Annealing brass

[SamGoldstein]

Does anyone anneal their brass for pistols?

For pistols, do you anneal brass for .45 colt and .45 ACP? I was told by another reloader that the blow by I'm seeing on my brass is due to the brass mouth not sealing the chamber (and the brass mouth is actually still slightly crimped on my .45 colt loads). So is it worth annealing or just buy new brass?

For rifles, I heard that a brass case needs to be annealed only when you do full-length resizing. For neck resizing there is no need to anneal. Does anyone believe this?

[SixPointEight]

Absolutely not. I don't even think it's safe to anneal brass as short as 45 ACP

Your understanding of why rifle brass needs to be annealed is a little off. Any brass that gets sized gets work hardened, whether or not you neck size or full length size.

['ol shooter]

Sometimes when processing pistol brass, I drop them on the floor, and anneal down to pick them up. Dumb humor, I know. No, I just load 'em and shoot 'em. .45 ACP and 9mm last a long time. I have loaded my .45 Colt brass several times with no ill effects.

[someoneeasy]

Sometimes when processing pistol brass, I drop them on the floor, and anneal down to pick them up. Dumb humor, I know. No, I just load 'em and shoot 'em. .45 ACP and 9mm last a long time. I have loaded my .45 Colt brass several times with no ill effects.

Ok, that was pretty good.

[JackEllis]

I load for bolt rifles only. I can pick up once-fired .223 cases for as little as a nickel. If I fire them five times that's a penny per shot. I just bought a bunch of once-fired .30-06 cases for 30 cents apiece. If I fire each one five times that's six cents per shot. My .243 has expensive taste and doesn't much care for once-fired cases so I have to buy those new. Figure ten cents per shot.

The cost of powder, primers and bullets is far larger than the cost of the cases if they can be reused five times without annealing them. Recycling helps fund new cases when they're needed.

I might get better life out of my larger cases because I load to maximize accuracy rather than muzzle velocity so I can get by with something less than maximum loads that tend to be hard on brass.

I'm not sure it's worth the time and expense to anneal cases unless you shoot thousands of rounds per year of ammo where the cases are pricey or you're a benchrest shooter. Unless of course, you want to do it and to h*ll with the time and cost.