Annealing case necks?

[DukeInFlorida]

You have to be VERY careful if you **DO** anneal any brass. And, only ever anneal the necks only on rifle brass. NEVER (and I do mean NEVER) anneal any pistol brass. Annealing pistol brass will make them too soft, and they will become BOMBS.

If you are going to anneal rifle brass, be sure to only anneal the neck area that touches the bullet. DO NOT anneal the main body of the brass. The discoloration that you see on some military brass is heat "wicking" from the neck area only. Only the neck that holds onto the bullet should be annealed.

Here's what I tell students:
" If you only have 5 pieces of brass to your name........... you'll find some way to keep them going. However, if you have a good supply, just keep reloading until they split or otherwise fail"

I have never annealed a single piece of brass to reload it. And, that's tens and tens of thousands over the years.

[rodnocker1]

I just formed 4.000+ pcs of 5.56 into 300 BLK and ater all the work involved, was planning on annealing them to get them to last as long as possible. It's an awful lot of work just to shoot them once or twice and have them split.....and I actually had a couple of hundred with shoulder cracks just from reforming. Not old brass like you might think but Lake City 2011/12/13 1x fired 5.56. Plus I have at leeast 1,000 pcs of 1x in the other 10 or so calibers that I reload that I would eventually anneal.

I have been planning for a couple of years on getting one of Doug Girard's but just haven't taken the time to order one, But lately, I've been thinking that with all of the factory loads I still have from back in the early 2000's before I started reloading plus all of the brass I presently have on hand PLUS all the 1x fired that I still pick up at the range from other shooters, I will probably never shoot any of it enough to ever really warrant spending the $500.00 for the annealer.....much less enough to split the neck.

That Giraud would definitely be neat (coolness factor 100) to have and I do already have 2 of Doug's trimmers that I have trimmed 10's of 1,000's of pcs of brass with (20,000+ in .223/5.56 alone) but I'm probably gonna end up not getting one or even bothering to anneal, like Duke said.