Cheap brass dilemma
So, not being capable of resisting a bargain, I bought a 100 count bag of brass for my 204R. Not that I really needed it, but since this stuff is getting harder to find and much more expensive, I thought, how bad could it be. (I’m not going to name the brand, cuz I’m in the process of talking to head office about it.). Didn’t take long to find how bad it really is.
Get it home n open the bag, yup nice n shiny. Start looking closer and there’s the obligatory dents and dings common to cheap brass. Start resizing it, measure to see where the shoulder is relative to where it needs to be. Varies from .012 short to .008 long. All the other brass I’ve got in 204 varies from .001-.002 short. Yikes. Then I run some through the full length sizing die, and check for run out. Most of it is .006 - .008 runout from the shoulder to the neck. And there is more that are .010 - .012 than there are those that are .001 - .002 And that’s just the ones that I can measure, there’s a lot of them that are so badly dented where the body meets the shoulder that I can’t get a reading on them.
So, clearly, I’ll have to fireform this whole bagful. And I’ll have to headspace on the bullet to push those shoulders ahead to where they should be. I plan to use a heavy (40 gr) bullet and go one step hotter than min charge powder. I’ve got them all to where they are concentric within .003 Some of them I had to run thro the die 4-5 times. So I plan to anneal the whole lot as well.
QUESTION: Should I anneal before or after I fireform? In other words, would annealing before or after fire forming give me the best chance of having this brass fireform to make it useable?
Thank you in advance for your collective insight and knowledge, and being willing to share your knowledge and experience with me and whoever else benefits from this lesson.
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