Re: Bench Source or AMP Annealing machine
Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2017 11:33 am
Most of my shooting these days in .308 and .338LM is at long range, so if I am bothered to properly clean and size the brass, use premium bullets, primers and individually measure powders why wouldn't I explore every avenue to improve vertical stringing. Currently the best ES I can achieve with four times fired Lapua .338LM brass is around 21 fps and I am starting to feel the differences in neck tension when seating bullets. I am hoping that annealing will bring the the ES down to single figures.
There is so much written about neck annealing but by far the consensus is that the temperature and time need to be spot on to get necks consistent. If you are striving for perfection a bit too much or a bit too little heat across a batch of cases is hardly likely to give the improvement I'm looking for. The AMP machine ticks all the boxes, but at a price. It seems the customer service from AMP in New Zealand is second to none and they will even test the hardness of your own brass for free and actually encourage people to use this service to build their data base which will give an annealing program by calibre and manufacturer and sometime even by batch number. No one else seems to come close to this perfection.
I too am still shooting gallery with .357 cases I had before the pistol ban. I tend to load to 1200 fps, a bit much for gallery but it easily takes me out to 100 yards if I feel inclined. The cases don't split or stretch and I still load on an RCBS Ammomaster press that I had from way back, when I'd shoot maybe 500 rounds on a Sunday morning. It was then fully progressive but when I started rifle reloading I converted it, so now everything gets loaded single stage.
There is so much written about neck annealing but by far the consensus is that the temperature and time need to be spot on to get necks consistent. If you are striving for perfection a bit too much or a bit too little heat across a batch of cases is hardly likely to give the improvement I'm looking for. The AMP machine ticks all the boxes, but at a price. It seems the customer service from AMP in New Zealand is second to none and they will even test the hardness of your own brass for free and actually encourage people to use this service to build their data base which will give an annealing program by calibre and manufacturer and sometime even by batch number. No one else seems to come close to this perfection.
I too am still shooting gallery with .357 cases I had before the pistol ban. I tend to load to 1200 fps, a bit much for gallery but it easily takes me out to 100 yards if I feel inclined. The cases don't split or stretch and I still load on an RCBS Ammomaster press that I had from way back, when I'd shoot maybe 500 rounds on a Sunday morning. It was then fully progressive but when I started rifle reloading I converted it, so now everything gets loaded single stage.