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Some advise needed.....

I shoot 45/70 and 45/100.

Large straight cases and I only use BP.

Some of the American sites recommend annealing cases before first firing, books I have read do not mention it.

Anybody with any experience of these calibres got any opinions one way or the other?

I do like to anneal these large cases often, the reason being that you are using a soft lead boolit that needs inside case diameter to be only 1-2 thou under boolit so as not to resize the boolit. Annealing helps keep the brass at a constant tension so that boolit retention is as consistent as possible for an even powder burn and case expansion. Or as I have found annealed brass shoots better.