed brass takes awhile to cool off, at least that’s what my fingers thought!
Mike
June 4, 2017
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I don’t do a lot of loading anymore but when I anneal I use a short lipped pan with less than 1/4″ of water in it. I heat the brass with a single propane torch with shell cases standing straight up, head in water. Then one at a time heat and knock over and roll. With a normal size brownie pan I can do 10 at a time before resetting another 10. The head stays hard, T/R
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